Fabled by the Daughters of Memory -Part Eight

‘Was he pitssched for an ensemple as certain have dognosed of him against our seawall by Rurie, Thoath and Cleaver, those three stout sweynhearts, Orion of the Orgiasts, Meereschal MacMuhun, the Ipse dadden, product of the extremes giving quotidients to our means, as might occur to anyone, your brutest layaman with the princest champion in our archdeaconry, or so yclept from Clio’s clippings, which the chroncher of chivalries is sulpicious save he scan, for ancients link with presents as the human chain extends, have done, do and will again as John, Polycarp and Irenews eye-to-eye ayewitnessed and to Paddy Palmer, while monks sell yew to archers or the water of the livvying goes the way of all fish from Sara’s drawhead, the corralsome, to Isaac’s, the lauphed butt one, with her minnelisp extorreor to his moanolothe inturned?’

- James Joyce, ‘Finnegans Wake’, 1939.

A philosopher whose presence haunts the Wake is Giambattista Vico, (1668–1744), indeed he gets a mention in the famous opening line (famous because the opening line is as far as many readers get with the Wake): ‘… riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs’. Vico postulated a theory of the ideal eternal history, that is to say, the perfect course through which all nations pass, though each nation travels through it marginally differently: ‘Men first felt necessity, then look for utility, next attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure, thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad and waste their substance’. History advances through a circular motion in which nations rise and fall, eternally coursing and recoursing through this cycle, passing through these eras over and over again, different human institutions existing differently in the three ages of history. .

The first age is the age of gods in which poetic wisdom is dominant, with an aristocracy of fathers well versed in how to control themselves and others through religion, theological poets Vico calls them, rulers of the famuli, wandering outsiders who come to them seeking protection, those who wandered into the lands of the fathers in the Universal Law. The second age is the age of heroes in which the famuli transform from being simple slaves to plebeians who want some of the privileges of the rulers. The theological poets thereby transform into heroes showing their strength by fighting each other, as illustrated in Homer (late 8th c BC). However, for Vico, the most important conflict is not between the heroes but between the heroes and the plebeians fighting for their own privileges.

The third age is the age of humans. Divine providence coordinates the class wars so that the heroes inadvertently undermine themselves by conceding certain powers to the plebeians. The plebeians are able to build these concessions in order to advance a new way of thinking. In the previous ages, society was ruled by poetic wisdom which controlled all actions through ritual. In order to undermine the power of these rituals, the plebeians gradually discovered ways to assert the power of conceptual wisdom, which is the ability to think scientifically and rationally. This way of thinking delivers to the plebeians more power and excises the grip of poetic wisdom upon humanity. Unfortunately, while this conceptual wisdom gives the plebeians their freedom, it undermines the cultural unity provided by poetic wisdom. While all in society become free and equal, the religious inspiration to work for the common good rather than the individual is rendered forsaken. Society eventually sunders into a barbarism of reflection a consequence of which is that civil wars are fought solely for personal gain and through which society goes back to its origin.

One of the central matters of dispute concerning the ideal eternal history is whether or not we are to think of it is a circle or a spiral, for those that hold to the latter take the view that every time a nation goes through the ideal eternal history it then improves. As for the suggestion that we are to think of it in circular terms, the idea there is that every cycle of the ideal eternal history really does reduce it back to its very beginning. Alas, Vico was unforthcoming on this matter, for were he to have made an attempt at his resolution he would have become embroiled in a controversy concerning the relation of the church to society, and that was something he was not prepared to do. As a consequence, the debate about how best to interpret this ideal eternal history goes on.

(Although, thinking of it as a circular process may fit better with its influence upon the Wake which begins in mid-sentence the beginning of which is the last line of the book, reading the Wake one becomes stuck in a circular loop, and yet, if there is anyone having reached the last line then goes back to the beginning to read through the text again they are doing so from the position of someone who has read it once or however many times already).

