0211 At this juncture, I find it necessary to emphasize the novelty of my non-theological assessment. I follow Houck in using concepts and terminology of Aquinas’s theology of original justice and original sin. At the same time, I hold the hypothesis of the first singularity, corresponding to the historical event that the fairy tales about Adam and Eve picture and point to.
0212 Small details loom large.
Why does the Genesis Story of the Fall feature a talking serpent, who ends up crawling on its belly like a snake?
Well, such a creature cannot possibly engage in hand talk. It must talk in speech alone.
Why is there a the tree of life in the Garden of Eden along with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?
Well, the tree of life represents original justice2c.
0213 Aquinas’s formulations are welcome because we currently have few cognitive tools for articulating the characteristics of our current Lebenswelt and the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.
On top of that, the philosophy of Charles Peirce, the ground for the category-based nested form and the triadic structure of judgment, may be construed as a historical re-emergence of the Baroque scholastic tradition. Peirce’s writings are sort of like an academic re-enactment of the movie Jurassic Park. Modern Positivists think that scholasticism is extinct and then, in Peirce’s seminal act, it hatches from an apparently infertile egg. And, it has teeth.
American philosopher, Charles Peirce (1839-1914), and Baroque scholastic, John Poinsot (1589-1644), arrive at the same definition of sign.
Now, the theology of Aquinas provides unanticipated insights into the consequences of the first singularity.
How much longer will modernism, and faux postmodernism, find safety in the hotel?
0214 This brings me to infant baptism, a source of theological controversy and perhaps, a source of further insight about our current Lebenswelt.
According to Houck, Aquinas offers an account of original guilt. An infant should be heir to original justice2c. But, “he” is not. So, a privation (or evil) accrues just by entering into the world.
Here is the world that each infant innately expects to encounter.
0215 An infant should inherit the Lebenswelt that we evolved in. This is our originating niche. But, the babe is born into our current Lebenswelt. So, the infant is accused from the very start, charged with the crime of a change in Lebenswelt. The child must suffer the penalty.
The transition from the Lebenswelt that we evolved in to our current Lebenswelt is called, “the first singularity”.
The Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia is the scene of the crime.
0216 Saint Paul, while trying to explain the implications of the life, death and resurrection of Christ, stumbles upon this um… revelation. Christ redeems what Adam binds. Adam digs a privation and Christ fills the hole with abundance, so to speak. This implies that the Christian believer attains a good that is even better than original justice2c.
0217 However, this implication hides in the background of controversies about infant baptism in the early Church.
Certainly, when an infant dies, the loss cannot be put into spoken words. Plus, this loss becomes entangled in procedural issues. Is the deceased infant heir to the good that is even better than original justice2c? Two issues are entangled. Both concern the infant’s human subjectivity. The infant as subject enters into a fallen world. What are the mechanics connecting the Fall to the subject? What are the conditions in which these mechanics operate?
0218 The early Church Fathers focus on conditions. Adam, the first man, and Eve, the first woman, eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Thus, the human condition changes soon after Adam and Eve are fashioned from dust and rib, respectively.
0219 Saint Augustine of Hippo offers a mechanism. Since Adam and Eve are the first man and first woman, they are the ancestors of all humans. So, the mechanics must have something to do with reproduction.
Well, Augustine certainly comes up with ‘something’ implicated in procreation. Indeed, ‘something’ is a little embarrassing to talk about.
0221 Funny, desire is the only thing that postmodernists want to talk about. Why? Forcing others to confess their desiresconstitutes a form of bureaucratic control. Libido Dominandi.To talk about desire is to conjure phantasms2b without sensations2a, or maybe, in search of sensations2a. The reactive body1b becomes habituated to act out certain sensations and feelings2a, making the fantasy what it ought to be2c.
0222 How do post-modern academics fixate on desire?
0223 Well, what ought to be looks vaguely pornographic.
What better way than to stimulate the limbic system, than with a promise of sexual liberation…
…and political control.
Ah, what year does America’s supreme court redefine pornography as “free speech”?
Here is a ruling that no one wants to talk about.
