0041 Secondness is the dyadic realm of actuality.

Looking back at the Greimas square for Alexander Dugin’s political theology, modern political theories (B, which, by the way, have all failed, each in its own way) extract an actuality from the narod (C, the pre-political and post-lapsarian adamah) and elevate that actuality into a normal context for a people (A).  So, modern political theorists, like the magicians at the employ of Pharaoh at the time of Moses, also perform transubstantiations.

0042 Once again, here is a picture.

0042 Against modern materialist -isms, Pope John Paul II offers a holistic theology that may turn the narod (of Christ) into a people (under the banner of Christ the King).  The blessed, honest Christian intellect offers a quest to recover (or, for modernity, to discover) who we evolved to be.

0043 That quest (relation, thirdness) brings the ethos of the gift (what ought to be, secondness) into relation with original innocence (what is, firstness).

The “gift” is theologically rich.  One offers a gift.  One receives a gift.  One does not refuse a gift.  Indeed, to accept a giftis a gift, as well.  Plus, the gift of not refusing a gift cannot be refused, because the gift is… well… unstoppable.

0044 Of course, if the laws of noncontradiction are applied to the gift, consistently, and gratitude becomes obligation, then the fate of the gift may draw people into a web of obligations leading to a horrible fate.

Consider how uranium can be an inexpensive agent for producing electricity or an expensive agent to reduce military targets to rubble.  What gift can be more wonderful and more horrifying?  Yet, international markets trade this giftroutinely.

0045 Think of how much more wonderful and horrifying the actuality of two becoming one “flesh” can be.

0046 What does “flesh” mean?

Pope John Paul II contrasts “flesh” with “spirit”.

Two becoming one “flesh”₂ occurs in the normal context of the spirit₃ and arises from the potential of ‘oneness’₁.  Otherwise, the two are just “playing house”.

The gift of one lover giving himself to the other lover, who gives herself to the one lover, also manifests as the gift of life.  Each child is a gift.  The narod (and the ethnos) recognize children as gifts, not of human ceremonial exchange, but of divine beneficence.  Grace inflows nature.

0047 So the potential of ‘oneness₁ of flesh₂ in spirit’₃ corresponds to grace flowing into human nature.

The “gift”, then, exemplifies grace inflows nature.

0048 Humans intuitively recognize the nature of gifts.  There is nothing like a gift from God.  There is nothing as welcome as a gift from a fellow human.

Our innate ability to recognize a gift is an adaptation.  In this adaptation, we anticipate the ethos of the gift (like grace) to flow into the ethnos (like nature).  What is the result?  Humans in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in are happy, in ways that civilized folk find hard to imagine.  They own nothing.  They are happier than any civilized person that owns something.

0049 Which makes me wonder, is “ownership” somehow different than the “gift”?

Uh-oh, isn’t ownership one of the conditions for civilization?

See Comments on David Graeber and David Wengrow’s Book (2021) “The Dawn of Everything”, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.  Chapter ten of this book is examined in Looking at David Graeber and David Wengrow’s Chapter (2021) “Why the State has no Origin”, appearing in Razie Mah’s blog from March 15-31, 2023.

0050 The explicit abstractions afforded by speech-alone talk toy with our minds.  The ethos of the gift (like grace) flows into the ethnos (like nature).  As far as the human intellect₃ is concerned, the gift₂ arises from the potential oneness of what we give and receive and who we evolved to be₁.

As far as the modern intellect is concerned, grace is one thing and nature is another.  The notion that grace and nature are contiguous is ridiculous.  Two options are available.  Either grace rules and God manipulates nature to His ends or nature rules and God’s grace is a nice idea to pray over.  Once “grace” and “nature” are no longer contiguous, then the gift-recognizing nature of the human becomes subject to analytic dissection, resulting in various -isms that theorize about what we ought to be giving and receiving and who we are.

0051 Finally, what is the question that Wanless addresses?

At the end of the first section, the author specifies.

