IN VITA VERITAS? PART I

Within the large philosophical context of the ethics of truth, one of the most incisive queries into the great question of “What is ‘good,’ and what is ‘bad’?” has been made by Nietzsche, on account of his coinage of the Latin dictum “Fiat veritas, pereat vita!” (Which would instantly prompt me to reverse the terms of this proposition to “Fiat vita, pereat veritas!” thereby creating the other, opposing member of a complementary distribution.)
Forget all the accomplishments, both dubious and real, of every natural school of philosophy that holds the principle of “in vita veritas” close to its heart. Once again, Nietzsche appears to hasten to the side of those Christian zealots who have condemned the life in this world (let us call it ‘vita,’ as in vita brevis), in favor of eternity in the next. (This is a joke on my part of course, as Nietzsche’s intention was nothing of the kind, although both these antipodal super-fighters arrive at essentially the same conclusion of denying the truth to my title question “In vita veritas?”
But let us leave those life-denying Church Fathers aside, as they have been, perhaps, sufficiently repudiated by their more reasonable peers, and return to the more comforting understanding that our precious life in this God-created world, being, after all, God-inspired, and somehow distinguished from the “Original Sin,” with its hair-raising consequences, must be essentially good.
And it is here, as expected, that Nietzsche’s original aphorism immediately encounters a whole avalanche of seemingly insurmountable philosophical challenges. If life is (apparently) incompatible with truth, and truth, being from God, is also good, doesn’t it follow that life is incompatible with God and goodness?
By now, we seem to have entangled ourselves in a linguistic jungle, enough to make our case hopeless, unless we make a feisty effort to disentangle ourselves from it. Let us start with the theological context.
When we say, “God is Truth” and also “God is Good,” it does not immediately follow that “Truth is Good,” or that “Truth is God,” or does it? There is no doubt that in an absolute sense, there exists an absolute Truth as an attribute of God, which can be equated to “God as perceived through one or more of His attributes,” or something like that. I need to remind the reader that even in such a case, the resulting equation ought to be treated with the greatest reservation.
The reason for such a reservation being the philosophically incomprehensible nature of God, which makes the terms “truth” and “good” equally incomprehensible, as God’s attributes, not to mention their attempted connection within the confines of a logical syllogism.
Which leads us now to conclude that either both these important terms have been rendered meaningless to us by their association with the incomprehensible, or else that we are not just allowed, but also required, to engage ourselves in a bold philosophical inquiry into the substance of these concepts, having received full immunity from the charge of impiety on our part.
Our first step must therefore consist in de-theologizing the context in which “life” meets “truth.” It is with such an understanding in mind that we need to approach the following quote from Nietzsche’s Jenseits (4):

“The falseness of a judgment is for us not necessarily an objection to a judgment. The question is, to what extent is it life-promoting, species-preserving, perhaps, even species-cultivating. (!) And we are inclined to claim that the falsest judgments (like the synthetic judgments ‘a priori’) are the most indispensable for us; that without accepting the fictions of logic, without measuring reality against the purely invented world of the unconditional and self-identical, without constant falsification of the world by means of numbers, man could not live. To recognize untruth as a condition of life---that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil.”

There are several loose strings here so far, requiring to be untangled and tied up into a neat thing, starting with, say, the semantic differences between falseness, untruth, and an outright lie.
To be continued…

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

TO ALL READERS OF MY BLOG---

A HAPPY, HEALTHY, AND PRODUCTIVE 2012!

THE TRUTH OF ALL CREATIONS

(This is not only an important entry in itself, but it is also indispensable as the key part of my series on truth in fiction. In presenting this entry, as well as the whole series, to the reader, I must acknowledge George Bernard Shaw as my chief inspirer in developing the whole train of thought best summarized as “the truth of fiction.” In Shaw’s delightful quip, never trust history, because it tends to lie, but always trust every word that Mr. Shaw has made up.)
Let us start with the following challenge, which I have made up, for which reason it must also be trusted:

---Inside every creation, “the truth” is the hypothesis at the foundation of this creation, whereas “a lie” must be anything that contradicts that hypothesis. However, the truth of one creation is most likely to be a lie if it travels outside its host, to the worlds of other creators. Only “The Absolute Truth” is absolute.
Nietzsche’s Truth, plus The Value of Truth, plus The Will to Truth, all these simple-made-mysterious words, which he conjures up with his habitual flair (e.g. “…there are no absolute truths!”), raise the most natural question: What “Truths” is he talking about? What is the value and the very concept of a metaphysical truth here, and how does his prejudice affect the meaning of his “truth”?
There must be several ranks, several folders, all marked with the word “Truth,” and no one can do anything about this bane of homonymy. For instance, I talk about fiction as truth, and I cannot do it otherwise. Now, obviously, this fiction-as-truth should be somehow different from the Absolute Truth in God! Mathematical hypotheses are truths, but we know that even two mutually exclusive truths can work side by side, as long as they are differently applied, and kept consistently separate throughout those applications.
…Now what is a lie, if a non-truth can also be a truth? Fiction is often mistaken for a lie, so that people may casually call a lie something which I would unhesitatingly call a truth. For instance, is “Harry Potter” a lie? Does he really exist or not? I would find even the slightest suggestion of his non-existence totally ludicrous. He is, indeed, the truth resting inside the world of his creator, like in every work of fiction there is a creator, and he (she) has a license for the truth, as long as he (she) is careful not to intrude into the space of another, preexistent creator. Now, God is also a Creator, and within His created world He alone holds the license for truth. Because there is no preexistent creator to God, His Truth has to be Absolute.

Well, it seems that the universal truth in this logic has none of the lofty concept of the philosophers and the theologians, but is something so amazingly and crudely trivial that it is almost insulting. And we can push it further still. To say that Dorothy is in Oz, when she is conspicuously and admittedly not in Kansas (“We are not in Kansas anymore”), but in Oz, must be a truth so obvious that even a hardened disputationist shouldn’t be able to dispute it, or should he? After all, Dorothy still is in Kansas, and, playing by the rules of Kansas, there is no such thing as Oz anywhere in the world. Or let us take another case. A person is in Washington, but he says that he is “in New York.” Is he lying, or can he be telling the truth? Perhaps, it is quite possible for a person to be physically in one place, while his mind is indeed elsewhere? That’s where we can see the difference between the literal and the figurative, raising an all-new debate about the true meaning of truth! I can next proceed with stuffing my argument with so many similar and non-similar “qualifications,” that the word casuistry won’t be strong enough to convey the ensuing disgust with the whole process of reasoning, and the core question of truth [linguistic or meta-linguistic, or whatever other angle may be introduced into the ridiculously bloated overanalysis] will be completely lost in the suspicious smoke rising from it.

Apparently, there are many more truths around us than most of us will be ready to acknowledge at a glance. What makes all these truths possible, in their countless multiplicity, is that they are all limited, stuck inside the worlds of their creators, from where they cannot escape without risking to become lies. If we talk about Harry Potter’s magic without the necessary attribution, we may well be lying, but a proper attribution turns a lie into a truth, meaning that these concepts do not possess any absolute value, are meaningless, and even harmful, without proper attribution, which means that they must be qualified as specifically limited, and by no means universal, or else, “the ice it isn’t water, and the water isn’t free, and you don’t know that anything is what it ought to be” (fancifully quoting from Dickens’s Cricket on the Hearth), only in our case Dickens’s concluding optimism: “But he is coming, coming, coming!” quickly sours into “So what?” No matter who is “coming,” no help is on the way!

What we have seen here were not numerous types of truth, but only the following two distinct classes:

(1) Instances of truth limited not so much in space and time (these two Kantian “Undinge” are not sufficiently descriptive, even though the only type of creation comprehensible to human brain is creation in time and in place), as in the circumstance of their creation.

(2) The Absolute Truth, which is infinite and not subject to any limitation. Such Absolute Truth, like God, is so incomprehensible that it can only be accepted by definition and viewed by each culture, civilization, or some extra-terrestrial race, for that matter, through the prism of their limited religious traditions.

…I wonder if Socrates, the great seeker after truth,--- if he could be summoned from his afterlife in the same manner Nietzsche summons his eight favorites, and asked right then and there: What is truth?,--- if he, dead, would be just as honest as when he was alive (admitting: "I know nothing, except the certainty of my ignorance!"), to answer: “I don’t know!”?

