In the painting of “The Red Dragon and the Beast of the Sea”, the English poet and artist William Blake shows us that the Dragon is the combination of Church and State militancy, the ‘armed prophet’ of political Christianity and the establishment of the theocratic regime. Historically, we may say that this is the Roman Church when it succumbed to the third temptation of Christ and sought control of all the kingdoms of this world, the creation of the universal, homogeneous State. In the Beast’s hands are the sword of secular power and the crozier of religious power. In Blake’s mythology, Urizen, what we understand as ‘human rationality’, finally sinks to this inhuman form as does Milton’s Satan in Blake’s understanding of his Paradise Lost.
According to the Book of Revelations, the Whore of Babylon rides on a beast with seven heads and ten horns. Blake identified the Beast with the Dragon. In another sketch of her, the fumes from her cup drive human beings to hatred and war; as they fight, the Dragon devours them. The Dragon is the anti-Christ or the anti-Logos. The Beast of the Sea is the Leviathan, “King over all the Children of Pride.” The Dragon and the Beast are two different entities. In marginal notes to his reading of the Book of Job, Blake writes that the “cloud barriers shall be scattered” and “the emptied shells of the Sea of Time and Space will be the deliverance from the material body”. (See my commentaries on the Sefer Yetzirah where time and space are viewed as “husks”.)
If our sketch of this portrait of evil has brought any of the many outward faces of evil from out of the darkness and into the light, then we should be able to see how the bringing of evil to the light is part of human “consciousness” or “cognition” and is the essence of what “human excellence” is; it is moral or ethical awareness because the world itself is essentially moral and ethical, and to have knowledge of this is to have “self-knowledge”. Blake, with his figure of Urizen, shows how what we understand as ‘rationality’ or what we conceive the essence of modern science to be, is productive of “Newton’s sleep”, a somnambulistic state of being similar to the prisoners in Plato’s allegory of the Cave. All human excellence is an act of rebellion of some sort, and this excellence to be found in the development of “consciousness” and with it “conscience”. This consciousness and conscience is not to be found in the submission of conformity nor in the donning of the cloak of “intentional ignorance”, the modern version of the wearing of the Ring of Gyges.
“Consciousness” is inseparable from “conscience”. “Consciousness” is present at all times and in various stages of development and degrees for all human beings. “True consciousness” is self-knowledge or “cognition” as Socrates called it; the lack of “consciousness” and the lack of self-knowledge is to be among ‘the dead’, the walking, waking dead. What we call “consciousness” is a somnambulism, a walking with shadows and delusions, or “Newton’s sleep” as the poet Blake referred to it. Newton’s sleep is induced by Urizen.
When we read or hear from the saints, we are surprised at their “consciousness” of their sinfulness for to us they appear to be human beings without sin. This awareness of their sinfulness is their higher state of consciousness. When we read the Irish writer, James Joyce, we can discover how his protagonist Stephen Daedalus carried out his mission of going forth “to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscious of my race” through the final writing of his Finnegans Wake, a book that requires us to engage in the discovery of the logos as if we, too, lived in a perpetual state of “consciousness” or “wakefulness” and were able to bring about a perpetual state of bringing forth epiphanies rather than living in the “somnambulism” that is modern waking life.
In the modern, the possibility of self-knowledge was gifted a cup of poison by Sigmund Freud with his notion of the id and his depiction of the human personality; and this cup of poison was handed over to Eros. It is not surprising that Freud’s final thinking was focused on Thanatos or the “death instinct”, nor is it that the logos of artificial intelligence is focused on ‘dead language’ or meta-language. In my living in Singapore for 30 years, I was always in amazement at its state of efficiency and I came to realize that this was the result of its attempt to dominate and control eros through technology. Eros is messy, and the technological abhors messiness. The experience of Singapore for many is that it is ‘soulless’, even though there are few, if any, cities that can match it for its effectiveness and efficiency.