This article addresses the manner and degree in which the late Holy Father integrates the theology of original justice (as formulated by Aquinas) in his proposed theology of the body.

This answer comes after noting that the first chapter of Theology of the Body contains no reference to Aquinas at all.  Instead, the pope relies on “biblical teachings” found in the Genesis text.

0052 Perhaps, the question should be phrased like this, “How does the Holy Father integrate the theology of original justice into a biblical teaching that is embodied in a fairy tale about the emergence of our current Lebenswelt, out of the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?”

Of course, this is an impossible task.  But, isn’t that what popes (following Christ) ask their flock to accomplish?

0053 Pope John Paul II cannot clearly state what he is asking for, because no one (until Razie Mah) scientifically ideates a twist in human evolution, now called “the first singularity”.  Our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  Hominin evolution occurs in a Lebenswelt associated to hand and hand-speech talk.  Then there is a twist, followed by a Lebenswelt associated to speech-alone talk.

Indeed, all political theories (B) are exercises in explicit abstraction made possible by speech-alone talk.

0054 Pope John Paul II stands opposed to all political -isms (B).

So does philosopher Alexander Dugin.

0055 Thirdness is the triadic realm of normal contexts, signs, mediations, judgments and… yes… gifts.

This brings me to the following comparison, in the category of thirdness.

0056 The logics of thirdness include exclusion, alignment and complement.

The sacrament of marriage₃ excludes other normal contexts₃ that reject the biblical teaching that the bonded male and female become one flesh₂.  The sacrament₃ associates to the pope’s use of the word, “spirit”, as opposed to “flesh”.

Along the same lines, the blessed, honest and Christian intellect₃ excludes normal contexts₃ that cannot recognize that the gift is one of the triadic relations that humans adapt to₂.  

0057 I wonder whether, if the now deceased pope purchased a copy of Mah’s e-book on the first singularity, he would be inclined to ask, “Can Aquinas’s theology of original justice be used to account for the noumenon, the thing itself, of human evolutionary history?”

That is a very good question.

What happens when a theology aiming to describe the conditions of the prelapsarian Adam is applied to the prelapsarian adamah, the ethnos, who cannot avail themselves to the explicit abstractions permitted by speech-alone talk, yet nevertheless evolve implicit abstractions that, miraculously, cohere to Aquinas’s proposal of original justice?

0058 In terms of poverty, even the poor within civilization are wealthier and more powerful (in terms of money and control) than the wealthiest and most powerful persons in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

Evidence?

Consider paleolithic burials in Europe, where elaborate grave goods adorn the corpse of what?… a child?… a person who suffered immensely from some ailment?…

0059 In terms of the joy of living, no civilized simulacra can manufacture a joy of living comparable to the ethnos.  Remember, the ethnos practice hand-talk and hand-speech talk.  So, when someone talks, others don’t just listen, they watch and witness.  At first, hominins evolve to be productive and have fun.  Then, hominins evolve to be more than productive and to have more than fun.  All these adaptations further actualize the potential of the ethos of the gift. 

0060 After the first singularity, a narod may come close to the way of being of the ethnos, with their festivals and their funerals, their work-alongs and their sing-alongs, and their banter and their gossip.  But, once an intellectual steps on stage and tries to explain why the narod, even though apparently happy, are so poor, the path is set to generate a people, who follow the laws, who build a civilization, who cooperate even while being sheared by rapacious authorities, and who are finally harvested like the sheep that they are.

0061 Biblical teaching intimates that our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  The pattern precisely matches Dugin’s political theological distinction between narod and ethnos.  A fundamental transition has taken place.  The cruelty, radicalness and monumentality of the transition manifests in time.  The explicit abstractions of -ismists turn traditional word meanings into technical exercises and then into parodies of what they used to signify.

0062 In the second section, the author offers a Thomistic account of original justice.

Aquinas starts with the fundamental states of human existence.

Here are my associations.

0063 A state of innocence associates to original justice.

“Justice”?