0224 Postmodernism defines what ought to be.
Academic discussions center on confession and fantasy. Confession is demanded even of the befuddled. Fantasy is also required. If I cannot fantasize my victimhood, then I must be a perpetrator. Ask Clarence Thomas. Ask Brett Kavanaugh. Confession of one’s victimhood is prized. The rational intellect is openly disregarded as a co-conspirator in thought-crimes or as a self-imposed denial of the pain. Sensations and feelings are salient when they enhance the fantasy of victimhood.
The academic wants to know. What is your desire? What are you guilty of? What do you accuse others of?
Cupid’s arrows carry twisted barbs. Ask Jacques Lacan. Ask Michel Foucault.
0225 Augustine comes up with ‘something’ quite similar. He calls it “concupiscence”. The term translates literally into “the state of being with Cupid”. Cupid is the passion child of Venus, the goddess of love, and Mars, the god of war. What better companion to have in party town? Cupid’s quiver is full of arrows of desire.
Augustine claims that original sin passes from Adam to us (today) through the act of conception. Conception entails “free speech”, if you know what I mean. Procreation is entangled with concupiscence. The two (or is it three, considering the natural consequence?) cannot be separated.
Augustine provides a mechanism for how Adam’s rebellion places the infant in the condition of original sin.
0226 The infant is subject to the actuality portrayed in the above figure, postmodern fixation 3. Yes, the infant must confess that his parent’s fantasies inform their reactive bodies, habituating them, so that their actions are never innocent. The lack of innocence transmits from parent to babe. The infant bears the guilt of “his” own conception.
0227 Am I surprised that the site of naming in postmodern fixation 3 coincides with Augustine’s concupiscence?
Perhaps, not. After all, what ought to be associates to desire. Power demands that desire reveal itself. Only through confession and fantasy can desire be managed by experts. Postmodern academics are not “judgmental”. They are managerial.
0228 Postmodernism takes the dyadic actuality, confession & fantasy [informs and habituates] reactive body2, in directions that Augustine never anticipated. The educated can name their desires. The uneducated brutes cannot.
How do the educated know the spoken words appropriate to this or that combination of perceptive soul [informing and habituating] reactive body?
0229 They have the information. They have created a cognitive framework from their fevered imaginations.
The postmodern academic constructs terms that apply to the contiguity between perceptive soul and reactive body. Only the educated can label their phantasms, thereby honoring themselves as star-filled perceptive souls, elevated above the mundane reactionaries who remain reticent to name their desires. The reactionaries are full of fear. They are deplorable. They ought to be ground into dust.
0230 Disorientation transubstantiates into utopia.
Utopia represents the trans-substantiation of a dyadic element in judgment into a full-fledged triadic structure. Here, what ought to be moves from realness (secondness) to judging reality (thirdness).
Yet, it remains in place as an element of a larger judgment.
What ought to be becomes a sick imitation of original justice2c.
0231 Three hundred years after Saint Paul writes a letter to the Romans, Augustine formulates his mechanism for original sin.
A thousand years after Saint Augustine writes of original sin, Thomas Aquinas formulates the concept of original justice, as the good that original sin fails to deliver.
Eight hundred years after Saint Thomas writes of original justice, these comments propose that Augustine’s concept of concupiscence is the substrate for a bureaucratic formulation that socially constructs a utopia, a judgment that malignantly parodies original justice2c, coinciding with the ministrations of a modern religion, Big Government (il)Liberalism.
Houck never gives us a clue as to how horrifying our substitutes for original justice2c can be.
Or, how relevant.
It is as if original sin cuts original justice down to whatever it can namewith speech-alone words, then sears this reduction with a flame of madness.
0232 If the what ought to beof original justice is named, “desire”, then those who construct the name and those who are indoctrinated into the expressions of the name stand against those who do not. This judgment evokes an ideal, a utopia, where the believer apparently achieves what is lost in Adam’s rebellion, the wholeness of commitment2c, the fruit of the tree of life.
Within this utopia, there is a stain that must be rooted out.
The uneducated must be purged.
So-called “liberalism” becomes illiberal.
But, no one can say that, without banishment.
So, the (il) is silent.
0233 Here is a picture of a Big Government (il)Liberal postmodern academic utopia, within its larger setting.
Don’t be taken aback. This is only theoretical. There is no real-world academic who idealizes to such an extent that what ought to be trans-substantiates into a judgment that then takes the place of commitment2c.