TRUTH AND THE TRUTH-SAYERS

In the previous entry, as well as in several other entries scattered throughout this book, I have been making my point of principle that the familiar religious saying "God is Truth" makes “truth” as such incomprehensible, and therefore we must come up with a chain of practical definitions, if we wish to keep using the word truth meaningfully, and with comprehension. It is no wonder that Nietzsche, always on the lookout for inherently-inconsistent platitudes, which he enjoys demolishing everywhere he finds them, attacks the frail conception of human truth, in dictums like this: “There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.” I do not approve of this outright rejection of the necessary concept of absolute truth (without which “truth” becomes relativist, and, to me, loses its meaning), but I do understand Nietzsche’s angry frustration.
The philosophical question of Truth, not in its incomprehensible dimension of Divine Infinity, but within the critical accessibility of its imperfect practical applications, is once again raised in Nietzsche’s Jenseits (5) in his merciless offensive against the Philosopher’s “Truth”:
“What provokes one to look at all philosophers half-suspiciously, half mockingly, is not that one discovers how innocent they are, or how often they make mistakes; in short, their childishness, but that they are not honest enough in their work. They are all advocates, who resent that name, and wily spokesmen for their prejudices, which they baptize ‘truths.’
The equally stiff and decorous Tartuffery of the old Kant, as he lures us on the dialectical bypaths leading to his categorical imperative--- really lead astray and seduce… Or the hocus-pocus of mathematical form, with which Spinoza clad his philosophy, really ‘the love of his wisdom,’ in mail and mask, to strike terror into the heart of any assailant,--- how much personal timidity and vulnerability this masquerade of a sick hermit betrays!"
(…And after this devastating blow to name Spinoza among the eight great shadows of Hades, who are more alive to Nietzsche than the living?! Well, Nietzsche’s passion is his lifeblood, and no one, neither the dead nor the living, ought to take offense at his violently changing moods!)
…Besides, probably, both Kant and Spinoza deserve a little criticism of this nature. Unlike Dèscartes, they did not protect themselves by the caveat of idiosyncrasy. And they were indeed putting on some airs: most of their general theories, frankly, do not pass the practicability test, to which all fiction must be subjected. (Once again, to understand this, see my Truth and Fiction series.)
A word or two on the specifics of Nietzsche’s charge. Kant’s categorical imperative, the great Achtung, to which I used to be rather partial in my early years, is a commendable contribution to philosophy, in much greater measure, I should say, than his rather artificial synthetic “aprioris,” whose limited (I do not agree that it is totally nonexistent!) value is certainly out of proportion to the humongous effort Kant had expended on them. By the same token, Spinoza’s pseudo-mathematical style and the formalistic zeal displayed in his Ethica are indeed persistently annoying, but then, he merits a pass on other grounds.

But Nietzsche’s great value here lies not in his abuse of the great shadows, but in the “positive” validity of his general philosophical criticism of “positive” general theories (if I may be allowed this innocent pun on the two meanings of positive). The common folly of practically all great philosophers is their pride in, and defense of (as if this was their greatest contribution to humanity), what has been in fact their most exposed chink in the otherwise shining armor.

WHAT IS TRUTH?

What is truth? According to my own definition, which will be elaborated in a long series of entries later on in this section, truth is the basic postulated premise at the bottom of every creation. Generally speaking, truth is a terribly complicated philosophical concept, and the question may be deceptively easy to answer, and in all likelihood this answer, whether it be charmingly childish or inanely pompous, will be philosophically inadequate. Therefore, there is a certain appealing simplicity in shielding one’s own inadequacy by the highest possible authority, responding “Truth is God!” Indeed, in all monotheistic religions (which are of course the only kind of serious religion), Truth is an attribute of God, and, therefore, considering the unknowability of God as a whole, we may describe Him by any of His attributes, provided that each of these attributes is seen as an absolute category, which does not exist anywhere in the Universe, as there is only one God, and each of His Divine attributes is absolutely unique with Him.
And, needless to say, by appealing to this transcendental, and virtually incomprehensible, mega-truth, our ability, as well as responsibility, to address the more tangible entity, which may be called “mini-truth,” has been compromised, and effectively relinquished. No wonder, then, that virtually all other responses to the question “What is truth?” except that “Truth is God!” are mostly naïve and largely disingenuous.
But, on the other hand, there can be no truth, in the sense of mini-truth, without a belief. The truth must be absolute, because it cannot be allowed to become relativistic, when it completely loses its meaning, and we cannot conceive of the Absolute without reaching out to the Eternity, with belief serving as our vehicle. If belief is a lie, this does not lead us into a dead end, seeing that the truth has a lie as a necessary condition to its perception. Such absurdity will only mean that our moral definitions are deficient, and that we must seek better definitions. “Revaluation of Values” again!!! However, we must not start from naught. Our starting point for all and any morality has to be, yes, “God is Truth!!!” Not axiomatically, hypothetically, logically, etc., but by sheer definition. Truth must be defined in absolute terms, so that it does not become a relative value, “amended” at will in the course of successive generations by something like a two-thirds majority, or other such nonsense. The only absolute is God by definition. Therefore, truth belongs with God, and the reverse formulation of the previous is also necessarily true: “Truth is God.”
But let us continue with this important discussion, looking at truth both in its absolute infinity, and in its practical applications.
When we say God is truth, we point to the infinite quality of truth by identifying it with the infinite nature of God. In this universal sense, Truth is almost synonymous with Goodness, while Falsehood belongs with the Devil, which makes it evil (and, as I will be later arguing, finite!).
The Goodness of Truth is indispensable to ethics. Without such identification in infinity, truth loses all its meaning, both universal and practical, in limited applications. It is, therefore, essential for our morality to keep their connection not just in mind, but also in sharp focus. For this reason, I find the following passage in Hobbes’s Leviathan (I-4) deficient both in scope and in clarity:
“For true and false are attributes of speech, not of things, and where speech is not, there is neither truth nor falsehood,” says Hobbes, “Error there may be, as when we expect what shall not be, or suspect what has not been; but in neither case can a man be charged with untruth.” And now, he goes on to define “truth” in the following way: “Truth consists in the right ordering of names in our affirmations, a man that seeks precise truth had need to remember what every name he uses stands for and to place it accordingly or else he shall find himself entangled in words, as a bird in lime twigs: the more he struggles, the more belimed.”
By deficiency in scope here I do not suggest that we should never attempt limited definitions, for practical purposes. On the contrary, most of our speech deals not with “universalities,” but exactly with such limited practicalities, and, of course, we should always strive after adequate contextual definitions. However, in the instance of such a highly charged concept as truth, disengagement from universality is bound to cause some serious problems in the import of our idea. Characteristically, Hobbes, immediately following this passage, goes on to say that geometry rests on pre-settled definitions (therefore implying its truthfulness), but, as I’ve said in numerous places elsewhere, the only truthfulness geometry possesses is the specific truthfulness of its fiction. I doubt if Hobbes would have agreed with me on this point, and, besides, he has already gone on record, contrasting the allegedly true ‘mathematical’ knowledge to its ‘dogmatic’ counterpart.
As a consequence of what I have called his deficiency in scope, there is also a definite deficiency in clarity. A clear distinction between falsehood and error, the former as a deliberate lie, and the latter as an ‘honest’ mistake, has ceased to exist. On the contrary, according to Hobbes, a bad definition results in a falsehood, and, eventually, his whole argument stops making any sense.
And yet, the whole (I-4) in Leviathan is a wonderful treatise on the importance of good definitions, which brightly shines as soon as we rub the metaphysical casuistic regarding the truth off its golden surface. As a matter of fact, my theory of the “truth of fiction” is uncannily harmonious with Hobbes’s insistence on the correlation between truth and denotative accuracy. The following passage, for instance, is nearly perfect:
“By this it appears how necessary it is for anyone who aspires to true knowledge to examine the definitions of former authors and either to correct them where they are negligently set down or to make them himself. For, the errors of definitions multiply themselves, according as the reckoning proceeds, and lead men into absurdities which at last they see, but cannot avoid, without reckoning anew from the beginning; in which lies the foundation of their errors.”
(And then, as long as we are on this subject, here is a priceless gem of relevance for our mentally-troubled time: “For words are wise men’s counters; they do but reckon by them: but they are the money of fools who value them by the authority of Aristotle, Cicero or Thomas or of any other doctor whatsoever, if but a man.” The special irony of this marvelous sentence is, of course, that today our ‘doctors’ are by no means any of the above, mentioned by their names, and their so-called “expert authority” has an even better reason to be called into question.)

Before I leave this entry (but by no means the subject it raises), here is a postscript which brings us back to a slightly different subject, related, however, through the exactly the same question asked, and only slightly differently (but what a difference!) answered.
When a Christian answers the question “What is Truth?” by replying “Jesus Christ!,” he makes no attempt at becoming a philosopher (which would have been possible with the ‘God’ reply), but in fact he undermines any possibility of a valuable philosophical discussion by merely expressing his religious belief, you take it, or leave it. Pity! This question, however, is too important to be reduced to religion alone. Each great culture has its own religion, and also the cults, the sects, and all other sorts, including the non-religious,--- all have their own understanding of God, and, therefore, their own definitions of truth. Too many ‘gods,’ usually at odds with each other, and too many truths, to hope to find a common denominator that could serve us all as some sort of an international ethical standard, generating the necessary common concepts of International Justice, or such. Here is the real problem identified and posited. It does not matter who agrees or disagrees with what, as long as this problem is understood, and the objective necessity to have it resolved is realized. Then finding a solution becomes the issue. Therefore, we must definitely raise these vital ethical concepts, which I have mentioned, above the all-too-vague level of mere belief to the higher level of Reason, which is the level of philosophy, by giving the proper reply to the question of What is Truth?: “God, by definition!”
As we can clearly see, this reply is absolutely consistent with all religious beliefs (even with atheism, if the value of this “interfaith” approach is properly represented to the non-believer, who, as an exception, rather than the rule within his own cultural tradition, does not pose a problem, except in a frivolously posturing debate), but being theologically-general rather than religion-specific, is not offensive toward any particular religion, among those of them, of course, that are of definite international cultural significance.

FIAT GOD!