Yeah, I heard that word used, before.  I also heard it misused.  After all, any spoken word is simply a placeholder in a system of differences.  Shift the system of differences and the word adjusts.  If I put the word, “justice”, as the focus (A) of a Greimas square, what do I get?

Perhaps, the following will do.

0064 The focal word (A) is “justice”.

Injustice (B) contrasts with justice (A).

Well-governed (C) speaks against (contradicts) injustice (B) and complements justice (A).

Here, I may add that well-governed includes self-governed.

Ungovernable (D) contrasts with well-governed (C), speaks against justice (A) and complements injustice (B).

0065 How curious.

That seems to work well.

Now, let me turn the nouns into adjectives to further illuminate a distinction hidden within the horizontal dimension.

0066 With this figure in mind, I consider what the author says about Aquinas’s teaching concerning the relation of both (1) prelapsarian adamah to God and (2) of parts within the hominin.  As to (1), the highest in the innocent person is subject to God.  As to (2), the hominin exhibits a certain rectification of order in interior disposition.  The inferior powers of the soul (and body) are subject to the superior.

0067 A well-governed body (C) complements a just soul (A).

0068 While many imagine that Aquinas discusses an idealized philosopher, whose, if I remember correctly, members are supposed to be subject to logical reason, when one starts to grasp that Aquinas’s teaching applies to people, who would scare the wits out of any civilized person, yet would welcome that civilized person as one of their own (and if not that, eat him), then we are looking at, as Graeber and Wengrow put it, “the dawn of everything”.

Or “the dawn of everything that moderns never imagined possible”.

0069 The noble savage is noble because he is innocent?

Does Aquinas’s teaching, applied to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, predict darwinian social and sexual selection favoring those who are just within their social circles and those who can govern their bodies in ways that modern athletes of all sports would admire?

It is as if each person contains his own society, with diverse factions (parts and appetites and tendencies) that need to be governed (that is, made whole).  The challenge requires both material and immaterial (that is, relational) training.  The relational entangles the material.  The material entangles the relational.

0070 The lesson applies to more than the body and soul of each individual.

It applies to the social circles as well. Social circles work in harmony.

If they don’t, then natural selection works its scythe.

Hominins adapt to survive in Aquinas’s state of innocence.

And, not one of them knows that fact.

0071 For physical anthropologists, a familiar instance of a whole bringing its parts into being through proper governanceis the Oldowan stone tool.

The Oldowan stone tool is made on the spot by hitting one stone against another in a specific manner, causing the target stone to fracture.  After a series of blows, the target stone expresses a sharp, jagged edge, making the stone tool like a giant tooth, capable of stripping muscle off bone and cracking long bones in order to expose the marrow fat.

0072 What is going on?

The whole stone on the left has within it, parts that are removed when struck, with good aim, by another rock.  The result is the Oldowan stone tool on the right.

If I go back to Aquinas’s Greimas square and replace “soul” with “aim” and “body” with “stone”, then I obtain another way to appreciate the implications of Aquinas’s formulation.

0073 Without a doubt, Aquinas idealizes the prelapsarian adamah, because he works from the Biblical text, written in Latin, not in the common vernacular.  He also examines philosophical texts, translated from Arabic to Latin.  He “baptizes” Aristotle and other ancient Greek philosophers.  So, the prelapsarian Adam seems like an incredible person, just like the philosophers of old.

0074 Aquinas lives two centuries before the Europeans “discover” the Americas, populated by peoples who were exposed to speech-alone talking civilizations, but were not quite ready to surrender their happy-go-lucky hand-speech talking ways.  These hand-speech talking folk appear radically naive to the Europeans.  Some might say that the descriptor, “original innocence”, applies to the North American Plains Indians.  They have no idea that Eurasian civilizations are three-thousand years older than the earliest American civilizations.

Late-medieval Europeans are shocked by reports of life in the Americas.  Indeed, early modern Europeans are dismayed after some of these hand-speech talking Americans learn European languages and say, “Y’all are the most miserable creatures that I can imagine.”