‘Clio’, 1624, Giovanni Baglione

Clio, daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, is the muse of history, her name meaning ‘to recount’, ‘to make famous’, ‘to celebrate’. Sometimes referred to as ‘the Proclaimer’ she is frequently depicted with an open parchment scroll, a book, or a set of tablets. The philosophy of history, a term apparently coined by Voltaire, (1694–1778), concerns itself with the meaning and purpose of the historical process, in particular with the question: is there a meaning and purpose to the historical process? Vico’s reflections upon the nature of history has been given the label of historicism, a slippery indefinite term which I find unhelpful but as it is often come across in discussions about the theory and nature of history it is worth looking into if only to point out how unhelpful it is. Historicism the story goes, was first advanced by Vico, and later rediscovered, seemingly independently, by German historians, that there is no extra-historical perspective upon which judgments concerning people or ideas can be grounded. Or to put it another way, there is no such thing as a general category, a universal principle, or human nature inherent in reality itself, rather, there exist only individual objects, individual people, and their interpretations of reality, where reality is conceived of as a single gargantuan, indomitable brute fact about which notions can be entertained but knowledge cannot be attained.

Vico reached his philosophical position through an inversion of René Descartes, (1596–1650), who advocated for universalism whereby some ideas have universal applicability, some truths are fundamental, and for rationalism whereby reason is the chief source and test of knowledge. This Vico was against. According to Descartes, mathematics is the nonpareil exemplar of reason and upon which all serious thought should be grounded, for everything follows logically and necessarily from a few self-evident axioms, and because a mathematical relation admits of definite and fixed variables, which is to say, mathematics is not a matter of interpretation but of necessity. Descartes saw this as the structure of the universe which the philosopher should emulate by so structuring his or her own thought. Vico concurred that knowledge of mathematics is certain but he challenged the assertion that this was due to a necessary relationship to the universe. Au contraire, he insisted that knowledge of mathematics was certain because it was the creation of human beings, and in place of Descartes’s cogito ergo sum from which everything in his system derived Vico substituted the alternative: verum factum, that is, the true is the made. Human knowledge can only be of those things that humans have created, and given that God is the creator of the universe only God can have knowledge of the universe. One must not think of this as a religious dispute between Descartes and Vico however, for Descartes too believed in God, and believed he had proven the existence of God through logical deduction.

New life was breathed into the Viconian perspective by Johann Gottfried von Herder, (1744–1803), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, (1770–1831), (though see below), and Leopold von Ranke, (1795–1886), in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century, and developed into something which German historical scholarship was grounded upon throughout the century, and now and then produced philosophers of the likes of Wilhelm Dilthey, (1833–1911), and Karl Marx, (1818–1883), the latter perhaps the most famous historicist in so far as the term means anything. A serious challenge to it was not forthcoming in Germany until after the close of the Second World War. A serious challenge to what? Well, speaking vaguely for the term is not very helpful remember, historicists are generally in accord that human beings are products of history, that their values and knowledge necessarily rest upon a contingent and somewhat mysterious historical process. On the other hand, they are not necessarily in accord concerning the implications of of such a principle. Generally speaking historicists can be regarded as falling along a spectrum, with historicists of a more sceptical bent that denied the possibility of any knowledge of history and hence of the world except that arrived at from the inside so to speak, and those more willing to stick their neck out who believed that reason could ‘pull itself up by its own bootstraps’, to employ a phrase of Friedrich Hayek, (1899–1992). The latter group believed, that is to say, that knowledge of the contingent nature of knowledge is in effect a kind of non-contingent knowledge from which other types of knowledge can be extracted, at the very least potentially. Vico, Hegel, and Ranke fall into the former group, Marx and Karl Mannheim, (1893–1947), into the latter.

Historicism may have initially developed as a counter-move to Cartesian rationalism and was taken up by German historians for political as well as for philosophical purposes in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, but as the nineteenth century wore on it then tended to merge with one of the most significant successors to Cartesian rationalism, the sociology of the French positivists Henri de Saint-Simon, (1760–1825), and Auguste Comte, (1798–1857), who advocated scientific socialism as a means of administering the state. In turn this view was also picked up, expanded upon, and popularized by Marx who was convinced that he had discovered laws that govern history in more or less the same way that Isaac Newton’s (1643–1727), laws, the law of gravity for instance, govern physics or Charles Darwin’s (1809–1882), evolutionary biology. Marxist philosophy may well have become the most widely known form of historicism, but it was not particularly representative given that the majority of historicists were not positivists and did not share Marx’s view that history could be understood as a mechanism, that it was governed by deterministic laws, or that reason could ‘lift itself up by its own bootstraps’ in order to attain an extra-historical vantage point, and they were not socialists either, indeed historicism originated as a conservative political doctrine. But given that Marx was so influential he produced a major strand within historicism, a strand that Karl Popper, (1902–1994), and Friedrich Hayek were to assail in their anti-historicist output of the 1940s and 1950s.