When Socrates was admonished by the oracle at Delphi to “know thyself” and was told that he was the wisest of mortals because he knew that he knew nothing, this admonishment was the command and call to begin the journey to “consciousness”. Consciousness gives to us a sense of the reality of being and a sense of the being of reality. What we understand reality to be is crucial for our understanding of ourselves and of our being-in-the-world and our being-with-others in that world. It gives to us our notion of what is good and evil and of what is human excellence. This reality is not to be found in many of the tools and gadgets that technology has brought into being; for technology, like the logos and eros itself, is “two-faced”.
Thinking and self-knowledge are correlated and inseparable, as are “consciousness” and “conscience”. When true thought is not present, there is no self-knowledge. Where there is no self-knowledge, there is no sense of “reality”. Where there is no sense of reality, there is no re-cognition (memory) or knowledge of good and evil, there is no possibility for human excellence or arete. Without a sense of “human excellence”, there is no strife or polemos within the individual soul or mind to resist the temptation to succumb to evil and subsequently to evil actions. One’s “moral compass” is lost.
In this writing, we have attempted to show how the gradual falling away of “consciousness” (call it if you will “attention”, or “contemplation”, or “prayer”, and with it ‘dialectic’) through the dominance of the principle of reason in the technological, causes “conscience” and the “moral compasses” of the human beings associated with this “conscience” to be replaced by “values” which, having no “factual” basis in ‘reality’ according to the reasoning of these sciences since they can only be constructions of the imagination, lack the strength to confront and strive against the needs for “effectiveness” and “efficiency” required by the technological. What is called “critical thinking’ is only the beginning of this journey to “consciousness”.
In the battle between technology and “values”, values will always lose out because technology’s root is power and empowerment. The shallow ‘reality’ of the values which are the products of imagination will always be of less power and strength than the necessity of the values of technology. As was shown in our discussion of Eichmann, technology is indifferent to whether a shipment is of coal or of human beings; both are resources. The “values” of technology are what Being itself, the conjoined faces and forces of the lower eros and logos, has given to human beings.
The question of “what is virtue or human excellence?” is identical with the question of “what is the principle of all value judgements?”; and the discovery of the principle of value judgements has much to do with the gaining of a “consciousness” and recognition of what is evil. We moderns distinguish judgements of “fact” from judgements of “value”. This “fact – value” distinction results in the lack of a “moral compass” so prevalent today among the powerful or among those who possess the potentia of the dynamis (what we call “agency”) for making things happen. Judgements of value require a greater attention, contemplation and thought than those judgements that derive from the regarding of judgements of “fact” i.e. the thinking that is done in the sciences, and thus derive from a thinking that is antithetical to those sciences. Meno’s low understanding of virtue, for example, adheres to the most common understanding of virtue. Adherence to the most common understanding of virtue results in the tyrant as was shown to us from the myth of Er at the conclusion of Republic.
The “fact/value distinction” of the social sciences is a lowering of human “consciousness”. The social sciences are a predicate of the subject technology. Artificial intelligence, the apogee of technology, is the elimination of “consciousness” altogether. This elimination of consciousness is the ultimate goal of the technological. What is the definition of “artificial intelligence” if not the removal of “conscience” from “consciousness” and the replacing of “conscience” and “consciousness” with “rationality” and the “rationality of values”?
Without “consciousness” there is no possibility for human excellence, no possibility of sophrosyne moderation and phronesis wise judgement. Technology’s tools and gadgets lessen those moments that human beings have for those activities which require attention; look at the people around you and their use of handphones in moments when human conversation is possible or might be possible. Look at the loss of the quality of solitude and the use of imagination in our day-to-day lives and the subsequent loss of reading skills and our moments of engagement with the logos. The death of the Russian novel is not hyperbole.