0075 Once this connection is made, everything changes.

Aquinas’s exploration into the nature of the prelapsarian adamah does not apply to some sort of philosopher king.  It applies to a noble savage.  Even weirder, it applies to noble savages who could not express the qualifier, “noble”, using hand-talk.  No, these savages embody everything that makes humans noble.  But, they have no gesture-word corresponding to the speech-alone term, “noble”.

What is there to picture and point to?

0076 The conceptual shift is jarring, accounting for John Paul II’s use of Aquinas as a soapbox on which to stand while proclaiming “biblical teachings” from passages of Genesis that must be regarded as prelapsarian.  The Genesis passages point to a Lebenswelt on the other side of the first singularity, to a time when we are who we evolved to be.

John Paul II suspects, but does not articulate, that the soap-box on which he stands contains a pot of conceptual gold.

0077 How can that stone, lying next to the partially eaten remains of… a dead wildebeest… say, “I am the target stone that contains, within me, the sharp edges that will provide the toothiness you need to scrape dried meat from ligaments and crack long bones to get the marrow fat.”?

Even the stones cry out.

Grace inflows nature.

The hominin knows, at a glance, that this stone will do.  After a few sharp blows, the Oldowan tool is in hand, ready for work.  Other members of the team stand by, also holding little stones, watching for any sight of a curious predator.  Yet, potentially disruptive predators know that these hominins can injure from a distance.  There is nothing quite as unforgiving as a well-thrown stone.

0078 Yes, grace is everywhere.  It flows through the scene, where a team of hominins scavenge from the corpse of a wildebeest, in the open, on the savannah, which is a dangerous place to linger.  No one works alone.  Everyone belongs to the team.  Without grace, the lucky find would be worthless.

0079 Thomas Aquinas has no knowledge in regards to the scientific construct of evolutionary theory.

He has no idea about the impending “discovery” of a new continent, standing to the west, between Europe and India.  He has no idea that this new continent is filled with people that start trending towards civilization around 3000 U0′, rather than 0 U0′.

He has no information about ancient civilizations that lasted hundreds, even thousands of years, in the Near East, only to leave dusty hills containing royal libraries of cuneiform clay tablets, fired into bricks.

0080 What does Aquinas know?

The Genesis stories of Adam and Eve offer clues.

Aquinas portrays Adam and Eve as individuals, in the state of original justice.  Original justice manifests as a rectitude of order among the parts of the sovereign person, who is ultimately wholly grounded in the rectitude of an order towards God.

This seems like a metaphor for royalty to me.

There is no rebelliousness within the kingdom.

The passions among the parts (the people) do not conflict with the soul’s (the king’s) dominion.

Indeed, the reasoned judgment of the soul (the king) cultivates and trains the expression of passions (among the people) in order for the person (the kingdom) to survive and flourish.

0081 How does the double (personal and political) vision of Aquinas key into the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?

0082 In Comments on Clive Gamble, John Gowlett and Robin Dunbar’s Book (2014) Thinking Big (by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues), the authors of the reviewed book make great hay over Robin Dunbar’s formula correlating mammalian brain size to group size.  The hominin brain to body mass ratio increases significantly in the millions of years from the southern apes to Homo sapiens.  So does group size.  Hominins start as bands (50) and end up with communities (150), with higher resonances, all the way to tribe (1500).

The idea of group size resonances occurring at factors of three plays a role in their argument.  However, the authors of the reviewed book do not realize that the evolution of talk might occur within one social circle (the team), then later expand to the entire group (the community) when circumstances change.  Hand talk is locked within the team for over a million years, until the domestication of fire offers a platform for talking itself: gossip after a fire-cooked meal.

Well, hand talk covers more than gossip.  Over time, hand-talk becomes fully linguistic, allowing the proclamation of grammatically correct yet counter-intuitive statements, such as “the raven gathers pebbles from the creek”.  In hand talk, the statement is grammatically correct.  But, it does not make much sense, because ravens don’t swim.