‘The Golden Age’, c. 1530, Lucas Cranach the Elder

Karl Popper, in ‘The Poverty of Historicism’, 1957, saw himself as a man on a holy mission, which he makes clear through its dedication: ‘In memory of the countless men and women of all creeds or nations or races who fell victim to the fascist and communist belief in Inexorable Laws of Historical Destiny’, a piece of sanctimonious codswallop reminiscent of his ‘The Open Society and its Enemies’, 1945, that he presented as a critique of teleological historicism whereby history unfolds inexorably in accordance with universal laws, and yet this ‘open society’ he is defending is anything but ‘open’ .. given that his concept of the open society is epistemological rather than political, that is to say, to understand the significance and nature of fascism and communism one must understand that they are grounded upon a faulty epistemology whereby totalitarianism forced knowledge to become political thereby making critical thinking impossible leading to the destruction of knowledge in totalitarian countries. Knowledge, argued Popper, is provisional and fallible with the implication that society must be open to alternative points of view and an open society is associated with cultural and religious pluralism, forever open to improvement, for knowledge is never completed but always ongoing: ‘if we wish to remain human, then there is only one way, the way into the open society … into the unknown, the uncertain and insecure’. Whereas the closed society makes claims to certain knowledge and ultimate truth leading to the attempted imposition of one version of reality and is thus closed to freedom of thought, the open society on the other hand requires citizens engaging in critical thinking which depends upon freedom of thought and expression, with cultural and legal institutions in place to facilitate this. All well and good, until someone comes up with a new idea only for it to be subjected to a barrage of criticism, facilitated by cultural and legal institutions, so that it never gets off the ground. That is an ‘open’ society?

Popper explains what he has in mind with his critique of historicism: ‘… I mean by ‘historicism’ an approach to the social sciences which assumes that historical prediction is their principal aim, and which assumes that this aim is attainable by discovering the ‘rhythms’ or the ‘patterns’, the ‘laws’ or the ‘trends’ that underlie the evolution of history’. Popper will argues that the idea of historicism is dangerous and bankrupt and sums uphis refutational argument in five statements thus:

1. The course of human history is strongly influenced by the growth of human knowledge. (The truth of this premise must be admitted even by those who see in our ideas, including our scientific ideas, merely the by-products of material developments of some kind or other.)
2. We cannot predict, by rational or scientific methods, the future growth of our scientific knowledge. (This assertion can be logically proven).
3. We cannot, therefore, predict the future course of human history.
4. This means that we must reject the possibility of a theoretical history; that is to say, of a historical social science that would correspond to theoretical physics. There can be no scientific theory of historical development serving as a basis for historical prediction.
5. The fundamental aim of historicist methods (see sections 11 to 16 of this book) is therefore misconceived; and historicism collapses.

Popper conceded that his argument does not refute the possibility of every kind of social prediction. Indeed, it is perfectly compatible with the possibility of testing social theories, for instance, economic theories, by way of predicting that certain developments will take place under certain conditions. It merely refutes the possibility of predicting historical developments to the extent to which they may be influenced by the growth of our knowledge. He takes the decisive step in this argument to be the second statement that he thinks is convincing in itself, for if there is such a thing as growing human knowledge, then we cannot anticipate today what we shall know only tomorrow. An instance of sound reasoning, he claims, though it does not amount to a logical proof of the statement. The proof rather consists in demonstrating that no scientific predictor, whether a human scientist or a calculating machine, can possibly predict, by scientific methods, its own future results. Attempts to do so can attain their result only after the event, when it is too late for a prediction, and they can attain their result only after the prediction has turned into a retrodiction. This being a purely logical argument applies to scientific predictors of any complexity, including societies of interacting predictors, but this means that no society can scientifically predict its own future states of knowledge.