Some questions are so intensely charged with electricity that you can feel with all your senses the monstrous impact power, as they strike their bull’s eye in the very heart of your interlocutor.
Does God really exist? Every man and woman of religion will see this moment as their call to sacred duty to solemnly, and with a colossal internal passion (whose tightly coiled overstressed spring can be actually felt vibrating through their electrified bodies) reveal the awesome truth to you and to all, which, in the Christian parlance, is called witnessing. In plain language, they are going to use this question as an opportunity, and will immediately jump in, with the fervent declaration that the formal, rational, and incontrovertible proof of His existence has already been firmly established.
Yes, they will talk… not of faith, but of definite knowledge… As if in your crude uneducated ignorance you have missed the obvious: right here, all the time, under your nose, here is that King’s Cross station, and here is the express train to life eternal. (Needless to say, their God is strictly and exclusively denominational…)

…But not so fast, please! If knowledge were indeed available, who would need the faith?
I do not think we can ever prove the existence of God to everybody’s satisfaction, nor should we. All those terribly strained and oh-so-silly rational arguments from design; ontological; theological; epistemological; gnoseological; eschatological; and even the one seemingly the most reasonable of them all, the teleological argument--- all of them are vain and fruitless efforts to prove the unprovable. For, had we been able to prove God’s existence, faith would have ceased, and become knowledge. There would have been nothing left to believe, no hope, but dry certainty; no poetry, but matter-of-fact prose. Love would have become a scientific subject. Life itself, devoid of the divine mystery, would have reverted to the pre-human condition of animal instinct, a degeneration toward the generic, death being just one recurring season in the recurring cycle of nature. But all of this ought to be beside the point, because God is not a phantasm of our dreams, and not a scientific fact, and not something tangible, or specific enough, that we may pinpoint Him, like a student in the classroom, who is desperately trying to recapitulate, in his feverishly throbbing memory, that whole mental process which is supposed to lead him to the ultimate triumph of passing the damn exam: Quod Erat Demonstrandum!
...I will be immediately contradicted of course by just about every single representative of every major culture and religion. They will surely quote numerous passages from religious texts, some very excellent aphorisms from their well perused booklets containing hundreds of collected familiar (and not-so-familiar) quotations, and mention what they have heard from persons of wisdom and what they themselves have always deemed a matter of fundamental common sense. Yes, every religious and traditional person takes the existence of God for granted, but always by his or her faith, which only too often effectively masquerades itself as irrefutable knowledge, inside his or her head.

Every religion worships God in its own special way, and this religious worship makes God understandable to every member of their congregation through common faith and practice, and through the sharing of the so-called devotional reading, those literary products appealing to the raw sentiment of the believer like the fiery sermon of a popular evangelical preacher, but totally devoid of intellectual depth. After having their souls soak in all such reading, these people do sincerely believe that they possess adequate knowledge and sufficient comprehension to prove to any heathen or unbeliever, which for them is close to being the same thing, that God, their God, unlike all those other fake gods, does exist in truth and beyond any doubt.

But the real God, the one and only true God, the very same Christian God whom the Jews refer to, possessively but authoritatively, as Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Ehad, and whom the Muslims call Allah in Arabic (“There is no God, but God!”), is certainly above the competence of even our greatest geniuses. He is the Absolute, and this concept of the Absolute is so thoroughly incomprehensible that most attempts at proof are nonsensical, and those that seem to make some sense, you just take another look: they all end up in a vicious circle! Instead of such total silliness as trying to prove something that we cannot even begin to comprehend, we will be much better served by establishing His Existence in explicit formal terms, that is, not scientifically, but mathematically. It is essential for me to be clearly understood here, because what we call “mathematics” is not a science of fact, as is popularly believed, but a complete fiction of artificial creation, a collection of postulated hypotheses, a fantastic construction that stands and does not fall just because nothing made so clearly out of thin air can be caused to tumble. Not surprisingly, mathematics is habitually referred to not just as a science, but as an art, and the basic meaning of all art is creative fiction. And thus we come to the big point that if we wish to be guided by fact, and not by belief, the only way for us to arrive at the truth is not by some asinine reasoning about the shape of the earth, but by an inflexible command, issued by an inflexible commanding authority, that is, by definition--- no arguing about, no questions asked!

So, here is the bottom line. If we want the existence of God, one universal, indivisible, absolute God, above all feuding religions and doctrinal controversies, unquestioningly acceptable to all, and also recognized by all as the supreme authority, established, then the only way to do this is by definition.

…God by definition? Established by a firm and solid command, issued by a commanding authority?
The obvious question about to be asked here is: by whose commanding authority, and why should anybody want to obey this authority? The answer is: by the authority of common sense. The reason to obey is quite similar to Hobbes’s description of the covenant establishing a Commonwealth: to promote and defend the common good of its participants. In our case, it is a pressing need to address the daunting problems facing our long-suffering world in a more or less intelligent way. Which is not by the brute force of weapons, nor by the seductive power of the dollar, nor by any combination of the above, but by the most sensible power of basic human communication, in this case, between nations, and what we need here, in the first place, is a common denominator. Yes, some kind of reason, serving as a generally acceptable and accepted arbitrator, whose authority can be accepted by every nation without any detriment to the national pride, or a seething discontent of an overruled minority, as in the case of a majority decision adopted formally by voting, say, within an international organization, such as the UN.
Such common criterion can only be discovered by our appeal to the common gold standard in ethics, which is the Absolute, which every great culture can easily find in the God of their religion.
Religion, unfortunately, has failed us all in our search for such common denominator. In fact, throughout all history, nothing has been proven more divisive and lethal than religious strife, both among major religions, and also among their bitterly bickering sects and denominations. Religion in a certain sense has always been the deadliest bane of the human race. But don’t we know that the worst poison of a venomous snake can, at the same time, become the life-saving cure, in fact, maybe the only existing cure for an otherwise incurable disease? (As Dr. James Tyler Kent wisely observed, “If a drug cannot kill, it cannot cure.”) This is exactly the case in point. Without religion, there is no way of telling good from bad, right from wrong, except in purely relativistic class-differentiating pseudo-terms, which, under the scrutiny of an impartial, disinterested arbitrator, should instantly reveal their false through and through, and terribly biased nature.
There can be no “generic ethics” without the cultural ethics of individual nations, rooted in their respective religious traditions. So, how can this problem be resolved? How can these different cultures take that thing, which makes them so different, and turn it into a common foundation? Simple: the same as with the deadly snake: they must first separate the venom from its carrier, then distill it, and then, lo and behold! it is now transformed into the cure. Religions must overcome their incompatible theologies, and turn them all into a surprisingly compatible, perhaps, even nearly identical, set of philosophies. Let them all be thinkers among fellow thinkers, rather than rival worshipers,ready to murder each other out of their sanctimonious sense of duty to demonstrate the superiority of their God over the competing gods of the other creeds! Let them use the venom of their weapons as ink, to sign the covenant of peaceful coexistence among the nations.

Now, how does religion become philosophy? By reaching beyond faith and belief, by conceptualizing God and His attributes. The concepts of Perfect Goodness, Infinite Presence beyond Space and Time, Immunity to corruption, being the First Cause in the chain of causes and effects, being the One Absolute Standard of Truth, not by faith, but by definition, and, therefore, not subject to doubt (as distinguished from everything else, which is), hostility, and rejection (which is the general attitude of the religions toward each other, etc.)-- all these ought to be defined not as attributes of a theological God, but as philosophical concepts alongside God, and virtually indistinguishable from Him. Thus presented, those skeptics who question the existence of God out of principle ought to be questioning also the conceptual realities of all philosophical constructs and abstractions. God will find Himself in good company, and cannot be denied, because all other things, which nobody can deny, will also be thus denied. Slightly modifying Dèscartes’ argument here, He exists by virtue of our thinking about Him: a slightly irreverent, but logically convincing approach.
The One God of philosophy is also Universal and Transcendent in clear and distinct ways which refer to the most practical scale of all, namely, the totality of the world of our planet. Being universal, means that He is not for the Christians only, nor for Muslims only, etc., and to suggest that only one group is right about their God, while all others are deeply and hopelessly in error, should constitute an even deeper error of judgment and understanding. The fact that He is transcendent, recognized by all believers, means that He transcends all established religions, each being a particular rather than exclusive revelation to different people, with a different set of historical circumstances and cultural traditions. Kierkegaard is absolutely right to insist that any heathen who worships a wooden stick with sincerity, believing that he worships the true God, is indeed worshiping the true God!

My central thought about the absolute necessity of one Philosophical God as the only possible arbiter in all matters of international relations and in the development of the concept of International Justice to be made acceptable to all and accepted by all, needs to be understood as a sine qua non of any such comprehensive endeavor. No man’s reason, no artificial concept of this nature shall ever suffice, because all great cultures already have their established ethical standards in the particular Deity of their respective religions. The task is to universalize these cultural representations of God philosophically, that is, to make His Word absolutely universal!
Now comes the question of Transcendence. When I say that we must ‘save’ the God of philosophy from the God of religions, what I mean exactly is that we must accept God as truly transcendent, that is, we must put Him above all particular religions. By saying: the Christian God, the Jewish God, the God of Islam, the God of Buddhism, etc., we are limiting and splitting the concept of God placing it within time and human history, and limiting its infinity. Therefore, we must necessarily transcend religious sectarianism, yet we cannot do it without retaining our God of Religions, because our Infinite Absolute Deity is totally incomprehensible. We cannot discover Him, or produce a proof of Him in any reasonable way, and the only way that we can make His existence acceptable to the human brain is by definition. To make our Deity comprehensible, we must appeal to the religious traditions of different cultures, who have all made God comprehensible, by making Him the object of their worship, and through this very graspable mystery of individual religions we arrive at the understanding of the God of our Religion. Then, through the upward connection from individual cultural roots to One God, Universal and Transcendent, we shall arrive, despite all inter-religious hostilities, and actually bypassing their pitfalls, at the commonly shared Absolute of universal Goodness, Truth and Justice.

