0254 What is a fetish?

0255 A fetish is magical.

In late medieval and early modern times, the way that regal qualities endowed the mortal body of the king was magical.  The order of the kingdom was attributed to the health and wellness of the royal person.

Perhaps, the arrangement was not so magical.

After all, the king did the dirty work that no one else would or could do.  Protection from invasion was a basic.

0256 The king’s dual body may be juxtaposed against the sovereign level of the society tier as well as Santner’s general formula.

0257 Santner works backwards, from the end point of Marxist theory, to the starting point of the late medieval and early modern model of the sublime body of the king.

0258 The early modern model provides a soil for mercantilist attitudes to take root.  The mortal body of the king, incorporating regal values, associates to both (1) sovereign acts, laws and decrees and (2) corporate (somatic) commercial activities.  The transition from kingdom to corporation is already present.

0259 The organization tier is spontaneous.  It is governed by simple rules of conduct.  These rules are somatic.  They come across as gut feelings.  No one will trade with someone who cheats.  Everyone will short the dupe.  Commercial relations are based on mutual benefit and repetition.

0260 The sovereign office enforces its laws and decrees through the mortal body of the king.  These laws and decrees regulate commercial relations.  One could say, they also empower commercial relations by allowing them to exist and flourish.  For this reason, the wellness of the king and the health of the kingdom are confounded.

Occasionally, the sovereign makes exceptions.  The exceptions prove the rule and show that the sovereign office corresponds to the immaterial and normative sublime body of the king.  The exceptions also provide opportunities for more nuanced rules or alternative simple rules.

Finally, the sovereign office draws on the potentials of personal honor and political order.  These potentials arise from possibilities inherent in the stuff and the flesh of the subjects of the realm.

0261 Similarly, the active soul of citizen^Marat situates the potentials generated by the biopower of the regular citizen.

The administrative activity of citizen^Marat mimics the mortal body of the king, mirroring sovereign acts that go with somatic attitudes and commercial relations.

Plus, the immaterial and normative administrative authority of citizen^Marat, here called “discipline”, calls to mind the sublime body of the king.

0262 Compare the following three nested forms:

0263 Something magical changes vessels, from the king to citizen^Marat.

With the king, the magical thing is transcendent.  A perspective level elevates the king above the folk.  The transcendent becomes immanent.

With citizen^Marat, the perspective level gets painted over.  Something immanent becomes transcendent.  Something elevates citizen^Marat above citizen^regular.

0264 Where does this surplus of immanence come from?

The surplus of immanence comes from a re-contextualization of salvation in England and similar nations in Christendom.

In the medieval world, the spirit of the individual was defined in terms of a mystical union with God.  The world was modeled as a sacrament.

The theory of the sublime body of the king exploited the Christian concept of sacramental vocation.  It turned Christian revelation into a secret formula for glorifying the king.

0265 The Reformation (starting around 1550) got rid of such nonsense.

The sacraments became symbols, rather than icons and indexes of Jesus the King.

This left a vacuum.

Some other way of knowing needed to replace the superstition embodied by the sacraments and the Church.  Thus, a spirit of rational expectations replaced the spirit of the saintly individual.

0266 Here is the transition as an association of nested forms in the content level of the society tier.

0267 Note the subtle shift in nuance between feudal and mercantilist institutions.  This fits the scenario described by Max Weber.  Ideas have consequences.

0268 The battles among Christian factions in pursuit of sovereign power sealed the transition.

The Peace of Westphalia (around 1650) established a new normal.  The king now determined which Christian factions would be permitted in his realm.  Thus, the king became both a seat of reason and a pastor to the nation.

0269 According to Max Weber, the Protestant Ethic confounded saintliness and industriousness.

It glorified work, not the sacraments, as the passage to salvation.

In the process, it glorified whatever work produces, including commodities.

0270 Thus, I arrive at Marx’s simplification (around 1850), labeled “the commodity fetish”.

The commodity fetish considers the commodity to be an object reflecting the glorification of ‘something’, regardless of the management, production, and service underlying the presence of the commodity as thing.

0271 Note how Marx’s simplification leaves a key part of the Protestant Ethic begging.

If the construction of the commodity as a thing is the glorification of God through industriousness, then what explains Marx’s simplification, where the commodity glorifies something regardless of the industriousness going into its production?

Did the Protestant Ethic open a door to another Ethic, one that sees the commodity as an object that reflects the glorification of ‘something’ other than whatever went into its coming into being.

Did the glory of creation supplant the glory of the Creator?

0272 Marx’s simplification (It is a fetish about commodities.) implements a logic (The fetish produces a value (or price) greater than the generalized labor value of the thing itself.) that will inform organizational objectives demanding sovereign power (The regulation of commercial enterprises is necessary in order to compensate for the surplus value generated by the commodity fetish.).

0273 Since the commodity fetish simplifies a relation, it also distorts, so its implementation as a logic within the social sciences produces Kafkaesque constructions.

The logic of the commodity fetish produces two contradictory loops of busy-ness.

One develops and enforces organizational objectives that miss their targets.

One deconstructs and evades the misguided (and righteousness-fueled) objects^org mentioned above.

0274 Only by de-animating the industrious flesh of the citizen^regular can citizen^Marat achieve the goal of total conformity, hence purity, of administrative intent.