Popper also distinguishes two main strands of historicism, a pro-naturalistic approach which ‘favours the application of the methods of physics’, and the anti-naturalistic approach which opposes these methods. Whether an historicist upholds anti-naturalistic or pro-naturalistic doctrines combines both largely depends on his or her views about the character of the science under consideration, and about the character of its subject-matter but the attitude he or she adopts will also depend upon his or her views about the methods of physics. Popper believed that the crucial mistakes in most methodological discussions arose from common misunderstandings of the methods of physics, in particular, from a misinterpretation of the logical form of its theories, of the methods of testing them, and of the logical function of observation and experiment, misunderstandings that have serious consequences.

‘In fact, some influential historicist writers have optimistically foretold the coming of a realm of freedom’, Popper wrote, ‘in which human affairs could be planned rationally. And they teach that the transition from the realm of necessity in which mankind at present suffers to the realm of freedom and reason cannot be brought about by reason but — miraculously — only by harsh necessity, by the blind and inexorable laws of historical development, to which they counsel us to submit’.

But what does ‘predicting the future’ actually mean in practice? Science fiction, of which I am an aficionado, though it is often set in the future is in fact a realist fiction set in our own times considered from the perspective of how it extrapolates from the moment to disclose that which is not yet present and which is already making its impact felt, thus providing for us metaphors and systems of meaning to assist our conceptualizing the moment, and through the creation of alternate realities in different points of time we are thus drawn to that which reflects where we are today, and may possibly even alert us to how better to deal with where we are. But when it tries to be really predictive it generally does a terrible job. According to Arthur C. Clarke, (1917–2018), the year of 2001 was to be a time of optimism and hope for humanity, with such huge strides forward in technological advancement, a splendid space station orbiting the Earth, an outpost on the moon together with moon buses for transport across the lunar surface, astronauts on the way to Jupiter, some in suspended animation, an artificial intelligence that replicates human consciousness and personality to such an extent that it has a very human psychotic breakdown, an encounter with an advanced alien intelligence that gives humankind a push towards an even higher stage in its evolutionary development.

But of course we all know now what was the bleak and terrible reality of the year 2001.

Isaac Asimov, (1920–1992), in his ‘Foundation’ universe, invented a fictional science called psychohistory that combines history, sociology, and mathematical statistics in order to make general predictions about the future behavior of very large groups of people, such as the populaces of the Galactic Empire. It is dependant upon the notion that, while one cannot foresee the actions of a particular individual, the laws of statistics as applied to large groups of people could predict the general flow of future events. One might illustrate how this works through the analogy of a gas whereby an observer has great difficulty in predicting the motion of a single molecule in a gas but with the application of kinetic theory can predict the mass action of the gas to a high level of accuracy. Such a concept, in Asimov’s fantastical universe, can be applied to the population of his fictional Galactic Empire, though it numbered one quintillion people.

Ever the thoughtful writer Asimov has the character responsible for the creation of psychohistory, Hari Seldon, establish a couple of axioms:

1. The population whose behavior was modeled should be sufficiently large.
2. The population should remain in ignorance of the results of the application of psychohistorical analyses because if it is aware, the group changes its behaviour.

Psychohistorian Ebling Mis later added these axioms:

3. There would be no fundamental change in the society

4. Human reactions to stimuli would remain constant.

Psychohistorian Golan Trevize then added this one:

5. Humans are the only sentient intelligence in the galaxy, (worth stipulating in case there should be an advanced alien intelligence interfering in human affairs and giving us a nudge towards a higher stage of evolutionary development).

Asimov’s psychohistorians are very much like Popper’s historicists. Does anyone, in the real world, seriously entertain the notion that the future can be predicted in this way? What Popper displays is a complete misunderstanding of, or perhaps chooses to disregard, much like a psychohistorian, as it would only complicate his shallow thesis, the dialectic process. It is time to look at the alleged ‘historicism’, if such it be, of a profounder and much more serious thinker.