0083 Here is a picture of the various social circles in operation in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

0084 Each social circle exhibits its own relational logic.  Each social circle is a site for natural selection of individuals suitable for that social circle.  This includes diverse teams.  Over generations, each long-lasting successful exercise of obligate collaborative foraging selects for adaptations, including neural and muscular, that make the team activity more productive and more fun.  For example, the physics of rock fragmentation becomes intuitively natural, for some, eventually leading to the invention of a new stone tool technology, the Acheulean stone tool, that is made ahead of time and carried along in the team activity.

0085 Team activity?

Hominins figure out all sorts of ways to obtain food that does not conflict with the interests of other creatures.

For example, bury a lot of overripe fruit, then wait a few weeks.  The hole is now full of delicious edible bugs.  The creativity of our ancestors must have been incredible. Their range of culinary traditions may put our own to shame.   Each successful team selects for its own adaptations, both anatomical and physiological, making its exercise of obligatory collaborative foraging more… um… “natural”.  No wonder the size of the hominin neocortex expands over time, along with group size.  It’s like a giant menu of what and how to eat.

As well as what and how to avoid being eaten.

0086 Is this where Aquinas comes into the picture?

Aquinas’s double vision is both personal and political.  The prelapsarian adamah is both a kingdom of parts and a sovereign over a kingdom.  Plus, this sovereign answers to the order of God.

Consider each social circle to be an individual writ large.  Consider the individual hominin as a social circle writ small.  Each social circle has its own nature and grace.  Each person has his or her own nature and grace.

0087 Does Aquinas know that the term, “Adam”, in Genesis, is a pun, meaning both “humanity” (adamah) and “an individual’s name” (Adam)?

Certainly, his political-personal approach calls to mind a harmony of the social circles, where higher social circles operate as sovereign, and lower social circles operate as the kingdom of parts.  Plus, the higher social circles are always aware of an order higher than their own.

0088 Now comes the kicker.

A perfect or complete justness within the souls of the social circles associate to a more perfect or complete governance of the bodies of the social circles, so that the whole and the parts are (relatively speaking) immortal.  Surely, the people who compose the social circles are mortal.  But, the bodies of the social circles are not mortal.  So, adamah is immortal, even though Adam is not.  Yet, adamah is Adam and Adam is adamah.

0089 To me, the immortal harmony of the social circles, selected through cultural (for each expression of a social circle) and natural (for individuals with aptitudes for being productive and having fun within social circles) selection, corresponds to the tree of life, in the garden of Eden.  The mortality of the person resides within the immortality of the tree of life.  We (hominins) are the roots.  We are the fruits of the tree of life.  Plus, the tree of life grows in a garden ordained by God.

Culture and hominins co-evolve.

0090 Yes, this evolution-informed vision is different than an immortal Adam, as some sort of philosopher king, ruling over all the parts of his body, while remaining ordered to the rectitude of God.

Certainly, it sounds different and more research is needed.

But, my goal is only to establish a principle that is intimated by John Paul II’s theology of the body.

The ethos of the gift is a phenotypic expression of our species, because the trait is an adaptation to the gift, as a triadic relation.

0091 Once one starts to fill in the cognitive blanks about human origins that have been opened during the past eight centuries…. as soon as one tries to translate what Aquinas says about the prelapsarian Adam into the evolution of adamah, humanity, in the double framework of the souls and the bodies of mortal beings participating in the souls and bodies of intergenerational beings, composed of diverse and nested (not so much hierarchical) social circles that promote the survival and flourishing of its participants… does one begin to appreciate the intellectual daring of John Paul II’s proclamation of a blessed, holistic and Christian theology of the body.

0092 At this point, I examine the fourth section, covering John Paul II’s integration of original innocence and the ethos of the gift.

To start, take a pencil and strike out the word, “perfect”, and replace it with the word, “complete”.

Why do I do this?

I know a few perfectionists, and they are not completionists.  Completion means fulfillment of an intention.  An oak tree is the fulfillment of the intention of an acorn.  The oak tree completes the acorn.