In the society tier, citizen^Marat obsesses and citizen^regular is petrified.

In the 3-tier system, citizen^Marat aggresses and citizen^regular evades.

0275 Why?

0276 In the society tier, citizen^regular clings to a spirit of rational expectations, remains industrious and focuses on the possibility of sanity.

Meanwhile, in order to demonstrate that objects^org are valid (even though they are unworkable simplifications), citizen^Marat must dispossess citizen^regular from the content level of the society tier and make the citizen^regular a slave to the organization tier.

0277 So what is citizen^Marat going to put in the content level of the society tier instead of citizen^regular?

How about institutions that depend on the sovereignty of citizen^Marat?

These institutions are collectively labeled “the party”.

0301 Taking these diagrams as interpretations, Lacan’s petit objet a correlates to the apparent element in the dyad of actuality.

0302 For the theory of the sublime body of the king, petit objet a consists of supplements adorning the mortal body of the king. 

The king does not show up like some unvetted carpenter at a temple.  No, the mortal body to the king is arrayed in fine robes, wearing a metal hat full of jewels.  Plus, advisors surround the king, concocting doxologies about the king’s glorious body.

0303 For the theory of the commodity fetish, petit objet a consists of price.

For any particular corporation, the sales price of what it produces will vary considerably, depending on the capricious perceptions of the buyers.

Entire markets may turn quickly.

To compensate, organizations advertise.

0304 What is advertising?

Advertising attempts to generate perceived value.  The advertising industry strives to induce the commodity fetish.

0305 Management, production and service are so indebted to the enhanced perception of perceived value that I have often heard engineers say, “The marketing department runs the business.”

0306 Here is one way to envision the role of advertising:

0307 Remember, an institution puts the organization tier into context.

Advertising puts a product marketed by a corporation into perspective.  It wraps the product in the mantle of righteousness.  It supplements the product with a purpose (object^organization).

0308 So, I return to petit objet a.  It is really is a subject, a thing that we can encounter.  Petit objet a is a subject (a piece of the Real) that supports an object.

0309 Lacan’s objet petit a corresponds to the mortal body of the king (in one theory) and price (in the other).  It is the apparent element in the dyad of actuality.

Actuality belongs to the category of secondness.  Secondness consists of two contiguous elements.  The appearance of one element is contiguous with the hidden presence of the other element.

0310 I hope this does not sound too much like Heidegger’s impression of Greek philosophy.

Here is how petit objet a looks in the current discussion:

0311 Price is the shocking piece of the Real that we encounter at market.  The market, then, exhibits a normal context of discipline.  

Market discipline is not the same as the discipline that contextualizes citizen^Marat.

0312 Market discipline is based on experience.  It contains rules, expressed in aphorisms such as “Let the buyer beware.”  It also implies control, especially self-control.

0313 Does the price reflect my perceived valuation?

The question itself turns the buyer’s attention away from the social machinations of the content-level and towards clues, influenced by advertising, that this commodity is supplemented with an organizational objective.

0314 What does this imply?

Humans value organizational objectives.

0315 An advertised organizational objective often answers the question, “What does this commodity mean to me?’

Plus, it addresses the question, “What does this commodity mean to everyone else?”

0316 So why does Santner bring up the word “debt” at the end of section 2.2?

0317 Clearly, the word “debt” means more than a financial arrangement similar to the one made between Shylock and Antonio in The Merchant of Venice.

0318 Is it more like the sigh of relief collectively released after Charlotte Corday plunged her once-concealed knifesuperior to the clavicle of the en-bath-ulated tyrant-to-be Jean-Paul Marat?

After all, she relieved the citizens^regular of Marat’s espousal of the organization objects belonging to his Friendship with the People, such as “murder the political opponents of the Jacobins”.  Unfortunately, Corday misjudged the importance of Marat.  He was just one of the contenders for regal citizenship.

0319 Is there a difference between the modern citizen^Marat and the late medieval and early modern royal personage?

So far, the answer to this question is not clear. 

But, the implications of the word “debt” becomes more obvious.

0320 Santner’s term, “debt”, derives from the acknowledgment of an organizational object as a situation-level value,supplementing the realness of the situating petit objet a.  This supplement enhances a fetish that benefits the content-level, providing it with a clear orientation and putting it in debt.

0321 For the late medieval and early modern world, doxologies to the sublime body of the king enhanced the subject’s self-perception as a participant in the kingdom.  They provided a site for organizing the active soul of the individual asa subject of the realm.

0322 Values virtually situate objects^org.  Organizational objects occupy the active soul, directly situating a potential for righteousness that moves the passive soul.

0323 Both Lacanian and Marxist terminology fit into the society-tier model of late medieval and early modern political theology.

0324 The same pattern fits the organization tier of the middle and late modern political economy.

0325 Two subtle questions now becomes a little more apparent.

0326 What is drawn upwards from debt into fetish?

What is drawn downwards from fetish into debt?

0327 The word “liturgy” combines the Greek words laos (people) and ergon (work).  The word translates into “public works”.  The word associates to an objective that brings people into organization.

0328 Thus, the sublime body of the king serves as a normal context for the regal values that virtually situate organizational objectives, bringing the individual into the organization of the kingdom (here on earth, rather than in heaven).