John William Waterhouse, ‘Crystal ball’, 1902

I discuss Hegel’s philosophy of history in The Cunning of Reason — Parts One to Four. Is there a meaning or direction in history and if so how are we to get beyond interpreting historical facts to discover it? Hegel regarded history as an intelligible process moving towards a specific condition the realization of human freedom, perhaps making him one of those ‘influential historicist writers [that] have optimistically foretold the coming of a realm of freedom’ that Popper mentions but doesn’t name, perhaps naming Hegel in this context would have been conceding far too much to his bugbear. ‘The question at issue’ said Hegel, ‘is therefore the ultimate end of mankind, the end which the spirit sets itself in the world. Hegel regarded the relationship between objective history and the subjective development of the individual consciousness, Spirit that is, as an intimate one, and a central task for philosophy is to comprehend its place in the unfolding of history. ‘History is the process whereby the spirit discovers itself and its own concept’. World history may be constructed into a narrative of stages of human freedom, from the public freedom of the polis and the citizenship of the Roman Republic, to the individual freedom of the Protestant Reformation, to the civic freedom of the modern state.

One may of course question some of his reading of historical civilizations and events, the thing about history is that there is a lot of it. He endeavoured to incorporate the civilizations of India and China into his understanding of world history while regarding those civilizations as static and therefore pre-historical. Specific moments are constructed as world-historical events that were in the process of bringing about the final, full stage of history and human freedom. For instance, Napoleon’s conquest of much of Europe is depicted as a world-historical event carrying out the work of history by establishing the terms of the rational bureaucratic state. There may be reason in history but it is latent reason and can only be comprehended when the fullness of history’s work is completed:

‘Only one word more concerning the desire to teach the world what it ought to be. For such a purpose philosophy at least always comes too late. Philosophy, as the thought of the world, does not appear until reality has completed its formative process, and made itself ready. History thus corroborates the teaching of the conception that only in the maturity of reality does the ideal appear as counterpart to the real, apprehends the real world in its substance, and shapes it into an intellectual kingdom. When philosophy paints its grey in grey, one form of life has become old, and by means of grey it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known. The owl of Minerva takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering’.

Hegel’s philosophy of history is not simply an exercise of speculative philosophical reasoning that analytic philosophers such as Popper regard it, something deeper is going on. It is not grounded solely upon foundational a priori reasoning, and his interpretations of concrete historical developments are insightful. Rather, the very thing lacking in Popper’s account of historicism, which dwells upon actual historical events, the historical given, hardly at all, is there in Hegel’s philosophy of history, an immanent encounter between philosophical reason and this historical given, for the results of empirical history are to be accepted as data but it is insufficient merely to reproduce them, history is to be illuminated by bringing his knowledge of the Idea, the formal articulation of reason, to bear upon it, striving to elevate empirical contents to the status of necessary truth, to discover the rational within the real, which is not to impose the rational upon the real: ‘To comprehend what is, this is the task of philosophy, because what is, is reason’. This method is neither purely philosophical nor purely empirical but rather undertakes to discern within the best historical knowledge of his time, an underlying rational principle that can be expressed in philosophical terms.

But there is more. As he writes in the ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’:

‘The task of leading the individual from his uneducated standpoint to knowledge had to be seen in its universal sense, just as it was the universal individual, self-conscious Spirit, whose formative education had to be studied. As regards the relation between them, every moment, as it gains concrete form and a shape of its own, dispIays itself in the universal individual. The single individual is incomplete Spirit, a concrete shape in whose whole existence one determinateness predominates, the others being present only in blurred outline. In a Spirit that is more advanced than another, the lower concrete existence has been reduced to an inconspicuous moment; what used to be the important thing is now but a trace; its pattern is shrouded to become a mere shadowy outline. The individual whose substance is the more advanced Spirit runs through this past just as one who takes up a higher science goes through the preparatory studies he has long since absorbed, in order to bring their content to mind: he recalls them to the inward eye, but has no lasting interest in them. The single individual must also pass through the formative stages of universal Spirit so far as their content is concerned, but as shapes which Spirit has already left behind, as stages on a way that has been made level with toil. Thus, as far as factual information is concerned we find that what in former ages engaged the attention of men of mature mind, has been reduced to the level of facts, exercises, and even games for. children; and in the child’s progress through school, we shall recognize the history of the cultural development of the world traced, as it were, in a silhouette. This past existence is the already acquired property of universal Spirit which constitutes the Substance of the individual and hence appears externally to him as his inorganic nature. In this respect formative education, regarded from the side of the individual consists in his acquiring what thus lies at hand, devouring his inorganic nature, and taking possession of it for himself’.