0093 Aquinas mentions three states of humans.  The following figure shows how the terms associate to biblical teachings, the hypothesis first singularity, and to Alexander Dugin’s political theology.

0094 Well, maybe the above figure overstates the importance of the hypothesis of the first singularity and Alexander Dugin’s political theology.  I mean, look at the three items for glory.  There is no way that they are equivalent.

I am sure that Pope John Paul II, looking down from his heavenly perch, chuckles at the folly.

0095 John Paul II refers to humans before original sin as living in a state of innocence and receiving the gift of grace.  Current Christian philosophy and theology have yet to grasp the implications.  What is the nature of the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?

Aquinas’s account of original justice seems a little too academic.  The state of innocence involves a complete ordering of the lower parts of man by that which is highest in him.  The rule of the soul over the body may be simultaneously labeled “self-mastery” and “interior freedom”.

0096  Too academic?

Doesn’t Aquinas’s account follow the rules of the Greimas square?

0097 Well, yes.

Nevertheless, Aquinas’s explicit abstractions defy the experiences of modern civilized folk… until… “man” is replaced the the term, “adamah”.  “Humanity” adapts to social circles, each of which offers opportunities to exploit and dangers to overcome.  The harmony among these social circles corresponds to the higher parts ordering the lower parts, allowing all social circles to flourish and adapt.  

In short, adamah is the human writ large, just as Adam is adamah writ small.

0098 In our current Lebenswelt of unconstrained social complexity, social circles translate into institutions and organizations.  See A Primer on How Institutions Think, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

0099 Self-mastery is required to participate in each social circle.  Plus, social circles celebrate interior freedom.  No one forces a person to join one team or another, even though an evolutionary anthropologist may call teamwork, “obligatory collaborative foraging”.  Social circles celebrate the responsibility to make a choice as to which team to participate in.

I call the distinction between freedom and responsibility a “co-opposition”.

Responsibility₃ serves as a normal context for the possibility of freedom₁.

Freedom₃ serves as a normal context for the potential of responsibility₁.

The integration of the person and social circles ranges from the male-female bond that founds each family (5) to the elders who arrange and negotiate occasional gatherings of communities (1500).  Participation is a gift.  Willingness to participate gives peace of mind.  Participation generates productivity and fun.

Participation₃ serves as a normal context for the possibility of purpose₁.

Purpose₃ serves as a normal context for the potential of participation₁.

0100 Of course, Pope John Paul II does not know the hypothesis that the human niche is the potential of triadic relations.

Yet, he focuses on a relation that is undeniably relevant to natural selection.  For our lineage, male-female pair-bonding is evolutionarily ancient, perhaps starting as a co-adaptation that contributes to a successful transition to bipedalism.

0101 How so?

Bipedalism evolves to facilitate transit between widely separated regions of seasonally rich resources, characteristic of the ecology of mixed forest and savannah.

0102 The problem?

The female cannot walk long distances and forage and feed her children by herself.

0103 The solution?

The male adapts to become the female’s helper.

“The marriage deal” is an evolutionary concept discussed in The First and Second Primers on the Organization Tier, as well as A Primer on the Family.  The male offers protection and provisioning.  The female offers fidelity.  Without fidelity, the genes of the protective and provisioning male do not make it to the next generation.  So, fidelity is key to “the marriage deal”.

Further adaptations, both organically and culturally, serve to increase the benefits of the marriage deal.

0104 Of course, a scientific discussion of the so-called “marriage deal” does not compare to the theological rhetoric of Pope John Paul II, where the communion of male and female in mutual self-giving is congruent with adamah’s original happiness.  But, such scientific discussion suggests that the rhetoric applies to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

0105 Big time!

The pope’s treatment of marriage applies to every social circle.  Maybe not so romantically.  But, definitely so practically.  Every social circle entails giving and receiving, because the triadic relation of the gift is intrinsic to its operation.  The human niche is the potential of triadic relations.