The Protagonist, That Is, You, Lives Inside an Animal! Part Two

At Sinai, You Died. At the Golden Calf, You Were Reborn.

Part I | Part II

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Love, spirituality, and rationality are the interwoven qualities of the idolatrous tapestry. Rational demonstration is a form of love because it can be shared. Ultimately, the self’s unjustified and unjustifiable affinity with a base rational system grounds the premises to all proofs. The more one finds oneself participating in that system undergirding all things, the more spiritual one becomes. This braid of rationality, love, and spirituality is very much like what the Greek idolator ultimately worshipped. They were transcended by the objective mysticism of Sinai. However, the people could not maintain the proper inner relationship. They lost sight of the inner reality of the Ox, the Divine Self that spoke through the external rational being. And so, seeking nothing but connection with the Creator, they fell into the sin of the golden calf.

This is ever the difference between the Protagonist, that is, you—who is larger than the universe—and the rational animal in which he lives. They are two mystics in fierce disagreement. The Jewish objective mysticism and the other kind are not only different. They are like matter and anti-matter; they annihilate each other. The non-Jewish mystic builds his way toward the Divine—refining his spirit, sharpening his reason, and purifying his soul until he can see the Ultimate Truth. The Jewish mystic is torn apart by revelation. His prophecy is “madness.” He does not climb toward G-d—G-d descends upon him like fire from the inside. Yet, both forms of mysticism exist within each Jew. This paradox lies at the heart of the Chassidic view of reality, and we shall explain it in terms even a Greek could appreciate.

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Old Uncle Aristotle, and medieval students of his—like Rambam, l’hadvdil—taught us four causes. The first thing to understand about the four causes is that calling them “causes” is somewhat misleading. What Uncle Aristotle really meant is that everything, from wisdom to wood, has four relationships that define it, four fundamental ways in which they can be rationally explained. Each of these explanations is intertwined with the others yet ultimately irreducible. Together, they exhaust the rational description of a given being, so that with the four causes in hand, one has both perfectly triangulated and fully explained a thing.

Take the tree in your backyard. You don’t need to be a philosopher to notice that the tree is what it is and isn’t what it isn’t. That is, we have picked it out from the variety of experience because it “hangs together” in some way. For example, when it rains, the tree does not rain; when the dog runs around in excited little circles, the tree does not run around. The tree has its story together and raining and running are not part of the story. Even small children, unaided by philosophy degrees, can pick a tree out from the background. To deny that something inherent in each tree, rain, and dog allows us to recognize them is—to Feter Aristotle, anyway—to deny that reality is rational at all. We are not imposing ultimately arbitrary assumptions on these things. We are encountering the way they fixedly, consistently, and inherently behave. Call this inherent tendency an essence or, if you prefer, a nature. Uncle Aristotle believes essences—natures—really exist, objectively, because if they didn’t, the universe would not be rational. And Aristotle believes the universe is rational with all the weight of his Greek soul.