Is there?
0234 In the Story of the Fall, small details loom large.
After God drives the man and the woman from the Garden of Eden, He places a cherubim, and a flaming sword that turns every direction, to guard the way back to the tree of life (Genesis 3:22).
In the utopia of postmodernism, the virtuous have celestial perceptive souls. They apply their swords of spoken names. Their swords turn in all directions. They have a label for every opponent. If the uneducated person is not this, then the uneducated person must be that.
The utopians savor their fixation on what ought to be2c. In order to complete their vision, death must prevail over the mundane reactionaries, just like death prevailed over the shamans who wanted to retain the old, timeless traditions of the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.
Cherubim holding flaming, swerving swords stand in the mirror of the world3a.
When we see their reflections1a, we see ourselves.
0235 I guess, I got this section turned around.
I should be asking, “What does original justice tell me about the consequences of the first singularity?“
0236 Augustine’s mechanism captures the essence of the first singularity. It does not capture the esse_ce. Augustine treats the Garden of Eden as if it is a real story. Instead, the fairy tales of Adam and Eve point to the first singularity.
Similar mythologies from the ancient Near East, revealed during the past three centuries from archaeological excavations, give the same impression. Humans do not have a deep past. Humans are recently manufactured by differentiated gods, who arise out of a foggy, undifferentiated nowhere.
0237 These ancient writings are not known during the Latin Age, so the scholastics do not contest Augustine’s mechanism. Yet, they find that the mechanism is not sufficient, because of those damned dead infants. How can infants express concupiscence?
The concern is both mechanistic and conditional. It can be portrayed as a dyad in the realm of actuality. This actuality corresponds to original sin2.
0238 How to describe the contiguity?
Houck lists three scenarios that gain prominence during the Latin Age: disease theory, a legal connection, and a realist view.
These three approaches tie into the above actuality.
0239 Augustine’s conflation of concupiscence and procreation provides a disease mechanism for how Adam’s rebellion infects us.
The legal framework corresponds to God’s Will, which is contained in the command, not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The status of humanity changes from blessed to cursed. A change in legal status puts Augustine’s conflation into context3.
The realist view is that humans lost something with Adam’s rebellion. The Story of the Fall indicates that humans lost access to the tree of life. A better way to put it is: The tree of life is no longer a possibility1. The Garden of Eden is no longer possible. So, God is no longer present as He once was.
0240 In sum, the scholastics, following Aristotle’s four causes, place Augustine’s mechanism into a complete category-based nested form.
0241 Perhaps, the reader can predict my next move.
I wonder, “Can this nested form go into the perspective level of divine suprasubjectivity?”
Or, does it correspond to what Christian doctrine projects into perspective-level elements?
Here is how the perspective level changes.
Note how the normal context3c and potential1c have changed character, they are now qualified.
Note how the judgment of original justice2c (belonging to thirdness) changes into a mechanistic dyad2c (belonging to secondness).
What are the implications?
0242 A change in perspective for God passes into a change of perspective for humans.
Our commitment2c does not make sense without God’s orientation (grace).
0243 Adam disobeying God’s command changes our legal status3c.
The ejection of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden changes God’s Presence1c from open to hidden.
And worse, a mechanism connects Adam’s rebellion to our own lives2c. Augustine’s hybridization of concupiscence and procreation is one mechanism that captures crucial features of the contiguity. However, modern evolutionary science argues for its implausibility. Adam and Eve are not the first human beings. Therefore, they are not the parents of all humans today.
0244 Is there a mechanism that will meet the qualifications of cause-and-effect and offer us (in our current Lebenswelt) a glimpse into who we evolved to be?
Augustine’s mechanism coheres to a literal interpretation of the Story of the Fall. Consequently, the mechanism is not independent of the biblical text.
The mechanism of the first singularity coheres with an interpretation of the Story of the Fall that is appropriate for the genre. The stories of Adam and Eve are fairy tales. Fairy tales are stories that are told to children. Often, they are preserved with remarkable precision over hundreds (and for these stories, thousands) of years. They may point to some primal event. That event cannot be reconstructed from the fairy tale itself. That event must be postulated independently of the fairy tale.