For this reason, the sublime body of the king calls for public works (that is, liturgies), extolling the potentials of both kingliness and order.  These public works treat the mortal body of the king like the well-dressed effigy that it may well be.

0329 Marx’s “fetish” has a lot in common with Freud’s “neurosis”.

The fetish neurotically attends to the apparent element that accompanies the hidden one.  For this reason, the fetish goes with both busy-ness (attending to literal appearances) and something else (attending to value perceptions).

0330 Giorgio Agamben insightfully characterizes the hidden element as glory, opening the door to an inquiry into the archaeology of (political) glory.

He raises the question: How are religious doxologies co-opted by political ones?

How are outward manifestations of political situations glorified?

0331 The fetish is a situation-level contiguity.

The situation-level puts the content-level in its place.  

For late medieval and early modern political theology, the fetish of a king’s mortal body puts the contiguity between an object^org and the (political) subject in debt.

A petit objet a (an index of kingliness) virtually situates an organizational object orienting the active soul of the subject.

Active soul [animates] body_2a becomes an organizational objective (inspired with indebtedness to the king) subject of the realm_2a.

Consider, for example, the custom of kissing the ring of the sovereign.

The ring is the petit objet a.  It is infused with regal value.

The ring reinforces an organizational object orienting the subject.  Kiss the ring.

This object^org is contiguous with the person as a subject of the realm.

This contiguity may be described using a variety of terms, such as inspiration, loyalty, duty and debt. 

0332 That is not all.

The readily apparent subject on the content level_2a emerges from and situates the possibilities inherent in joissance (here, the joy of being alive)_1a.

Joissance_1a, in turn, is virtually situated by the qualities of kingliness and order_1b.  These qualities_1b set the stage for a social form of surplus value_2b.

Consequently, the actuality of regal values [fetishizing] the king’s mortal body_2b generates something equivalent towhat Marx called “surplus value”.

This generation occurs in the society tier, suggesting that Marxism projects the operations of the society tier onto the organization tier.

0333 The feedback loop changes with time.

In the following diagram, history proceeds from top to bottom.

Only the content-level associations are shown.

0334 The nested forms represent religious theology, political theology and political economy, respectively.

0335 In political theology, the spirit of the individual standing before the king attends to the king’s personage (and the regal values that inform that personage).

With the Peace of Westphalia, the king also becomes the pastor of his nation (at least for the Northern Europeans).  The prince favors certain Christian factions over others.

0336 So what is an excluded Christian faction to do?

Many excluded Christian factions find joy in objects^org other than the objects^org of the sublime body of the king.  Directed by a spirit of rational expectations, typical of industry, these folks take the only sane path.  They make things that they can sell.

Thus, political economy overtook political theology.

The glory of the king passed into the glory of the fine commodities that the subjects produced.

0337 Here is how that looks in the 3-tier model:

0338 Indeed, the industriousness of the Protestants became their way of advertising.

0339 Few political theologians of the day saw what was coming.  

In the diagram, the reason is obvious.

The Protestant Ethic potentiates a new societal situation-level.  It supports a new authority, so to speak, which took Thomas Hobbes by surprise.  Hobbes published Leviathan in 1651, right around the time that the Puritans seized sovereign power and beheaded a mortal body that tried to live up to his regal values. 

The Leviathan is an extended and rational argument against the pope serving as spiritual sovereign over the temporal sovereign, the king.  Hobbes did not even mention the bloodthirsty Puritans.

Hobbes’ leviathan is depicted on the front cover of the original edition.  A giant human composed of small humanscarries a sword and a (bishop’s) staff, not a sowing machine and a ship.

0340 Oh, did I say “blood-thirsty”?  I meant to say “industrious”.

But then, can “industriousness” become an organizational object belonging to an institution capable of seizing sovereign power?

If so, then the institutions declaring industriousness to be righteous fit the definition of an infrasovereign religion.

An infrasovereign religion carries a capacity to grasp for sovereign power.

Sovereign power is empowered to spill blood.

0341 Let me look closely at this object^org.

Industrious labor (rather than self-sacrifice) glorifies the Creator.

0342 The message contains two contradicting actualities: work and faith.

By faith alone, I will be saved.  I must continually attend to my faith.  My faith justifies my righteous certitude.

At the same time, my work advertises my commitment to the glory of God.

0343 Do these two actualities contradict?

Do they combine into a single actuality?

The following intersection depicts the Puritan message.

A contradiction is presented as a single actuality: salvation.

0344 Salvation is a single actuality composed of two contradicting actualities, the business of faith and labor glorifying God.

The Protestant Ethic boasts certitude and industriousness.

The English Puritans at the time of Thomas Hobbes constituted an infrasovereign religion capable of contending for sovereign power.  They also developed the organization tier of the English economy by producing fine products that could be marketed.

0345 On one hand, Puritan leaders exhibited all the fervor of Jean-Paul Marat.

Indeed, their champion, Oliver Cromwell, prefigured Napoleon Bonaparte, as well as other tyrants.

The Puritan Revolution in England defines a phenomenon.

All varieties of mercantilism, fascism, communism and big-government (il)liberalism are constellations of infrasovereign religions.