And finally, regarding the God of Philosophy, as opposed to the God of Religions. Here is what Nietzsche confesses in his autobiography Ecce Homo (Why I am so clever, Section 1):
“I am too inquisitive, too questioning, too exuberant to stand for a gross answer. God is a gross answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers, at bottom only a gross prohibition for us: thou shalt not think!”
It may be true that religious dogmas demand that we accept too many things unthinkingly, on faith, but it is still possible to reconcile Nietzsche’s argument with the philosophical concept of God, by transcending the God of the religious dogmas, who is always the automatic answer (What is Truth? God is Truth!), and who is never allowed to be questioned---and reaching for the Supreme Philosophical God who can be seen as the ultimate Question, addressed both to Him by us, and to us by Him.

THE INFINITE AND THE INDEFINITE

While the nature of God is incomprehensible to us in its totality, many great philosophers have concurred that certain aspects of God are accessible either to our reason or to our imagination. Whenever we say that God is good, we cannot claim a total befuddlement in the understanding of goodness, at least in its limited sense. Otherwise, we would confess ourselves incapable of distinguishing good from evil, which very few people would be happy to admit. Now, goodness is not a “finite” concept, like in “good works,” where it is an application, rather than the concept itself. Yet, being infinite, we can still grasp it, and even distinguish its infinite quality from the finite quality of evil, for instance, as I do elsewhere.

On the other hand, the distinction of the definite from the indefinite is another story. In this case, I totally agree that we cannot understand the indefinite at all, except that it is not well-defined. (Let us not confuse the indefinite in general with such a term as “the indefinite article,” where the word ‘indefinite’ is used in a very definite limited sense, which is clearly defined.)
This goes well with my argument about the necessity of clear definitions; the absence thereof makes most of our concepts incomprehensible not by reason of their reaching beyond our perceptive capacity, but because of their inherent fatal flaw. It is with this clarification in mind, that the famous idea of Dèscartes, regarding God as infinite rather than indefinite, starts making more sense than if we had chosen to view these concepts of the indefinite and the infinite on the, so-to-speak, equipollent level, which, I insist, would be wrong.
By the same token, the mathematical concepts of plus or minus infinity should be comprehensible, as long as we empower them with being definite through the magic of clear definitions. We can even comprehend the oneness of plus infinity with minus infinity, if we define the straight line as a perfect circle in infinity. What we definitely cannot have is the indefinite character of a flawed definition.

In view of everything said above, I have a strong disagreement with Hobbes in the following passage from his Leviathan (I-3):
“What we imagine is finite. There is no idea or conception of anything we call infinite. No man can have in his mind an image of infinite magnitude nor conceive an infinite swiftness, infinite time, infinite force, or an infinite power. When we say anything is infinite, we mean only that we are not able to conceive the ends and bounds of the thing named, having no conception of the thing, but of our own inability. And, therefore, the name of God is used not to make us conceive Him (for He is incomprehensible and unconceivable), but that we may honor Him. Also because what we conceive has been perceived first by sense, a man can have no thought representing anything not subject to sense. No man can conceive anything, but must conceive it in some place, endued with some magnitude, and which may be divided into parts; nor that anything is all in one place and all in another place at the same time; nor that two or more things can be in the same place at once: for none of these things can be incident to sense, but are absurd speeches taken upon credit without any meaning, from deceived philosophers and deceiving Schoolmen.”
I can hardly call myself a “deceived philosopher,” and even less so a “deceiving Schoolman,” in suggesting that it is our power of abstract thinking which allows us to comprehend the infinite. Otherwise, what exactly does “abstract thinking” signify, if anything at all? Even the simple abstraction of “cat” presupposes certain infinity, insofar as no matter how many “cats” we can visualize, multiplied and raised to a great power, the “number” of cats in abstracto will always be far greater, leading us to the core mathematical significance of the concept of infinity.
Indeed, our thinking capacity is well equipped with abstract reasoning, and also irrational leaps of insight, to grasp certain infinite concepts, and has a self-protecting mechanism as well, to guard our mind against a host of “viruses,” which can all be described as a group by the excellent term the indefinites. As long as we are capable of distinguishing between the infinite and the indefinite, our conception of infinity is safe and sound, and, therefore, we must always keep the necessity of such distinction at the top of our list of mental priorities.

The bottom line of my philosophical disagreement with Hobbes is that, all his religiosity notwithstanding, he presents himself here as a materialistic thinker in the sense that ‘matter is an objective reality perceived by our five senses,’ and thus denies us the ability of ‘idealistic’ perception. The value of practical idealism is crucial to our ability to comprehend the absolute (which, in this case, is synonymous with the infinite), as in the Absolute, unlimited, infinite authority of God, thwarting, among other things, our understanding of the basic philosophical ideas of good and evil and effectively destroying the very foundations of ethics and philosophy as such.

QUI TOLLIS PECCATA MUNDI

(A thought for the Christmas season…)
Love is an emotion, not a rationale. It can’t be explained by reason, in other words, it is incomprehensible. Therefore, God’s love is a conclusive evidence of irrationality being one of His attributes.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son to condemn the world, but that through him the world might be saved.” (John 3:16-17)
Having studied theology more, rather than less, diligently, I must confess that Christ as the Agnus Dei is as much incomprehensible to me as God The Father. Unless God had a sense of a personal responsibility and some “legal” obligation on account of the faultiness of His Creation, the Sacrifice is very hard to explain in rational terms. It can only be understood in terms of a parent’s love for the child, which, to me, is an irrational mystery, having perhaps as much connection to the logic of protecting one’s own procreation, as the mathematical number “i” [the square root of (-1)] to a rational number.
The question can thus be settled--- whether God is Pure Reason or has feelings too--- in favor of the latter supposition, except that there may exist a supernatural link between reason and emotion (that is, rationalizing emotion), which we are not capable of discerning and understanding. For instance, the word instinct may contain evidence to the existence of such a link, but how this can be helpful for making the next step, I do not know.

In our down-to-earth everyday life, the subtle question I have in mind, which is still rather poorly formed, to be asked, let alone answered, is whether our human sense of caring for a fellow human being, the so-called “compassion,” can be transferred to the impersonal world, making us care for the world at-large, beyond the sense of kin and volk, and even beyond gens una sumus, thus challenging Plato, who says, in Politeia, that “nothing in human affairs is worth any great anxiety,” not for the purpose of refuting him, but in countering his logic with our emotion, our love for an entirely unworthy object, even as obviously squalid as… “human affairs…” Wouldn’t such a terrible irrationality somehow raise us to the level of emulating our Creator, and, paradoxically, make the Sacrifice of his Son--- the Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi--- RATIONAL?…
…MERRY CHRISTMAS!

ADAM THE PRE-NEANDERTHAL

This entry is intended to introduce a cluster of entries on philosophy and religion, leading up to my refusal to accept all scientific rationalizations of the existence of God. In the most rational science of all, that is, in mathematics, we cannot even rationalize the simple fact that two times two makes four, and must introduce a series of axioms, or non-provable postulates, to start up our mathematical engine, in the first place. Having identified (in a previous entry) the presence of the irrational component in the concept of God, we find that, at least for this formal reason, rationalization of God is theoretically impossible. For this reason, we moved that God be accepted by postulation, like this is done with the essential basics in mathematics, which will be the culmination of the God series in this section, giving its principal pronouncement the prominence as the overall section title God, By Postulate!
The preceding paragraph is basically a summary of the series that is starting with this entry (perhaps, it was launched already in the earlier entry Reason And Passion), but first things first, and we shall now proceed with the business of this specific entry.

Whenever religious zealots are quarreling with their secularist counterparts, or either or both of them with common sense (common sense not necessarily in the right!), philosophy ought to be called in as the judge. Not in the sense of pompous pontification, which most philosophers are often mocked for, but in the best sense of thoughtfulness and wisdom, which distinguishes philosophy from all kinds of sciences, yet without having it completely separated from them. In fact, philosophy is the thoughtful component of every human endeavor (like in philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, etc.), and it is in this capacity, that she is now being called to our service.

The rather small matter of religious fundamentalism, as defined by the so-called “literal” interpretation of the Bible, becomes large when viewed as a matter of principle, getting us back to “Definitions, Definitions, Definitions!”
The distinction of literal and figurative interpretations of the Bible is rather lame, because the word literal is insufficiently defined. There can be no such thing as literal literalcy between two different languages, or two different points in time, to say nothing of its complete absence between two different usages, either by two different speakers, or by the same speaker at different times, or in different states of mind. And this is talking about some simple unsophisticated situations of everyday usage, whereas the Bible offers us the depths of complexity and an unrivaled challenge to our understanding.
It is reasonable to suggest that the right word to apply to the Scriptures would be cryptic, and the Book of Daniel clearly emphasizes this quality of the Bible, when it says that certain things will be understood only by those for whom they are meant to be understood, and then only when they are meant to be understood. The cryptic nature of the Bible is further brought out by the explorers of the so-called Bible Code, which, whether we accept their practical suggestions or not, does not change the basic fact of heavy symbolism and cryptology in it. Therefore, I think that those who insist on the literal interpretation, known as fundamentalists, are probably promoting their own reading of the text, or the reading of their school of exegesis, and cannot be credited with authenticity of interpretation by any stretch of interpretation.

Incidentally, the heavily charged word ‘Logos’ of St. John’s Gospel cannot even be approached, so as to be understood, without studying the significations of this word in pre-Socratic Greek philosophy, and I doubt that most of those second-tier, derivative exegetes, quoted as Scriptural authorities in the churches of today, have delved that deep, anyway.