This weakening of the moral compass which was initially intended to point to the good causes the moral compass to decay and become ineffectual since there is no good to point to since it has become a ‘value’, that is, a product of the human imagination, a matter of choice, of chance, of taste. Modern notions of ‘freedom’ are bound up in this illusion of choice and matters of taste, the philosophy of aestheticism. This will eventually produce the ‘happy tyranny’ that is the ultimate outcome of the technological future: the fulfilling of the appetitive consumption and the abdication of the responsibility to think.
Thoughtlessness and the lack of self-knowledge are characteristics found among those who succumb to the temptations of evil. Reason is not thought as it was understood by Plato. For us, the Self, understood as subject, grounds all that is in being through the principle of reason: nihil est sine ratione “nothing is without (a) reason”. It is this Reason of the Subject which spreads ‘like a fungus’ (in Hannah Arendt’s words) through all that is in being transforming all that is into an object, a problem to be fixed or solved. This was shown to us in the works of William Blake and his mythic figures of Urizen and Orc (whose origin is not from J. R. R. Tolkien as many believe but was originally from Blake. Both Tolkien and Blake were involved in the same task: to create an English mythology, to create a consciousness and conscience for English-speaking peoples. Orc is derived from cor, meaning ‘heart’, and the Orc is the ‘misplaced heart’ of human hatred in Blake’s work). The Reason of science is the two-legged stool upon which our modern world totters.
As was shown in our long discussion of Plato’s Divided Line in Part I, this principle of reason is the essence of technology, the invisible “knowing” combined with the visible “making” to bring forward or “produce” the ready-to-hand things, the artifacts that are the ‘goods’ of our world. These artifacts (including the invisible metaphysics, schema) determine the shadows that are displayed on the walls of our Cave (the Cave is phusis, Nature) in Plato’s allegory. The artifacts and their shadows are produced by the artisans and technicians whose self-ignited ‘fire’ creates the light that casts the shadows of the ‘opinions’ (doxa) that have become the “orthodoxy” of those who rule and those who have power. These opinions rule because they ‘work’ and produce ‘works’. The pre-dictive powers of the sciences is the ‘prophecy’ that we now bow down to. “Prophecy” is the highest human logos, the highest speech. The artifacts of technology are destructive of dialectic. Drugs and other pharmaceuticals, for example, are used to ‘cure’ human beings of the mass meaninglessness which has enveloped their lives through this destruction of dialectic. In their consumption, only the symptoms are briefly overcome; the disease remains unchecked. The ‘drug problem’ is but one manifestation of the human need for meaning in their lives.
The doxa of the artisans and technicians determines the logoi of technology’s apogee - artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence combines with the ‘consciouslessness’ of cybernetics to eliminate human beings from their interference in the efficiency and effectiveness of the creation of the technological world. The “thinking” which will interfere with this efficiency and effectiveness needs to be eliminated. Technology is, in its very essence, tyrannical.
“Conscience” has been replaced by reason. These doxa of the artisans and technicians are the determiners of the kind of making that will occur, ‘the stamping of becoming with the character of being’. These doxa develop the mass meaninglessness which envelops us and causes our humanity to seep away unless we struggle to hold on to it. We have given some examples of these doxa in our discussions of the ‘fact/value distinction’ and ‘malignant narcissism’ so prevalent in our being-with-others today. They are examples of that nihilism that is the sea in which we swim.
Christian Nationalism and Machiavelli’s “Armed Prophet”
In this writing I have alluded to the relationship between “Christian nationalism” and the “armed prophet” of Machiavelli. There is a relationship between the ‘malignant narcissism” so prevalent in the world today and of those who believe that they are in sole possession of the truth. Knowing that one does not know is the first step to “consciousness” and to self-knowledge. Believing one already possesses the truth provides the certainty required by the will which is necessary for the establishment of technological values, the values that see themselves beyond good and evil, the will to power.