As these constellations gain sovereign power, the nation tends towards tyranny.

0346 On the other hand, the English Puritans exhibited all the rationality of citizen^regular.

They were industrious and tolerant, in their own market-oriented way.  The Puritans blamed the sovereigns, rather than Christian factions, for the so-called “wars of religion”.

In many ways, they were correct.

0347 Aristocrats often manipulated Christian factions into openly fighting with one another.  They hoped to establish a need for order, which they were already prepared to supply.

Plus, factional conflicts justified looting the monasteries and taking their lands and property.

Little did the aristocrats know that they were next in line.

Remember the assignat in David’s painting, The Death of Marat?

0348 As Santner suggests, the subject matter of political economy includes some very un-economic (that is, political) subject matter.

In the Marxist-Freudian view, a fetish occupies the actuality of the situation levels of both the society and organization tiers of the West.

0349 A fetish connects expertise (as another term for citizen^Marat)_2bC with political objectives_2bC.

A fetish connects price_2bB with perceived value_2bB.

The apparent actualities of expertise and price are the sites of busy-ness and business, respectively.

0350 Now, I may wonder: Are the hidden actualities of political objectives and perceived value the sites of glory andadministration, respectively.

Or, is glory the same as administration?

0351 Consider this juxtaposition of three nested forms.  One is general.  The other two match the sovereign level of the society tier.

0352 Now, allow me to convert the dyadic actuality into a sign structure.

The structure of a sign goes like this: A sign vehicle stands for a sign object in regards to a sign interpretant.

0353 Take a look at the actualities in the above figure.

The apparent actualities are subjective.  The hidden actualities are objective. 

Thus, the dyad of actuality constitutes two elements of a triadic sign, the sign object and the sign vehicle.

The king’s mortal body stands for regal values according to a sign interpretant.

Citizen^Marat stands for political objectives according to a sign interpretant.

0354 The contiguity between the sign vehicle and the sign object is not the sign interpretant.  It is the referral making the sign interpretant possible.

0355 So, where is the sign interpretant?

Is it somewhere in the clouds of the perspective level?

Glory and administration hovers like incense above the king’s mortal body and citizen^Marat.

These spirits belong to the perspective level.

0356 The lecture continues. 

The words “policy” and “police” are both rooted in the word Greek word polis, meaning “city”.

I can describe a polis in terms of policy and policing.  But, these do not capture the splendor of the city.

0357 Cities are risky.

Every city is vulnerable.  Yet, most citizens proceed with confidence, reflecting the splendor of their city.  Policy makers may claim to have designed it.  Police may pretend to have kept it.  But, the foundation of confidence comes from a success that cannot be accounted for by policy makers or police.

0358 The confidence is aesthetic.

It is expressed in the liturgy of everyday life.

0359 Indeed, both policy makers and police may destroy the liturgy of the regular citizen.

They do so by usurpation.

What are they usurping?

0360 They are usurping the production of splendor.

But, what is splendor?

0361 Let me show a figure that has previously appeared.

0362 Policing runs horizontal.

The situation levels of all three tiers are subject to policing.

Each tier is vulnerable.

The police can break the discipline of citizens^Marat.  The police can undermine the contiguity between perceived value and price.  The police can force ideology into the reckonings and phantasms of everyday life.

0363 The citizens^Marat may use the police in order to regulate the organization tier and individual in community tiers.

Indeed, many of the political objectives that inform citizens^Marat attempt to alter perceived value by regulating prices.  They also teach myths about everyday stuff.

0364 Policy runs vertical.

The content level of the society tier is subject to policy.

Because the content level of the society tier contextualizes the organization and iic tiers, policy spills out into the entire 3-teir system.

In a democratic society, the citizens^regular supposedly validate the citizens^Marat through open and contested elections.

Is this the case?

The proof is in the pudding.

For example, turnover among elected officials in the United States of America, the home of big-government (il)liberalism, is remarkably low.  Most so-called “representatives” are career politicians.  Turnover in the non-elected federal administrative state is even lower.

0365 Consider Western society from 1945 on.

During this period, political objectives are increasingly determined by citizen^Marat, rather than citizen^regular.  The situation level of the society tier becomes more impressive, more splendid, while the content level falls into line.

Citizens^regular lose the capacity to participate with a rational spirit.

Will big government liberalism forgo democracy once the administrative state can survive without the approval of its citizens^regular?

Or will it rely on democracy to achieve its objectives?

What puts citizen^Marat into perspective?

Look at the painting The Death of Marat.

What is that blank space above citizen^Marat?

0366 Giorgio Agamben’s genealogy of economy and government supports Foucault’s conclusion: 

The modern person supplements and supplants medieval sovereignty with “govern-mentality” (that is, management of the political economy).

0367 Agamben claims that the Christian elaboration of the Trinity as a description of God is key.

Early Church writers transubstantiated the Greek term for “household”, oikos, into an image for the “oik”-onomy of God.  Later, Gnostic interpretation brought the term, “economy”, from heaven to earth.

0368 The latter transition may be phrased as a question: If Jesus is king, then who is sitting on the throne in yon castle?

The theological difference between general and special providence split into a host of late medieval and early modern distinctions.  Politics went with words “law”, “constituted power”, and “legal”.  Economics went with “order”, “constituent power” and “legitimate”.