A few words in this regard about the never-ending controversy between the proponents of Creation versus the Evolution. I see little merit in the proponents of Creationism setting themselves up as an alternative to Evolution. The Story of Creation in the Bible is far too cryptic to make their claims in any way legitimate. For instance, it is outright silly for them to interpret the Six Days of Creation as our own cycles of twenty-four hours, when Time itself was created in the process of Creation, and when both duration and extension are matters of very complicated nature, and, of course, the Bible itself gives us a clue that one day to God is countless years to man, or something like that. (As an amusing interjection, I suggest that, in explanation of deism, as distinguished from theism, in modern quasi-theological-quasi-philosophical usage, the “Seventh Day” of God’s rest has stretched over the post-Creation remainder of Time, thus accounting for His alleged non-participation in human affairs.)

In this regard, there is only one point of interest, where Evolution can indeed be challenged, or, at least, our focus of attention may be rightfully placed. If the Inspiration of Man is a deliberate act of God, as literally described in the Bible, how can we reconcile, or harmonize it (I am by no means suggesting that this cannot be done!) with the extremely lengthy process of brain development, as suggested by the Evolution theory, in which incremental changes in the "animal" brain eventually produce a new quality in the human brain. (To clarify my point, I am not talking about the crude caricature of Darwinian man descending from the monkeys, but only about the different “animal” stages of the development of homo sapiens proper. In other words, was Adam some kind of pre-Neanderthal, or what?) This must be the central question of our interest, and not the stupid argument about how many years ago God rolled up His sleeves, having decided to create the world.

IS THE KING OF FRANCE BALD?

Among educated laymen, and possibly among professionals too, Bertrand Russell’s best-known phrase must be “the present King of France is bald,” which provides a powerful illustration to his theory of descriptions. Russell insists that this proposition is neither true nor false, as there is no king in France (in his time, as well as in ours).

It is not my intention to argue with him about this matter, trying to convince anybody that, indeed, there is a bona fide King in France today, or, for that matter, to agree that there is nothing of the kind. My intention is to draw the reader’s attention to the fact that all subjects of such propositions are relative, and it is very hard to insist on the truth or falsity of any statement, or even to cop out of pronouncing a judgment by saying that something is neutral in this respect, meaning neither-nor.
Let us imagine a very reasonable situation that there are some people in the world who consciously contend that France is still considered a monarchy by the French monarchists and point to the “rightful pretender” to the throne. Thus, although France is not juridically a monarchy, the subject identified as “the present king of France” is real, and it can be predicated, turning the phrase above into a normal subject-predicate sentence, contrary to what Russell says about it.
To get any obstinate nitpickers out of the way, I will just add that, aside from France, there have been many other nations on earth where the Russell question of whether they have a King, or a Shah, or a Grand Prince is at least arguable. England did have a King (Charles II) throughout Cromwell’s Protected Commonwealth, even if one could get in big trouble for saying it. The Russians, even today, have two Romanov claimants to the Russian throne, even if the likelihood of either one’s ascension to the throne is lurking somewhere in the whereabouts of zero.

My larger point, however, is to suggest that, just like in the case of “the present King of France,” where the nonsensicalness of the subject can be reasonably disputed, there is no lawful subject among the members of the regular subject-predicate community, whose legitimacy cannot be disputed by a competent “lawyer.”
There are no unassailable truths under the sun that could not be exposed as lies. There are no statements that could not be contradicted. There are no perennial idols that could not be knocked off their marble pedestals. There are only propositions that can be accepted axiomatically, by postulate.

This whole line of thinking has very interesting repercussions, which I encourage the reader to dwell on.

THE SAD RETREATS OF THE OPEN MIND

One of the greatest practical tragedies of philosophy has been her never-ending oppression by the changing historical circumstances. It goes without saying that medieval, and partly modern, philosophy suffered from the intractable pressure of the Christian Church with its infallible dogma, placing faith (rather than its more understandable counterpart intuition) above reason, and effectively shutting the latter up.

Traveling fast forward in time, we shall find the Soviet political system maintaining the quasi-solid façade of political orthodoxy, effectively and most unfortunately shutting up the open-minded philosophical ideas, which, as a matter of fact, did not even pose a real, but only imaginary, threat to the Soviet system, but had to be sacrificed on the altar of the State-imposed collective uniformity and officially interpreted exclusively through the phony prism of Marxism-Leninism.
The philosophical tragedies of our time are many, not the least of them being the relegation of philosophy and good education to the moldy cellar of yesterday’s flukes, all deemed unnecessary for achieving success in modern post-industrial (have you ever taken time to think what this term means, and-- if you have-- have you shuddered?!) societies. But prominent among these tragedies is the tagging of certain pivotal events of the twentieth century, such as Italian fascism, German national socialism, and, to some extent, Russian Stalinism, as intellectual anathema, effectively forbidding any study of these exceptionally interesting phenomena in the proper intellectual fashion. Mind you, I am by no means talking of some kind of exoneration, but only of a thoroughly objective critical examination, free from foregone conclusions dictated by crude propaganda, and unfettered by the heavy chains of political correctness.
As a result, items of extreme intellectual curiosity and philosophical value have been caricatured, diminished, trivialized, distorted, and otherwise banned from serious consideration, and, just where we could have learned the most from history, there is an impenetrable wall of a dark-age prejudice separating us from essential knowledge, which should have helped us to deal with some very real and urgent problems of the present and the future from the position of Baconian (Hobbesian!) strength. Scientia potentia… fuisse?!

WISHFUL THINKING AND REALITY

We are used to thinking that, like hope, wishful thinking is a sweet lie, whereas reality, no matter how stark, is an actuality, and therefore it must be true.
Yet I’ve been insisting, inspired by the famous George Bernard Shaw quip, that only fiction can be true, and based on that insistence, wishful thinking, being a form of creative fiction, must be true by that definition.
Pushing this argument still further, is it then possible that the world is being wrong about itself, in believing that actuality is true just because it is. Wittgenstein says, “Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.” But he does not actually say that was der Fall ist is true. There is no intrinsic judgment on veracity in a statement of fact.

All this rather confusing discussion boils down to the simple assertion that the world must be true just because it is God’s Creation, within the Creation itself. By the same token, our fantasy (wishful thinking is a part of it) is true just because it is our creation, within its own parameters. But it does not follow from such identification that whatever happens must be true as well. The fact that the world (Die Welt) is true does not automatically make true everything (alles, was der Fall ist) that constitutes it. For even based on basic logic, we know that lies exist and are therefore parts, that is, “facts,” of the world. Lies start and proliferate from where separate creations clash, and they become lies precisely by trying to assert their internal truths externally, rather than keeping them within, where they are indeed true.

APOLLO DESCENDING

Aesthetically speaking, world culture appears to be steadily deteriorating. I have given numerous examples of this already. World literature has been in gross neglect for some time already, even more so recently, as reading books has now been supplanted by surfing the Internet. Good music is no longer in production, and the best performers of classical music are increasingly forced to pander to vulgar mass tastes. (Anyone who used to be, like myself, an admirer of the Metropolitan Opera, must share my feeling of sheer disgust with the more recent productions there.) Visual arts have all been dumbed down and have become a playground for greedy and talentless moneymakers. Or even worse, as epitomized by the infamous crucifix immersed in urine “work of art.” Talking about religion, even religious art, once a bastion of good taste, has deteriorated to the point of becoming aesthetically abhorrent. (I am not counting the Russian Orthodox Church in that category yet, and hopefully she will never succumb to the mass appeal of vulgarization. At least, unlike her Catholic and Protestant counterparts, she has been successful so far, with the most undemocratic support from the Russian government, in resisting the intrusion of the worst kinds of profanity and vulgarity always masquerading as free speech and uninhibited artistic expression.)


Fortunately for the aging paragons of good taste, they do not have to agree with Socrates in Plato’s Apology that the only way to rediscover Apollo is to descend into Hades with him, that is, to die. We can still enjoy and cherish the best musical recordings of great artists, we can still look at the reproductions of museum art, remembering how we used to see and spiritually bond with the ‘real things,’ when we visited these museums in our earlier lives. It is indeed our aesthetic memory, which is cheering up Apollo on his way down. There may still be hope for his return… or is there?
This hope for the return of good taste, is perhaps the most valuable component of world-historical wishful thinking, seeing that with Apollo’s return all other values will surely return with him. In this return, one can hardly count on a mass reawakening of aesthetic elitism, but look back with justified nostalgia at the Soviet era aesthetic experience in Russia. Soviet authorities did not wait for the public to dictate to them the kind of aesthetic manifesto which they would then follow as their law. Instead, they chose to impose good taste from above. The Bolshevik Revolution was not all about the proletariat and class struggle. It was about the perennial classics of world literature, arts, music. I have no love for the Bolshevik Revolution per se, but I do applaud it for what it had done to the nation’s religious spirit and aesthetic taste!

Is an aesthetic world revolution possible today? Pragmatically speaking, it cannot be born out of a universal spontaneous generation. It must start somewhere where the seeds are preserved. It is therefore logical for us to point our finger at Russia, the old repository of Western Civilization. But is today’s Russia, where there is a titanic struggle going on between good taste and bad taste, up to it?
I do hope so, and I also hope that a victory of good taste in Russia will infect the rest of the world with that splendid bacteria… somehow. Well, after all, this is still the section on wishful thinking, and let us hope that the next step from here will be made in the right direction, before the tragic figure of Apollo has been fully swallowed by the insatiable glutton of the kingdom of the dead.

