the truth shall make you free

"Man is an animal that . . . has need of a master. For he certainly abuses his freedom in relation to his equals, and although as a rational creature he desires a law that establishes boundaries for everyone's freedom, his selfish animal propensities induce him to except himself from them wherever he can. He thus requires a master who will break his self-will and force him to obey a universally valid will, whereby everyone can be free. Where is he to find this master?"

(from 'Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Intent', Immanuel Kant, 1784)


Kant's answer - that we master ourselves through the use of reason - is certainly attractive. It flatters my ego to think that, in and of myself, I can think my way through to an ethical system and practice that guarantees true freedom for everyone. Where this argument falls short, though, is that it contradicts everything I know about myself - my shifting desires, my shortcomings, my limitations; and it treats my mind almost as something that is separate from my 'self', which, again, is flattering but incongruous with what I experience to be true. Also, honesty, if not humility, compels me to confess that I find even my 'mind' - with all its limitations of both knowledge and capacity - inadequate to the task.

So where is all of this leading? To despair, obviously, unless I admit and submit to a 'Master' external to myself.

'And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.' (John 8:32)

[Lit-geek note: This is in the King James Version of the Bible that was put together by committee under the reign of King James, the English monarch Shakespeare's theatre company, The King's Men, performed for.]

It's interesting that the word used is 'make', not 'set'. This implies that, left to themselves, people are not only not free, but actually prefer it that way. This is strikingly similar to Rousseau's line of thought in 'The Social Contract', where he writes that man, if he will not voluntarily obey the 'general will', must 'be forced to be free'.

That true freedom is antithetical to our natural desires is something that goes against the grain of much modern thought. However, I do think that this is true. I also think that, whether or not one agrees with this initially, it is something that's definitely worth ruminating over.
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lascia ch'io pianga

There's a restrained yearning about this aria from Handel's 'Rinaldo' that seems more Romantic than Baroque, despite the genteel string and harpsichord accompaniment.

Here's a link to an excerpt from the 1995 film, 'Farinelli', about the castrati (male singers castrated in their childhood to preserve the purity of their voices) who were forced to sacrifice so much for the sake of art. Apparently, the voice you hear in the film clip was created by mixing the voices of a soprano (Ewa Godlewska) and a counter-tenor (Derek Lee Ragin).

'Lascia ch'io pianga' (or, 'Let me weep')
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the human factor

With thanks to JL, who doesn't read this blog and therefore will never know of my gratitude.

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(from David Martin's review of John Gray's Black Mass: Apocalyptic religion and the death of utopia)

Lions do not throw up, shaken to the core, at not being adequately leonine. Elephants do not roll in the mud to vent their desolation at being so grossly elephantine. Whatever else does or does not separate us from animality, the potential to imagine and body forth transfiguration and to acknowledge disfiguration, is what makes us human. Our sense of indignity is the essence of our dignity. Non sum dignus.

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Our sense of indignity - or, in Christian parlance, our awareness of sin, no matter how dimly felt and no matter what name we give it - is one of the things that convinced me that there is a God who is the absolute source of all goodness and truth. For where does it come from - that sense of brokenness, of things being aslant, of there being something rotten in the state of Denmark (or the world, or our hearts)? If there were no absolute truth, if there were no absolute Good, we would not be constantly subjected to this feeling of homesickness, of yearning for something more, something higher - for transfiguration - that no one has ever attained, and that none of us would have any knowledge of, if that yearning were not first placed in our hearts by some Power external to ourselves . The acknowledgement of our disfiguration is what points us, through a glass, darkly, to God.
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