0369 One irony of God’s Entrance into the Continuum of Time is that God does not want glory.

God wants flow.  Divine grace flows into human nature just like water fills an artisanal spring.

Grace (the hidden) and human nature (the apparent) are contiguous.

The contiguity is flowing in.

Grace [inflows] nature.

0370 Jesus is God’s Entrance into the Continuum of Time.

Early Christians addressed many questions. 

What happened?  How did this come to be?  How did time itself become divided by the presence of God?  Isn’t God outside of time?  How could a mortal being order the continuum of time?

Christians did not go about glorifying the One True (Time-Ordering) God as a public work.  They did so as a way to get in tune with one another.

If anyone heard Christians singing their doxologies, they could call Roman soldiers to break up the meeting.

0371 Yet, there is always the matter of advertising.

Doxologies to God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit eventually translated into the political fetish_2bC, the commodity fetish_2bB, as well as the me-too fetish_2bA.

0372 Indeed, the story that Santner and Agamben tell begins when the kings of the fledgling realms of Europe began to ask, “What about me?”

Thus, the glorification of the One True (Time-Ordering) God was taken out of its theological box and fashioned into goofy theories like the king’s dual body.

The royal values imbuing the mortal body of the king were glorious.

0373 The transfer of glory from God to king fits the sovereign level of the society tier.

0374 The question that I have to ask is this:  Why would the One True (Time-Ordering) God need praise and glorification?

Surely, it is not to shore up His Sovereign Power through habituation.

0375 Maybe it is keep us on shore through habituation.  Otherwise we could be lost at sea.

The Church performs liturgy in order to remind herself of something the angels already know and do.

0376 Angels unite thought and action without contradiction.  In doing so, they think-do good and evil.

0377 For humans, the unity of thought and action is full of contradictions.

In fact, the unity goes under the label: good and evil.

0378 There are two actualities to good and evil: thinking and doing.

Since they contradict, their nested forms cannot hierarchically order themselves.  They do not interscope.  Instead, they intersect.  Two actualities combine into one.

0379 This is the basic intersection for the message that underlies the word “religion”.

0380 What does this imply?

Liturgy, to humans, habituates what angels already think-do.

0381 Santner mentions a 1935 book that Agamben found inspiring.

Eric Peterson’s Book of Angels: Their Meaning and Place in the Liturgy puts it simply: The hymnic glorification of Godconstitutes the very being of angels.

0382 To me, this implies that an angel goes with a liturgical office, occupying the normal context of the situation level of the society tier, just like the glorious body of the king.

An angel sings words about God, praising His laws, His actions, and His decrees, just as the mortal body of the king expresses the embodiment of noble values.

Finally, the angel, contrary to the strange bureaucratic characters in Kafka’s stories, emerges from the potential of ‘something to announce’.

0383 The angel is a messenger, emerging from and situating the potential of a message, just as the mortal body of the king actualizes the potential of kingliness.  

0384 That makes me wonder.

Is kingliness like a message?

0385 Here is how this looks as a diagram.

0386 The Greek word doxa means “glory”.

Christians perform doxologies in imitation of the angels.

Angels perform their songs of praise with felicity.

I don’t think that they even need practice.

0387 In contrast, doxologies habituate humans into the cognitive space potentiated by Jesus, the Messiah.

0388 God is One Household (or Oikos).

The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three persons in One Oikos.

0389 One Oikos describes the potential underlying three divine manifestations within the Abrahamic and Pauline traditions: Yahweh, Jesus and the Spirit.

Three Persons are in One God.

0390 What is the doctrine of the Trinity?

Three Persons are in One Household?

0391 In order to appreciate this doctrine, I first re-present the basic interscope of the society tier.

0392 Consider the suprasovereign level.

The normal context is assume.

0393 The word “assume” has two referents.

One, the common use of the term is to take for granted.

Thomas Hobbes described Christian doctrine as a pill not to be chewed.  It is to be swallowed whole.

Two, the technical and religious use of the term means to take up into heaven.

For example, in Genesis, Enoch was taken into heaven.  In the Catholic tradition, Mary, the mother of Jesus, was assumed.

0394 These two uses do not exclude one another.

What does this imply?

There are nuances to the word assume.

So, there may be more than one model for a single suprasovereign religion.

However, these models cannot exclude one another.

Or, can they?

0395 The actuality of a suprasovereign religion is a relational object.

0396 Object^relation emerges from and situates the potential of bringing all into relation.

0397 Now, let me present one Christian model for the society tier.  Remember, this is not the only model.  This is a doxological model.

Look down the category of firstness.  The Trinity is the One, True God.

To me, that sounds like a line that could come from angelic voices.

0398 The Trinity manifests the all the elements of a suprasovereign religion.

The Holy Spirit brings the contiguity between the Father and the Son into relation with the possibilities inherent in the unity of The One House of God.  

0399 What is this contiguity between the hidden actuality of the Father and the witnessed actuality of the Son?

The contiguity is Real, therefore to name it reduces the contiguity to one of its facets.