THE ANDROMEDA NEBULA

(This entry talks about a seminal work of Soviet science fiction: Ivan Yefremov’s Tumannost’ Andromedy. Its somewhat dumbed-down English-language title is Andromeda: A Space-Age Tale, but a more accurate translation would be The Andromeda Nebula, although the scientific-Latin jargon is totally absent from the original Russian title, which has "nebula" rendered simply as "Mist." The novel was published in 1957. Its English translation exists, but so does a deep political bias against it, preventing it from gaining popularity in the English-speaking world. Hoping that the reader will be sufficiently tempted to find this book and read it, I prefer not to reveal its plot here, except for one major detail, which is the tragic outcome of the novel’s space mission.)

There are two opinions about this great work of Soviet wishful thinking, in Russia and in the West. Starting with the Western view, there is an element of contempt and rejection of Yefremov’s work, on account of the opinion that by showing the world of the future where communism has triumphed, the author was engaging in Soviet communist propaganda, and, as such, his work has little merit. The Russian opinion is much more to the point: the novel’s political philosophy and its element of social engineering and prognostication have been rather ordinary, but other than that it is an unusually clever and sophisticated piece of science fiction with an exciting plot, provocative character development, and even certain elements of non-political philosophy that can claim some valuable originality.
Being a Russian and writing about important works of wishful fiction, I cannot leave Yefremov’s book with no mention at all, and so, here are my brief comments on it.

All Utopias, even the best ever written give off the same rather artificial saccharine aftertaste which, I guess, comes with the territory. Yefremov’s book in that sense gets a pass-plus, mixing naïveté and sophistication in fair measures of both. I am rather surprised by the shallowness of the Western critics who dismiss it as an obnoxious example of Soviet propaganda, failing to understand that the author does not surrender his talent to the political authority of his day. Rather, he is taking the official ideology for granted in order to dwell on the less conventional aspects of “life under communism.” Having achieved the communist goals, the society can now afford to allow each individual to pursue his or her dreams as they see fit, thus solving the problem of man versus society in an individualistically acceptable manner. Furthermore, Yefremov debunks the silly quasi-doctrine of a conflict-less communistic paradise, by introducing a large measure of conflict, and even tragedy, into the picture. Pursuing their individualistic dreams, all people are allowed to take risks, paying for them, on some occasions, with their lives. One of the heroes of the novel sacrifices his life for science in his pursuit of a daring hypothesis, and causes the death of all members of his crew, who, however, had been aware of the risks involved, and died not as sheep taken to a slaughterhouse by the butcher, but as voluntary risk-takers, come whatever may.

I believe that this novel could have been much greater appreciated in the West, had the Western mind been free of the cold-war mist at the time, and free from ingrained prejudices after the end of that era. Ironically, I bet that had Yefremov’s novel, instead of being squarely published in the USSR, been secretly smuggled to the West, like Pasternak’s great novel Doctor Zhivago, it might have received an equally enthusiastic reception and proclaimed a masterpiece of… anti-Soviet literature. After all, Doctor Zhivago can hardly be called an "anti-Soviet" novel. There are unmistakable “pro-Soviet” elements in it as well, and, at the very least, great works of literature never submit themselves to such rigid political characterizations.

Same thing with Yefremov’s novel… But at least the Russians can enjoy it for its hidden treasures, and get better and wiser for them.

SPIELTRIEB

This entry takes a look at the wishful thinking of one of the greatest playwrights in history (deemed second only to Shakespeare), a prodigious poet, historian, philosopher and aesthete, as well as a close friend of the great Goethe, Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805). For more on him there will be a special entry The Good And The Beautiful in the Significant Others section, to be posted later. But here, just as I said from the start, only one particular aspect of his philosophy is going to be discussed.


To Schiller belongs the peculiar concept of Spieltrieb, derived from the Kantian vocabulary. He advanced it in his 1794 philosophical work Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen. The Letters were written in the wake of the French Revolution, which had started promisingly for liberal minds, but quickly turned into an ugly mess of unnecessary violence and gross incompetence. Something must have gone wrong, and Schiller identifies the problem as the deficiency of aesthetic education. The moral character of the French people was found wanting in the Revolution. It is only by being touched by beauty that one’s moral character can be elevated and improved.
Following Kant, Schiller looks at the conflict between man’s Sinnestrieb, his sensuous brutal nature, and his Formtrieb, that is his capacity for reasoning and rational judgment. Enter Spieltrieb, the aesthetic drive with its capacity for beauty appreciation, and the conflicts are resolved in mutual content and total happiness.
Thus Spieltrieb rises further, into the area of social generalization, and a picture of the future eutopian state. It is easy now to dismiss Schiller’s eutopia as a hopelessly idealistic and practically unimplementable utopia, if we look at his ideal picture as a whole, a simulated social model for the future. But we do not need to take his ideal as a blueprint for transplant. Once we realize that its component ideas can indeed be transferred to an existing reality to deal not with its particulars, but with certain principles at work within it, the implications of this are rich and rewarding. It is in this sense that Herbert Marcuse, a serious neo-Marxist philosopher, is prepared to take Schiller’s wishful thinking with utmost seriousness. To him, Schiller’s Spieltrieb is a useful alternative to social alienation. In Marcuse’s words, “Schiller's Letters aim at remaking of civilization by virtue of the liberating force of the aesthetic function envisaged as containing the possibility of a new reality principle.”

Remarkably, throughout the Soviet era of Russian history, Spieltrieb had been virtually imposed from above in the USSR, creating a unique aesthetically elitist Soviet culture, which aspect of the Soviet experiment has not been studied enough, if at all, and definitely never from the Schiller perspective. I hope that one day there will be an appropriate study done, connecting the basics of Soviet culture with the concept of Spieltrieb, and some useful socio-cultural discoveries and conclusions will be made, benefiting all humanity, which may not have reached yet a point beyond redemption.

But, anyway, not every utopian creation can be interpreted to become constructive in practical applications, which makes Schiller’s particular utopia even more valuable to us, a firm and resolute step beyond wishful thinking.

SMITH AND JONES

This entry takes a rather unexpected look at the unlikely combination of two authentic American prophets, one legitimately established, the other abysmally failed, and the social experiments in wishful thinking resulting from their efforts. Not that I intend to draw an equivalency of any sort between them, but their comparison will undoubtedly bring their respective experiences into a sharper focus and, hopefully, yield us some fresh insights.
The life and death of Joseph Smith has brought about a thriving new community of Americans, religiously driven and socially active. The life and death of Jim Jones has brought about nothing but a ghastly memory of the worst collective murder-suicide in American history, and not even a perfunctory nod of appreciation from the sole beneficiary of Jones's last will and testament: the Communist Party of the USSR.

But let us not rush our two stories. We shall begin with Joseph Smith (1805-1844), the founder of the Latter Day Saints religious movement. His critics called him a clever and immoral conman, playing on the religious sensibilities of his fellow Americans, thirsty for a new improved religion. Coming up with the idea that an angel (Moroni) had paid him a visit and led him to the treasure trove of gold plates containing a sacred text was a thoroughly ingenious idea, and, most importantly and improbably, it worked! Although nobody was allowed to see the plates, Joseph Smith was a charismatic young man, and his followers chose to believe him on the strength of his charisma. Throughout the whole risky game, Smith was constantly getting in trouble with the Law, and during one of his imprisonments he was attacked and killed by an angry mob of his detractors. Thus Smith’s new religious movement got itself a martyr-founder, and thanks to the inspired move of Smith’s follower Brigham Young, who, like Moses, led the crowds of the new religion’s adherents away from the populated areas of non-Mormon America to the wilderness of Utah, this new movement was thus allowed to settle, as if in a test tube of the social experimentation, which produced a distinctive Mormon culture, united by religion, a new cohesive cultural tradition, which... well... worked!
Curiously, after Smith’s death, and with no clear successor established, several of his followers claimed the mantle of his successor, but only the Brighamite branch of the movement sprouted a full-fledged culture of Utah Mormonism. I attribute this to the fact that, generally speaking, Smith’s new religion was not much of a religion per se, and it was only under the specific conditions of isolation from the rest of the world that the Mormon culture flourished, and in so doing it had given cultural legitimacy to Mormonism as a religion. As I noted in the Religion section, concerning the Mormons, I believe that outside the proper boundaries of the State of Utah, where it is the dominant religion, Mormonism has no legitimacy anywhere else, be that inside the United States of America or anywhere abroad. But inside Utah, we can rightly observe that the Mormon experiment in wishful thinking, albeit extravagant and outlandish, has survived, taken root, and succeeded marvelously altogether.

The story of Jim Jones (1931-1978) has several totally different aspects from that of Joseph Smith, but in the end, both represent two sides of the same American experience, of the same wishful thinking for better or for worse, on the part of activity-prone, yet unfulfilled citizens in search of a new adventure, and the enterprising power- and fame-hungry men, born with a strongly developed leader syndrome, and applying themselves to the new opportunities, which they themselves had caught while fishing in the social pool of wishful thinking. Unlike the story of Smith (hagiographically written by his triumphant disciples, and virtually uncontested by his detractors, gagged with the surest gag of all: that of political correctness and prohibition of “hate speech” against an established religion), the story of Jones has been written entirely by his enemies, and even though he deserves the historical memory of a monster, the historical circumstances of his rise and fall ought to be treated with great caution and distrust every step of the way.