‘Christian nationalists’ are to be found in a number of countries throughout the world. Even Vladimir Putin of Russia is a self-proclaimed “Christian nationalist”. Christian nationalism may be said to be “fascist theocracy”, with its followers quite satisfied in their blasphemy of placing the Great Beast which shows itself as the “fatherland” or “motherland” and the cult of personality of their leader before the eternal verities of their faith.
Machiavelli’s name is synonymous with deception, treachery, cunning, and deceit, and not without reason. He was, and is, a teacher of evil. Machiavelli compared himself to Christopher Columbus; and like Columbus, he sought to establish a new world order that would replace the ancient order that he had inherited. The old world order that he had inherited was the universality of the Holy Roman Empire, the successor to the Roman Empire of the Caesars. Machiavelli himself was a man without faith.
When it came to the idea of human excellence, Machiavelli wrote: “”Many have imagined republics and principalities that have never been seen or known to exist in truth (e.g. Plato’s Republic, Augustine’s City of God). For it is far from how one lives to how one should live. That he who lets go of what is done for what should be done learns his ruin rather than his preservation” (italics and examples mine).
Machiavelli required the domination of necessity, fortuna, but he did not realize that this transition or jump from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom (the great revolution of the Renaissance) would be the death of the possibility for human excellence. He knew that it would require new codes and norms. What he did not know was whether or not his new world was inhabitable for human beings. Machiavelli will equate the self-preservation of the Prince with the goal of the preservation of the state for the Prince is the State, the tyrant is the nation or country. The technology of the helmsman will be that which will guide this brave new world in its novel domination of necessity from out of human beings’ freedom and any notion of excellence will be derived from this ‘freedom’.
Machiavelli turns virtú or human excellence on its head by showing that human beings should live according to necessity rather than aspiring to the good of what ‘should be done’. For Machiavelli, self-preservation is the good above all other goods and this self-preservation can only be assured by possessing and maintaining power. For Machiavelli, the self-preservation of the polis or ‘fatherland’ is prior to the self-preservation of the individual. Machiavelli’s virtú is Meno’s second response to Socrates’ question regarding arete virtue or human excellence. Like Meno, his virtú dispenses with any requirement for justice. His Prince is a handbook for wanna’-be dictators or tyrants.
Machiavelli is a kind of step-grandfather of modern-day social science and his thinking has ultimately led to the “fact/value” distinction (the distinction between what ‘is’ and ‘what should be’, between how men in fact do live and any notion of how they should, in fact, live). As has been shown in this writing, an indispensable condition of a scientific analysis of the facts is moral obtuseness. It is the distinction between “consciousness” and “conscience”; and while it does not lead to depravity and evil on its own, it is bound to strengthen the forces of depravity and evil as we have tried to show with the example of the American Psychology Association and Donald Trump.
Machiavelli defines virtues as qualities that are praised by others, eudoxa or ‘good opinions’, such as generosity, compassion, and piety. Machiavelli’s ‘piety’ is merely an early form of ‘gaslighting’. He argues that a prince should always try to appear virtuous, but that acting virtuously for virtue’s sake can prove detrimental to the principality and to the Prince himself. We have shown similar characteristics in our commentary on the Meno. We can say further that, in fact, Machiavelli does not bring to light any political phenomenon of any fundamental importance which was not fully known to the classics. All things will appear in a new light if they are seen for the first time in a dimmed light.
The closing down of the horizon of thinking to only that which is given in the lower portion of the Divided Line from that of the whole only appears as an enlargement of the horizon. It is in fact a great lowering or leveling of horizons. Machiavelli’s silence regarding the soul in his writings reveals the soulless nature of his thinking, its lack of “consciousness” and “conscience”.