0400 If the contiguity is begetting, the names are Father and Son.  If the contiguity is speaking, the names are The One Who Speaks and The Spoken Word.  If the contiguity is hand talk, the names are The Gesturer and The One Who Embodies the Gesture.  If the contiguity is creation, the names are The Creator and The One Who Embodies Creation.

0401 The divine names tell of a dyad of persons belong to secondness.

0402 The Holy Spirit is the Person defining the Contiguity.

0403 The names of the contiguities must be compatible with the Holy Spirit, else they are excluded.

The names of the contiguities virtually contextualize the divine values extolled by the angels.

0404 From the examples above, the angels sing praises to the divine potency, the divine voice, the divine gesture, and the divine creation.

Each lifts up one facet of the Contiguity between the Hidden and the Apparent Persons of God.

0405 On the situation level, the angelic officers gaze up to God.

The angels proclaim the divine attributes of God in word and song.

Each acclamation delivers a message.

0406 Christian doxologies bear witness to God Entering Time Itself.

0407 In the realm of potential, angelic messages_1b virtually situate righteousness_1b for the human being, the creature belonging to the content level of this model of the society tier.  

Furthermore, angelic messages are virtually contextualized by The One House of God.

0408 On the content level, the person hears sacred words and songs (the doxologies of the angels) and looks up, through the angels, into the clouds of divine unknowing.

0409 Within those clouds, the Holy Spirit virtually excludes, from the One House of the God, those angelic officers who re-interpret divine values.  They are cast into darkness.

0410 Fallen angels bear false messages.  Humans can pick up these little gems.  The gems turn into the righteousness of gods who are neither one nor true.  How captivating.

Then, humans situate these gems as organizational objectives.  The captivated humans paint over the One True God.  They may exploit some facet of the Contiguity between the Hidden and Apparent Persons of God.  But, they fail to recognize the entire divine relation.

0411 Is this how Jesus is King became Henry VIII is King?

Was Henry VIII Jesus with a sword and bishop’s staff, both weapons of sovereign power?

I love rhetorical questions.

0412 Let me go through some of the items that Santner examined in the course of his discussion.

Jean-Paul Marat, the one who died in a bathtub, may have thought that he was an angel, but his assassin Charlotte Corday, thought he was a devil (Preface 0.2).

In Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Portia, in the guise of the lawyer Balthazar, serves as an angel, praising the laws of the city (Lecture 1.2).

In Kafka’s stories, various bureaucrats act as messengers, but have no truth, hence, no message to tell (Lecture 1.4).

0413 Professor Bonnie Honig adds Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab to the list.  Ahab is a devil who wants to deliver a message to the leviathan that stumped him (First Comments).

Moby Dick portrays the dangers of mercantilism as brilliantly as The Merchant of Venice.

0414 In addition, Santner’s key terms, normative, somatic and flesh, correspond to the columns of the angelic model.

The flesh corresponds to possibility.  The somatic emerges from and situates the flesh. The normative brings the somaticinto relation with the possibilities inherent in the flesh.

0415 The sovereign office compares to the angelic office.

The one who occupies the office is more than he otherwise would be.  The king would be just another person.  The angel would be nothing.  Or worse, the angel would retain its office while proclaiming a false message.  Similarly, the mortal body of the ignoble prince grows corrupt.

0416 Erik Peterson concludes his 1935 book with this: Knowledge of God culminates in praise of God.  Theology builds into doxology.

0417 For Santner, doxology takes on a life of its own.

Theologically informed acclamations may be transubstantiated into political glorification.

0418 How is this so?

The sovereign offices occupy the same slot as the angelic offices.

Theological acclamations always carry political undertones.

A political slogan may sound identical to a theological message.

0419 Both angels and sovereigns proclaim.

Angels proclaim the actions, laws and decrees of God.

In the late medieval and early modern periods, the king, or rather, his ministers, proclaimed sovereign actions, laws and decrees in the name of God.

In modernism, the same bureaucrats proclaim in the name of the People.

Or maybe, they do so in the name of institutions that stand in for the People.

It’s hard to see what is upstairs.

Do administrators stand for anything, other than their appointed duties?

0420 Both angel and king situate the subject, the regular folk.

Agamben argues that traditional acclamations of the king’s legitimacy (or kingliness) weighted the occupant of the sovereign office.

The weight of the king’s flesh is somatic (soma is “body”).

Nobility supplements the king’s mortal body.

0421 The king’s glorious body congeals vibrant doxological matter.

The noble flesh of the king appears to embody an angelic message: This mortal being serves a royal destiny.

0422 Similarly, the truth of God congeals vibrant doxological matter.

But, what is the weight of an angel’s flesh?

Word and song accompanies the angelic office.  An angel embodies word and song.

0423 These words and songs are witnessed by the folk.

0424 So is the mortal body of the king.

0425 Is the supplement of liturgy necessary?

The king has a mortal body.  Why does he need a glorious one?

Does a political theology of sovereignty require a theological oikos-onomy of glory?

0426 If so, then the supplement is foundational.  It is the libidinal oikos-onomic base that shapes the political bond.

0427 This logic seems both circular and foundational.

In Christianity’s divine Oikos, doxologies appear to be a mode of God’s own Self-glorification.

0428 One problem is that God does not have a Self, but that does not matter for this argument.  The angels are singing about something up there.