The hypothesis of the first singularity fits the criteria of (1) cause-and-effect and (2) a connection to the Genesis text. But, it does not allow us to appreciate how the twist in human evolution touches base with the doctrine of original sin.
0245 This is why Aquinas’s postulation of original justice2c is so crucial.
Original justice2c pertains to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.
Original sin2c pertains to our current Lebenswelt.
Original sin2c is the privation of original justice2c.
Speech-alone talk is the privation of the hand-component of hand-speech talk.
Speech-alone talk attaches labels to the elements within the perspective-level actuality2c.
Why stop there?
Spoken words can label every element on the perspective level, as well as the situation level, as well as the content level.
This is not possible in iconic and indexal hand-speech talk.
0246 The Story of the Fall tells a tale, rich in details that call to mind the first singularity.
With the assistance of the serpent, Eve attaches spoken labels to the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Then, her spoken words generate the reality of Adam’s rebellion.
0247 Thousands of years later, scholastics refine the Story of the Fall into a perspective-level category-based nested form for original sin.
They know nothing about the content level, as it currently is configured by modern science.
They know that the content level pertains to crucial questions, “Where does the world come from? Where do we humans come from?”
They know that the situation-level addresses the question, “What went wrong?”
They figure that we cannot return to the Garden of Eden. We cannot go back to the original justice2c, enjoyed by Adam before his rebellion.
This explains why revelation is necessary.
0248 Jesus Christ fills the emptiness inherent to original sin. No one, not even infants, can avoid that emptiness. Original sin is the privation of original justice.
From this, Latin-Age scholastics cobble together a normal context3c and a potential1c for the mechanism connecting Adam’s rebellion to our current lives2c.
0249 Speech-alone talk facilitates the scholastic’s exercise in exemplar extrinsic formal causality. Speech-alone talk permits the articulation of exemplar signs.
The sign-vehicle (SVe) consists of phantasms that arise from the recitation of the Story of the Fall2b.
The sign-object (SOe) is the perspective-level actuality2c.
The sign-interpretant (SIe) is as shown below.
0250 In this exemplar sign, Augustine’s version of original sin2c initially stands where original justice2c used to be. Original sin2c overwrites original justice2c. This is what spoken words do. Our verbal rhetoric can never recapture the wholeness of the commitment2c that we evolved to sense and feel2a. But, it sure can trigger our longing for that wholeness.
Yet, Augustine’s vision captures an essential feature of our own lives2c. We are fallen.
0251 Similarly, the proposed confluence of Adam’s rebellion and a change in Lebenswelt may occupy the contiguity in the dyad where original justice2c used to be. Again, this proposal somehow distorts the judgment. But, it does so in a way that scientists cannot dismiss out of hand. The hypothesis of the first singularity is not the second doctrine of original sin. However, it offers a mechanism that reflects quite nicely in the mirror of theology.
See Comments on Mariusz Tabaczek’s Arc of Inquiry (2019-2024) by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues (also appearing in Razie Mah’s blog from April through June 2024).
0252 Not unlike Augustine’s first version of original sin, the first singularity offers a suite of insights that are difficult to ignore. First, it is mechanistic in the way that science is mechanistic. Second, it challenges current paradigms on human evolution, but not the data that support them. Neodarwinism has not come to grips with the possibility that the human niche is not material. Modern evolutionary science has yet to entertain the idea that human evolution comes with a twist. Plus, the twist is metaphysical.
And, what better place to look for the metaphysical tools to construct the second doctrine of original sin, than those formulated by Thomas Aquinas and re-formulated by Charles Peirce, who is about to be baptized in the same way that Aquinas baptized Aristotle and Averroes?
0253 So, I conclude my comments on Daniel Houck’s Book (2020) Aquinas, Original Sin, and the Challenge of Evolution. My thanks to the author and apologies for wandering far and wide.
0254 And, what about the turtle?
When I place the apparently dead turtle into the pond. Its head and feet poke out from under the shell. It swims away. The pond is its Umwelt.
We (humans) are not so fortunate. We can never return to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in. Nor can we create our own utopia. The most we can hope for is some miraculous redemption of our current Lebenswelt. This is precisely what God delivers.