Now, here is an example of his Wikipedia biography, depicting him as a weird, although precocious child:
“In interviews for the 2007 documentary film Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, childhood acquaintances recalled Jones as being a “really weird kid” who was “obsessed with religion... obsessed with death,” and claimed that he frequently held funerals for small animals, and had, reportedly, fatally stabbed a cat as a young child.
Jones was a voracious reader as a child, and studied Joseph Stalin, Karl Marx, Mahatma Gandhi, and Adolf Hitler carefully, noting each of their strengths and weaknesses.”

Without even knowing anything about Jones, that is, whether he was a saint or a monster from hell, this kind of “biography” can be judged as a pretty unintelligent attempt at crude propaganda, which is bound to raise suspicions about the reasons for such an intense bias, rather than inform the reader about the facts of Jones’ private and public life.
Therefore, leaving this kind of biography aside, we can only assume the basic facts in evidence, that Jones had emerged as the charismatic leader of a survivalist cult, had a considerable following, and even political endorsement from such prominent California Democrats as George Moscone and Willie Brown. Whether or not he was calling himself a reincarnation of Jesus Christ, Mahatma Gandhi, the Buddha and Lenin, among others, is just another unsubstantiated tidbit that we ought to throw away. His quasi-religious organization Peoples Temple was founded in 1955, and was later headquartered in San Francisco. Touted as a socialist commune, it thrived in several California locations, enjoying support of several mainstream politicians and even personally of the First Lady Rosalynn Carter and indirectly of President Carter and his Vice President Mondale. In other words, for a weirdo who allegedly killed pets, admired Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, and called himself an incarnation of Jesus Christ, that was perhaps too much establishment recognition, wasn’t it?

The building of the utopian socialist commune of Jonestown in Guyana began in 1974, but by 1978 it came under intense scrutiny for the alleged human rights abuses of its members. Jones claimed interference and espionage by several United States Intelligence agencies, but it had become clear by then that the commune was about to collapse. And collapse it did, in the infamous murder-suicide of 909 commune members, Jones included, on November 18, 1978.
No matter what, even if the ensuing official propaganda offensive must have distorted many facts, there can be no justification for the tragedy of Jonestown, and there can be nothing short of astonishment at how this whole affair of the Jim Jones enterprise had been allowed to proceed with the vocal and tacit approval from the foremost names of American politics!

And yet, we shall hardly ever learn the whole truth...
Here in this entry we have brought together two bizarre social experiments in America: one, Joseph Smith’s, a demonstrable success, the other, Jim Jones’s, a demonstrable debacle, and there is little else to be learned about the birthing details of each enterprise, as history, in both cases written by the victors, cannot be trusted in either case, despite the outer appearances of historical objectivity.

THEOSOPHY AS WISHFUL THINKING

The reader may remember me making in the course of this book numerous negative references to the rather offensive and obnoxious term new age. There is a general consensus of ignorance that new age is a Western invention, which is only partially corresponding to reality, to the extent that all modern new age movements bear the indelible stamp of Western adaptation on them, and are indeed predominantly located in the West, with America undeniably in the lead on this account. However, the true origin of new age thinking boasts of a distinctively Russian parentage. Rooted in Mme Blavatsky’s (who was, of course, an adventurous Russian noblewoman) theosophy, as elaborated by the legendary Russian couple of Nikolai Konstantinovich Roerich and Helena Ivanovna Roerich, it received the name Living Ethics, also known as Agni Yoga. It is a spiritual teaching, claiming mystical origins, but its essence is rendered in the following ten principles.---

---Our Universe is governed by Cosmic Laws, and man is the most powerful implementer of these laws, being a part of the cosmic energy, a part of the cosmic intellect.
---The principal task of the evolution is the spiritualization of matter through the refinement of its energy. Man affects the cosmic evolution by means of the energy of his spirit.
---Man’s cosmic effect is determined by the moral motivation of his activity. It can be positive, creative, but it can also be negative, destructive, anti-cultural.
---Culture is the life-saving self-organizing system of the Spirit. Culture produces Love and Beauty seen as the underpinnings of the evolution. Lacking either, evolution stops, and involution begins.
---The Teacher-Student principle, known since ancient times, is here expanded to become the cosmic principle of instruction and learning, the basic instrument of the evolution.
---Recognizing the immense role of religion in the history of mankind, Living Ethics sees an expanding role of science in the process of cosmic evolution, and empowers it with vastly increased responsibilities in psychic and spiritual matters.
---The greatest task of the evolution in its current stage is a transition from conflict and disunity to agreement, unity and cooperation.
---The Living Ethics calls the coming era The Epoch of the Woman. The woman must apprehend her cosmic purpose, rise to equal rights in society, and bring in with her the cosmic concept of love and harmony.
---The basic tools of self-perfection are education and labor. Man must purify his thinking, elevate himself through art appreciation, and let his heart strive toward the light.
---The Living Ethics rejects any missionary activity. Her doors are wide open, but all who are willing to enter must do it on their own.

Such are the ten principles of the Living Ethics, and we shall leave them at that, as just another example of wishful thinking, full of grand words and going nowhere. Remarkably, the attitude of the Russian Orthodox Church toward the Roerich spiritual teaching stops short of anathemizing its areligious substance. There is no need for that, according to the Church Fathers, as the Living Ethics lies outside the religious boundaries. Metropolitan Cyril, before he became the current Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Cyril I stated this opinion as follows: “No, nobody anathemized them. They cannot even be anathemized, being outside the Church, not being Christians. Just as you cannot anathemize an atheist, or a theosophist. These are all outside the Church.” Needless to say, the Russian Church does not consider itself in competition with any wishful thinkers. It sees itself as the only real thing, and the time has finally come when it can prove to the Russian people and to the world whether this is in fact so.

A MODERN UTOPIA

The borderline, if there is one, is very thin, between utopianism and social engineering. One is a disposition of the mind, the other is its application to reality. (Let us not confuse, though, the genuine, idealistic, kind of social engineering with its modern-day manipulative variety, where the engineer’s motives are by no means utopian…)

A remarkable event took place in 1920, when the great utopian H. G. Wells met the great social engineer V. I. Lenin in the Kremlin and had a fascinating conversation with him, regrettably, only partially “transposed” by Wells to literature, under the title Russia in the Shadows. There is one incredible paragraph in that book, however, which I'd like to quote here, as most significantly pertaining to our subject:

“…For, Lenin, who, like a good orthodox Marxist, denounces all “Utopians,” has succumbed at last to a Utopia, the Utopia of the electricians. He is throwing all his weight into a scheme for the development of great power stations in Russia to serve whole provinces with light, with transport, and industrial power… Projects for such an electrification are in process of development in Holland, and they have been discussed in England, and in those densely-populated and industrially highly-developed centres one can imagine them as successful, economical, and altogether beneficial. But their application to Russia is an altogether greater strain upon the constructive imagination. I cannot see anything of the sort happening in this dark crystal of Russia, but this little man at the Kremlin can; he sees the decaying railways replaced by a new electric transport, sees new roadways spreading throughout the land, sees a new and happier Communist industrialism arising again. While I talked to him he almost persuaded me to share his vision.”

Ironic, isn’t it, that Wells is telling us with a straight face that a good orthodox Marxist should denounce all Utopians, despite the fact that Marxist “eschatology” which I previously compared to Christian eschatology, has been one of the most notorious utopian dreams of mankind, ever since Marx restated the Bible…

Having said all this, let me confess that the subject of this particular entry is not Wells’ meeting with Lenin (which will be taking front and center in my yet to be posted entry Russia In The Shadows), but, as the title directly suggests, his rather little-known, and undeservedly so, 1905 book A Modern Utopia.
With H. G. Wells we are returning to the genre of utopian literature, not only by the title of his fantasy and by his own admission in the first chapter, which I am quoting from below. His is a… deliberate utopia. Its citizens are well aware that their place is not some static fantasy designed to fulfill the creative wishes of its author, but a work in progress, where people realize that theirs is not a perfect place, but they are intent on pushing it by their common effort in the right direction. (It must be obvious from this that Wells and Lenin were indeed birds of a feather!)
Thus it’s not Wells’ flight of imagination that interests me the most in his book, but his underlying principle, which represents a new method in utopian literature, and, in this sense, is of much greater importance than anything else that he has to offer in social innovations or futuristic predictions.

So here is the key passage from Wells’ A Modern Utopia, which my reader is advised to read with attention:

“…The Utopia of a modern dreamer must needs differ in one fundamental aspect from the Nowheres and Utopias men planned before Darwin quickened the thought of the world. Those were all perfect and static States, a balance of happiness won for ever against the forces of unrest and disorder that inhere in things. One beheld a healthy and simple generation enjoying the fruits of the earth in an atmosphere of virtue and happiness, to be followed by other virtuous, happy, and entirely similar generations, until the Gods grew weary. Change and development were dammed back by invincible dams for ever. But the Modern Utopia must be not static, but kinetic, must shape not as a permanent state, but as a hopeful stage, leading to a long ascent of stages. Nowadays, we do not resist and overcome the great stream of things, but rather float upon it. We build not citadels, but ships of state. For one ordered arrangement of citizens rejoicing in an equality of happiness assured to them and their children forever, we have to plan “a flexible common compromise, in which a perpetually novel succession of individualities may converge effectually upon a comprehensive onward development.” That is the first, most generalized difference between a Utopia based upon modern conceptions and all the Utopias that were written in the former time.”