Does it matter whether the words and songs are about God’s Self (not Christian doctrine, since God is a Household) or the contiguity between the Father and the Son (which is not a Self, but a connection that may be symbolized by a name)?

0429 I suppose this technical aside sounds neurotic, consistent with a picture of circular logic.

Yes, this is the stuff of obsessions.

Why else would Santner give these lectures?

Why else would anyone consider them?

0430 Santner connects this neurotic circularity with Freud’s concept of the superego.

The constant pressure to live up to my own expectation of righteousness produces a super me, or better yet, a surplus me.

Or, maybe the term should be surplus ego.

Or maybe, super ego.

0431 Is Freud’s superego one of the paradoxes generated by the circular and foundational logic of Christianity?

0432 To me, the term superego goes with the person as an institution.

The Freudian term ego goes with personal objects^organization and deeds.

0433 Recall, the intersection of thought and action constitutes a single actuality: what is good and what is evil.

This is precisely what the ego responds to.  The ego is responsible for good and evil.

The ego trains the Self to love the good and despise the evil.

But, the Self is not naturally attuned to good and evil.

The Self is prone to temptations, fantasies and desire.

The Self is like a horse.  The ego is like the rider.

0434 The Freudian word “id” goes with the angelic possibility of righteousness (according to God).

But, it also goes with the devilish possibilities of temptation, fantasy and desire.

0435 Id^righteous underlies the ego.

Id^fantasy underlies the Self.

Does the circle go in two directions?

If so, then righteous laws may inspire sin by naming what is to be fantasized about.

How is that for a twist?

Humans are so impressionable.

The horse can carry the rider wherever it wants to go.

0436 Consider this comparison.

It_1a directs.  It_1a misdirects.

0437 Santner quotes Agamben’s recitation of a series of Christian paradoxes.

0438 Glory goes to God for eternity.

However, no one can increase or decrease God’s glory.

0439 All creatures owe God glory.  God demands it of them.

At the same time, God does not need glorification.

0440 God does not need glory.

Yet, God creates and redeems for His own glory.

0441 Surely, this list sounds like a sequence of paradoxes.

I sense that these paradoxes describe a Christian complement to the society tier.

Here is how that might look:

0442 Glory flows up the virtual nested form in the realm of actuality.

Livingness flows down.

0443 Take the first paradox listed by Santner.  Glory exists, but cannot be increased or decreased.

The Father is Creator.  The Son is the Manner of Creation.

The glory of God does not increase or decrease.

Glory rises from below but does not build up.

The contiguity between the Father and the Son turns it into something else: new life.

Now, for the second paradox, why does God demand glory?

Glory rises.  Livingness descends.

God’s demand for glory is begotten by God’s gift of life.

Stop glorifying God and God’s mandate to live withers.

0444 Finally, the third paradox asks: Why does God create and redeem glory when God does not need glory?

Look at the contiguity between the Father and the Son.

It is conception.

0445 In English, one may conceive of ideas.

Liturgical doxology ends up as God’s conception of life.

The Father’s act of conception ends up as a conceptual space in which my active soul animates my body.

If that is not livingness, I don’t know what is.

0446 The contiguity between my active soul and my body is animates.

My active soul animates my body.

My body reminds me of my active soul.

That referral is conceptualized as a message actualized by the angels.

Existence induces adoration.  Adoration glorifies the Son.

0447 Glory encompasses the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  The Father conceives the Son.  The Holy Spirit contextualizes the love between the Father and the Son.  

0448 Glory flows up.  Livingness flows down.

What a beautiful way to describe the cognitive space opened by this meaning underlying the Christian religion.

0449 Santner does not seem to be impressed.

He unhesitatingly moves from the usurpation of this model by the political theology of king’s dual body to the craziness of political economy.

0450 Let me slow down and imagine how this feedback loop translates into late medieval political theology.

0451 Going up, the body of the subject glorifies the mortal body of the king.

Going down, royal values grant livingness to the active soul of the subject.

0452 Theoretically, the glorious body of the king was directly answerable to God (rather than some corrupt pope).

0453 However, some Christian factions balked at the glory of the king business.

Instead, they claimed that the king answered to the People.

0454 Does this sound familiar?

These factions believed that industriousness was a way to glorify God.  The wealth that came from such business served as a sign of one’s destination.

Thus, the work of everyday life became a liturgical practice, producing glory as well as things that could be sold.

0455 Here is how that looks in terms of a feedback loop in the vertical column of actuality:

0456 Note how the passive, impressionable soul is replaced by the sane soul of one who does rational calculations.

A life of prayer?  That is for lazy superstitious monks.

0457 At this point in history, the body, that thing that worships God simply by being animated by an active soul, becomes driven by an organizational objective that derives from (mercantilist) values.

0458 The mercantile version of the Protestant Ethic says, “Wealth is a sign of salvation.”

Livingness is heavy, shiny and metallic.  Put it in your safe.  Gold is livingness.

The active soul has been subsumed by an organizational objective.

0459 Finally, I extrapolate the diagram to a fully modern political theology.

Or should I say, “political economy”?

0460 Industriousness is no longer for the glory of God.

Industriousness illustrates the glory of citizen^Marat.

Citizen^Marat looks into the blankness of the heavens and finds a perspective that will inform his (biopower) values.