And what is inorganic nature? Science is an incomplete project, an unsettled matter, it has existed in the past and it has delivered unto us facts. Hegel is not so much interested in facts other than how they can exist behind us and in a kind of present and motivate us. We can draw upon facts of the past to help move ourselves forward, and such facts that exist exterior to subjects Hegel terms inorganic nature. A requirement of education should be to make individuals aware of such inorganic nature while at the same time providing the student with the faculty to recognise universal Spirit, their capacity to look in upon themselves, to motivate a kind of self-perpetuating movement, a becoming. And history contributes to this in making all previous accounts understandable, for without history it is nigh on impossible to imagine having a future, history is bound up with every single moment, it translates all the previous points into individual instances that happened, altering them into something that can be consumed by the people of the present so that they can move forward in a new way. If things in the past existed just in the past they would have no causality, no effectual possibility upon the now, or upon a people as they now are, a process that takes us away from closed systems that we are privy to, God or Nature, for instance, that we take to have a prior existence as simply beings-in-themselves that do not affect us being already determined.

‘Allegory of Inclination’, 1615–1617, Artemisia Gentileschi

Pure Science (systematic enquiry) is perpetually moving on, (while mathematics, including the statistics employed by psychohistorians, has its established rules and axioms), in which something is put into tension with something else to produce as result, not a truth that we have already arrived at, and this is to say that what is of interest to Hegel is science as form, and what can we extract from science as form, and what can we take to relate to such a process. Knowledge is actual and can only be expounded as science or as system, for what is true is actual only as a system, the actual is something other, being not itself it thinks itself thoughts as an active subject reflecting into itself. Spirit is the process of self-recognition in absolute otherness for the fundamental similarity between all things is also separate as Spirit connects all things, the universal connects all things for they are all different. And science is by no means settled but called upon to move towards Spirit and is perpetually at a struggle with itself, in tension with itself, with its many different properties because of itself, and a concluding resolution is never present, by no means for science existed in the past and has given us facts, Euclidean geometry opened up the way towards Einstein, and history is a process. Whether history has an end point is impossible to ascertain, but the developing process of being human and which we can think of in terms of history does.

Universality is part of the very foundation of science, if we want to get at objective truth, that which is true unconditionally, true for you, true for me, be it the laws of gravity, or of evolution, this is attained at the first level of the understanding. But the second level of the understanding, the level Popper is unable to reach, concerns being for the Notion, (reflection in the mind of real objects and phenomena in their essential features and relations). the capacity of the universal Notion to reflect back into itself, whereby the movement of sublation (the motor by which dialectic works) is one as a plurality. And while Vico may have been content to flip Cartesian philosophy upside down Hegel is flipping classical science upside down, inverting normal scientific thinking, or normal thinking generally, whereby we are used to or conditioned to thinking on the first level of the understanding but we are not used to thinking about the second level of the understanding. In the world of physics that Popper accuses the historicist of not understanding while he himself is stuck upon the first level of understanding things are thought about in terms of a universal being, a being for others, our presuppositions about space, time, or evolution are true for me and true for you, but they are not thinking of the universal understanding that is reflected into itself, the manner by which the subject comes to relate to its own universal understanding. Such reflection remains true for me and true for you, but there also remains a difference, there is a universal truth for me in my universal understanding, and there is a universal truth for you in your universal understanding, and we must needs inscribe into this universal understanding a difference.