What I also find fascinating in Wells’ approach is his honest admission that the creation of an utopia on the ruins of the past necessarily requires an emancipation from national culture, history, tradition, etc.---

“That, indeed, is the cardinal assumption of all Utopian speculations old and new; the Republic and Laws of Plato, and More’s Utopia, Howells’ implicit Altruria, and Bellamy’s future Boston, Comte’s great Western Republic, Hertzka’s Freeland, Cabet’s Icaria, and Campanella’s City of the Sun, are built, just as we shall build, upon that, upon the hypothesis of the complete emancipation of a community of men from tradition, from habits, from legal bonds, and that subtler servitude possessions entail. And much of the essential value of all such speculations lies in this assumption of emancipation, lies in that regard towards human freedom, in the undying interest of the human power of self-escape, the power to resist the causation of the past, and to evade, initiate, endeavor, and overcome.”

Thanks to Wells, we can now pinpoint the fatal flaw of all utopias: their artificiality and disconnect from all living cultures. Once again, I am reminded of those adventurous linguists, trying to improve on the existing languages by creating a perfect language for human communication, free from the defects characteristic of human languages, which makes it… inhuman.
(All of this now leads us to our final very intriguing question. If Lenin, with whom we started this entry, was a utopian of sorts, how come that Russia would allow him to become a social engineer, and to apply it to her national destiny? The answer ought to be clear from everything I have already written on this subject. Lenin was of course an exceptional man, but he was by no means a trailblazer. Russia chose him to lead the stage of transition from the Tsarist Empire to the Soviet Empire. Not surprisingly, Lenin’s vision corresponded to the two necessary ideas Russia had for some time been ripe for: totalitarianism and Christian communism. The Tsarist Empire had been opposed to both, and it was only Lenin’s Bolshevism that could usher them in: one in practice, the other as a national idea. Thus Lenin’s presumed utopianism was in fact the real thing, within the Russian context.)

Footnote: Wells here alludes to several utopian works, some of them needing no introduction and discussed by me already elsewhere, but others needing a short note of explanation, although not compelling enough to warrant separate entries.---

Etienne Cabet (1788-1856) was a French utopian socialist who wrote his 1840 Icarie with a blueprint of the society he wanted to build, and later tried to build, unsuccessfully, moving to America in 1848.

William Dean Howells (1837-1920) was an American author whose utopian novel A Traveler from Altruria is a critique of American obsession with money and other lures of greedy capitalism.

Edward Bellamy (1850-1898) was an American socialist, whose best-known novel Looking Backward tells the story of a nineteenth century Boston man who wakes up in a socialist utopia in the year 2000.

And finally, Hungarian-Austrian journalist Theodor Hertzka’s (1845-1924) utopian novel Freiland is built upon the same premises as Bellamy’s novel, for which he was dubbed, unflatteringly, in my view, “Austrian Bellamy.”

(Separately from these, Wells also alludes to Auguste Comte whom we have discussed in the sociological-philosophical context, and not as a utopian. In his major work Système de Politique Positive he advances the idea of a unification of several Western European nations into a nineteenth century version of the European Union, which he does as a positivist political philosopher, rather than a utopian fantast, which, of course, sets him apart from the wishful thinking bunch, discussed in this section.)

CREATIVE INTERACTION AND OTHER PHYSICS

Dialectical materialism, which Marx created, is by no means a triumph of matter over mind, but a victory for mind creatively interacting with matter and conquering it, although all the time disingenuously insisting on matter’s unquestionable superiority, and claiming for itself to be toiling on her (matter’s) behalf.
Marx, however, can in no way be called a bona fide idealist as, in his vision, "matter" (Dasein) does affect the mind (Bewußtsein) in a substantial manner (whereas in idealism, the Spirit is always fully independent of matter, and its interaction with the latter is always a one-way street), but, rather, a philosophical dualist, in whose thought the mind and the matter are mutually affecting each other, in a kind of creative interaction. He cleverly avoids calling an obvious spade a spade, by disguising this otherwise self-evident mind-matter interaction as a dialectical struggle between a thesis and an antithesis, which is, in fact, an active interaction between a subject and an object. In thus shaping his argument, Marx manages to bring it somewhat down to earth, from the realm of metaphysics to the more tangible world of physics, in which endeavor, though, he is not altogether original. In the following excerpt from Leviathan, Hobbes uses physics to illustrate his point concerning human perception. There is a whole wide world of difference, of course, between Plato’s notion of perception, where our senses are overwhelmed and, we may say, tricked, by the shadows of their royal highnesses, ideas, and, say, Bishop Berkeley’s opposite-case situation, where our senses are the real royalty, producing concepts according to their whim. (I believe that we can reduce Berkeley’s brand of idealism to this rather unorthodox interpretation.) In Hobbes, however, we find an example of interaction between the subject and the object, and, as long as he introduces physics to make his case, we are in our rights to apply the Newtonian laws of physics to Hobbes’s theory of perception, thus making his philosophical version of perception interactive, rather than reactive. (Otherwise, our senses will meekly surrender all action to their pesky irritants.) So, here is the promised Hobbesian passage:
“When a body is once in motion, it moves (unless something hinders it) eternally; and whatsoever hinders it, cannot in an instant, but in time, and by degrees, extinguish it. As we see in the water, though the wind may cease, the waves give not over rolling for a long time after; so also it happens in that motion which is made in the internal parts of a man, when he sees, dreams, etc. For, after the object is removed, or the eye shut, we still retain an image of the thing seen, though more obscure than when we see it. And this is what the Latins call imagination, from the image made in seeing, and apply the same, though improperly, to all the other senses. But the Greeks call it fancy, which means ‘appearance,’ and is as proper to one sense as to another. Imagination thus is nothing but decaying sense found in men and many other living creatures, as well sleeping as waking." (From Hobbes’s Leviathan: I, 2.)
There are at least two major points of interest here. The very first one is the question of subjectivity versus objectivity of perception and understanding. In defense of subjectivity, it is obvious that our impressions of all objects are not some objective vibes produced by the objects (in which case, they easily become subjects themselves, and the vibes, in turn, become subjective), but our subjective interest in what we wish to extract from our object. Perception in this case is like opening a large refrigerator filled with food, whose content is familiar to us. We pick and choose only what we want at this moment, not an hour ago, not one minute from now. Even better, we may not as much as notice some of the choicest foods there, if our mind is prefixed on a particular item. Our resolution to get exactly what we want and to pay no attention at all to anything else may not even be deliberate, but involuntary: we just fail to see what we had not expected to see. How would Nietzsche, for instance, define “contemplation,” so vehemently criticized by him in Rénan and, generally, in the human race? How would he see his object of derision in our context? Would he look at the food, or just pick up what he wants, and shut the door on the rest? I admit that Nietzsche’s perception is a special case, of course. He would see everything of significance to him inside that refrigerator, everything, that is, worth seeing, to him. But in lesser men such essential ability to observe, and selectively absorb, would be possible only through contemplation, rather than through the illuminating lightning of discernment. Some individuals are quicker, others are slower, and that slowness of the mind might be called “contemplation.” According to Nietzsche, he thinks without wording his thoughts and he words only as he writes, while most people are not so lucky.
The second major point of interest confronts us with the same refrigerator metaphor, only, in this case, we are not familiar with the food contents of our refrigerator, and ready to be surprised. As we get acquainted with the foods within, we make our own choice of what we want, thus affecting the foods inside. But, prior to making our choice, we are affected by the specific selection of the available foods, and our subsequent choice cannot, therefore, be called an independent one. So, here is a perfect example of interaction!
And, finally, in the title of this entry I have called my kind of interaction creative. This raises the question of whether there are different types of interaction: creative and non-creative, predictable and unpredictable (the list of such binary oppositions can go on and on, but you get the point). The laws of physics suggest a predictable pattern of interaction, like when two physical bodies in motion collide, the postmortem of their interaction can be mathematically calculated (but only if we treat them as abstract bodies), or predicted, if we have made a comprehensive prior analysis of both these bodies, and, from it, determined the end result of their collision (which is extremely difficult, but in most cases of purely physical bodies, with no “mind” of their own, at least theoretically possible).
Generally speaking, the end result is, then, either theoretically predictable or totally unpredictable at all. In the refrigerator metaphor, the first case, when the contents of the refrigerator are known to us beforehand, covers predictability, the second, when the contents are unknown, covers unpredictability. It is safe to say that in all interactions between mind and matter the results are unpredictable, no matter what Marx has to say about it.
What is creative? A chess game, as soon as (or as late as) it gets off the beaten path, a soccer match, as soon as the referee’s first whistle is blown-- all these become technically unpredictable either from a certain point on, or from the very beginning . But what is the real meaning of creative, and how does it substantially relate to being unpredictable. We talk about art being creative, so does creativity have to be aesthetic, or artistic? Was Dr. Frankenstein’s Monster, even though unaesthetic, a work of art?
All of this hardly depends on any substantial criteria, but only on how we define our terms. Creation of an automobile does not usually mean its manufacture on the production line, but, rather, a new design, a new concept, the technical implementation of which is no longer counted as part of the creation. But we would not know it, if our usage expands the meaning of creation to manufacture. By the same token, the word art has a variety of meanings, and it gets particularly confusing when we differentiate between the qualitative novelty and its aesthetic value. Also, creation can be a rational process, the result of a work of reason, or an irrational one, being the result of an intuitive passionate outburst, and we can proceed with this catalog ad infinitum, adjusting and readjusting our nuances and reinventing our definitions, until the pathetic futility of this lengthy process becomes too obvious to us, to continue.
But the bottom line of this discourse is that the meaning of creative, in our term creative interaction, boils down to the generation of a new quality or a new value, whether in physics, or metaphysics, or beyond them both.