These values, in turn, will virtually situate the object^org-active soul of the People.

0461 Remember, Jean-Paul Marat’s revolutionary rag was titled Friend of the People.

Maybe it should have been called The Biopower Values Virtually Situating the Organizational Objectives of the People’s Active Soul.

0462 This raises the question: How does the object^org possess the active soul?

Two terms stand out at the end of this section, flesh and the paired opposites of operative and inoperative.

Maybe they can provide an answer.

0463 Santner associates his category, flesh, to Agamben’s use of the term inoperative. 

To me, the term, flesh, labels the body in the realm of actuality.  So the term, inoperative, applies to the active soul.  The active soul becomes inoperative.

0464 What does this imply?

The industrious flesh of the People is animated, not by an operative active soul, but by a soul rendered inoperative by an organizational objective.

0465 In order to compensate for this negation of the active soul, I also negate its potential.

Thus, the potential of the passive soul becomes an impossibility underlying the inoperative active soul.

0466 So, where does the contrasting term, operative, go?

It goes with the normal context.

0467 A spirit of operative expectations_3a brings the actuality of object^org – inoperative active soul [animates] industrious flesh_2a into relation with an impossibility within the passive soul_1a.

0468 A spirit of operative expectations_3a reflects and supports the apparent situational busy-ness of citizen^Marat_2b.

In turn, the hidden situational actuality of the (biopower) values of citizen^Marat_2b declares that the passive soul cannot operate on its own accord.

0469 Who are you going to believe, your own eyes or citizen^Marat?

The human body no longer mindless refers back to the source of its presence, the Creator [Gestures] The Path Through Which Creation Becomes.

The active soul of citizen^regular must be rendered inoperative.

That is to say, “Something_2b is needed in order to activate the soul of the regular citizen_2a.”

If I don’t know what that ‘something_2b‘ is, then I had better watch more screens.

0470 What is this impossibility underlying the inoperative active soul?

That is a good question.

0471 All I know is that this potential comes from something other than what is in the person.

Activity flows towards to heavens.

Something paralyzing the passive soul comes to earth.

Is that why everyone seems so bored?

0472 The surplus value of labor is a slippery topic.

The term describes a circulation within the subject of commodities.

To me, that means the organization tier.

0473 At the same time, the term puts the machinations of the organization tier into perspective.

So, the theory of the surplus value of labor belongs to the institution level of the society tier.

It sustains righteousness_1aC.

0474 My question is: Does the theory of surplus value project a political theology from the society tier onto the organization tier?

This requires a derivation.

Let me start with the original presentation of the organization tier.

0475 According to Marx, as soon as the exchange of commodities is conducted with money, the specializations of laborbecome a matter of indifference.

Price_2bB situates the content-level of the organization tier_2aB, just as adoration_2bC situates the human body_2aC that initiates the upward cascade of glory. (See point 441.)

0476 Adoration_2bC looks upwards, towards what defines its existence_2cC.

Does price look upwards also?

So far, what do I know?

Price_2bB moves up and down according to fashion value_2bB.

However, the word “fashion” is too restrictive.  So, I will replace it with the term “supplementing”.

0477 Price is significant to the assessor level.  The costs that went into producing the product are also significant.  Labor is one of costs.  So are regulations, taxes and so forth.  Assessors weigh many items.

0478 Marx reduces all the assessed items to a single term: value-producing labor.

To Santner, the term value-producing labor ought to inform the price.

But, he is not sure how.

Value-producing labor is a generalized term for all that goes into corporate-level activities.  Some types of labor are very expensive.  Others are less so.  However, they all congeal into the life-blood of the organization.

0479 But, what is life-blood if there is no life?

What is life without purpose?

Institutional purpose brings the organization to life.

So, where does value-producing labor fit in the organization tier?

To me, value-producing labor enters into the question posed to the assessor: 

Do we continue this value-producing labor?

0480 Okay, then the assessment might go like this:

Value-producing labor will continue as long as the organization experiences surplus value.

This places value-producing labor into the realm of possibility.

What about the realm of actuality?

Could an organization’s institutional mission exist without surplus value?

If not, then I may assume that an institution’s mission (reflecting the society tier) is contiguous with surplus value?

The organization depends on surplus value.

Surplus value depends on the way that a supplementing value informs (and often enhances) the price of a commodity.

0481 A picture of the changes in the organization tier follows:

0482 These changes settle into a picture that looks more like the society tier.

0483 Now, Marx’s terms begin to meld with Freud’s.

Value-producing labor goes into constructing the shape that is called “commodity”.

So I will replace “commodity” with shape as situational potential.

In addition, what the buyer’s money is looking at concerns both the commodity and money itself.  Money does the talking.

So, I will replace “buyer” with money as situational potential.

Instead of price, I substitute what money regards.

Figuratively, what the money sees parallels the mortal body of the king, suggesting that the supplementing valuecoincides with royal values.  Like royal values, the supplementing value exhibits an abstract materiality.

The situation-level actuality_2bB becomes an abstract material [informs] what the money regards.

What else?

Market discipline parallels the glorious body of the king.

But, market discipline is not sublime.  It is subliminal.

Does that seem Freudian?

The situation-level contiguity, informs, equals the commodity fetish.