Concurrent with Machiavelli’s life and thinking was the enactment of a Papal Bull known as the “Doctrine of Discovery” by Pope Alexander VI. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/doctrine-discovery-1493 . Alexander VI was the first “armed Pontiff” and he conspicuously lacked any “goodness” according to historians. In Machiavelli’s view, the rule by the priests or a “theocracy” was more tyrannical than any other regime. Priestly government cannot be responsible to a citizen body. For Machiavelli, priestly governments are most easily attained or conquered and ruled without virtue. Has this in fact occurred with Donald Trump and his alliance with the Christian Nationalist movement in the USA?
White supremacy has Christian roots and creates those principalities most easily conquered by a tyrant. The Doctrine of Discovery 1493 was established by a Papal Bull that claimed that European civilization and western Christianity were superior to all other cultures, races, and religions. Its evil rested in its stating that it was God’s will that Spain (beginning with Columbus, and later the rest of Europe would follow) could and should engage in imperial expansionism, the slave trade, and the genocide of the Native Peoples of the North American continent which was “discovered” by Columbus the year before. The doctrine was carried into effect with missionary zeal. The evil, the blasphemy, still so prevalent today among evangelicals and Christian nationalists was to believe that God’s will is scrutable and that the good end justifies any means. The moral parallel to this belief is the teaching of Machiavelli.
“The Doctrine of Discovery” said “…that in our times especially the Catholic faith and the Christian religion be exalted and be everywhere increased and spread, that the health of souls be cared for and that barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself.” ”The Doctrine of Discovery” furnished the foundational lie (which was hardly a ‘noble lie’) that America was “discovered” and that its discoverers were the “pioneers” who were ‘nobly innocent’. One example of their “noble innocence” was their leaving behind clothing infected with the smallpox disease for the Native peoples to pick up.
The foundational lie for white North Americans could not be a “noble lie” because there was no “autochthony”, no being and living with the land, the soil, before conscious memory as there was in Europe itself, nor as there was in the Athens of Plato. The best that could be done was the creation of shabby myths regarding freedom such as America presenting itself as “the shining beacon on the hill” and other such nonsense. The North American example illustrated Machiavelli’s original premise that all Principalities began or begin with a great crime.
It is not surprising to find that the current Christian nationalists in the USA have a number of neo-Nazis and their organizations as their members. The movement has no problem accommodating atheists. There is a direct connection between Christian nationalists and authoritarian or totalitarian regimes and this was noted long ago by Machiavelli.
Francis Bacon in his “13th Essay” of 1612 was able to write: “…one of the doctors of Italy, Nicholas Machiavel, had the confidence to put in writing, almost in plain terms, That the Christian faith had given up good men in prey to those who are tyrannical and unjust.” We see a repetition of that history in the world today. The original fear of God was to be replaced by the fear of the “leader”. Such is the reason for the prevalence of “cults of personality” among the far-right today, be it in Russia or the USA. That there are those who believe that Donald Trump is a ‘saviour’ indicates that such madness has been present among human beings since ancient times and is not unique to our time nor to the totalitarian regimes of the early 20th century. What distinguishes ancient tyrannies from modern tyrannies is the presence of technology which makes the tyranny more pervasive and oppressive. The ability to think outside of technology is almost well-nigh impossible, and this is the great strife or polemos in our living in the world today.
Along our journey to try to compile an image for a sketch of a portrait of evil we have noted that evil is associated with death and nihilism. We have noted that evil is anti-life and anti-logos, and we have said that this is revealed in the two-fold, two-faced nature of both Eros and of the Logos. We have noted that “consciousness” and “conscience” involve both the logos and eros, and that life at all times involves a choosing of which of the faces of these two one is looking at; for as we live we find that life is a sowing and a reaping, a giving birth and a dying, a loving and a hating, and so on. Our souls need to discern which is the ‘fullness’ and which is the ‘deprivation’. Although we cannot see the peak of the mountain upon which we climb because it is often obscured by clouds on most occasions, we are able to distinguish a mountain from a molehill and are capable of making moral judgements in doing so. We are capable of knowing when we are ascending and when we are descending.
Theory of Knowledge: An Alternative Approach 