Taking a universal medium as true for all others we have to articulate how self-consciousness is historically enacting this very flipping of classical science upon its head. We all concur with this outside, but it is itself being mediated by a universal notion in movement, we must take into consideration all the subjects of science all of which are different from each other, all mediating a universality which are all mediating the Notion in itself. It is historically engaged on a phenomenological level, and at the first level of understanding we are dealing with the force of understanding as substance, materialism that is to say, the modern world is founded upon presuppositions of materialism. But on the second level the force of understanding is interiority, we as subjects in history are effected by and enacting consequences to the presuppositions of materialism. With such force as exteriority science is going more and more towards understanding this external outside and to transforming this outside. But the force of interiority or the interiority of the force of our minds and the interaction with things outside, well, that takes us to a beyond, a supersensible world, for the greatest scientist alive right now, whomsoever that might be, let’s say Richard Dawkins, (1941 — ), for I am in the mood for some low-grade humour, he himself is mediating reality through such a supersensible appearance of things in themselves, or rather a supersensible understanding that is exerting a force against a backdrop of things in themselves, of things a well developed understanding mediates in the world of appearance to experience a higher truth, a pure empty void of consciousness fills up with appearances and then directed by the force of the understanding which is a law unto itself law settles upon a tranquil image, of evolution say, and the appearance of appearances becomes settled and fixed:

‘The absolute flux of appearance becomes a simple difference through its relation to the simplicity of the inner world or of the Understanding. The inner being is, to begin with, only implicitly the universal; but this implicit, simple universal is essentially no less absolutely universal difference, for it is the outcome of the flux itself, or the flux is its essence; but it is a flux that is posited in the inner world as it is in truth, and consequently it is received in that inner world as equally an absolute universal difference that is absolutely at rest and remains selfsame. In other words, negation is an essential moment of the universal, and negation, or mediation in the universal, is therefore a universal difference. This difference is expressed in the law, which is the stable image of unstable appearance. Consequently, the supersensible world is an inert realm of laws which, though beyond the perceived world-for this exhibits law only through incessant change-is equally present in it and is its direct tranquil image’,

Such is the great and principle force undergirding Idealist philosophy! Ideas are realities, in need of extraction, and the Notion when it first comes on the scene is not fully developed, but ideas have their force and power and are able to unfold themselves into reality, and this is not just an application of our thought onto reality, our thinking is indeed a real thing, it is a part of reality and not something opposed to it, nor a foggy picture of it, they exert their influence and follow their rules in the development of history along is particular path….

‘Toward a Better World’, Luis Ricardo Falero (1856–1896)

Coming up next:

Polyhymnia, muse of sacred poetry.

Notes on ‘Finnegans Wake’ quote:

1. pitch: to put (anything) in a fixed or definite place or position, so as to stand, lie, or remain firmly or permanently.

2. for ensample: a deterrent instance of punishment, or of the evil consequences of any course of conduct, and a practical warning; and ‘for example’.

3. seawall: a wall or embankment to prevent the encroachment of the sea, or to form a breakwater, etc.

4. Rurie, Tuaithe and Cleena: three ‘waves of Erin’ (Wave of Rury, Dundrum Bay, County Down; Wave of Tuath, mouth of the Bann river, County Derry; Wave of Cleena, Glandore Harbour, County Cork). It was said that when danger threatened Ireland they would smite upon the shores with foreboding roar; and Thoth, Egyptian god of wisdom.

5. stout: Of persons, thick in the body, not lean or slender; usually in unfavourable sense, inclined to corpulence.

6. sweyn: swine; and Sweyne Forkbeard , son of Harald Bluetooth. He was baptized in infancy, reverted to paganism, fought the Christian faith; and swineherd, a man who tends swine, esp. for hire.

7. Orion: name of a large and brilliant constellation south of the zodiac, figured as a hunter with belt and sword; His first name was Urion because his birth was caused by three gods making water on a bull’s hide. The margin of the Empress Eudocia’s copy of the Iliad has a note summarizing a Hellenistic poet who tells a story of Orion’s birth. Here the gods Zeus, Hermes and Poseidon come to visit Hyrieus of Tanagra, who roasts a whole bull for them. When they offer him a favour, he asks for the birth of sons. The gods take the bull’s hide and ejaculate or urinate into it and bury it in the earth, then tell him to dig it up ten months later. When he does, he finds Orion. This explains why Orion is earthborn.

8. orgiast: one who celebrates orgies; orgiastes (Greek), one who celebrates secret rites.

9. marshal: and Meeres Schale (German), bowl of the sea.

10. MacMahon, Marie Edme Patrice Maurice de, duke of Magenta (1808–93), French marshal, president. Descendant of a wild goose, he commanded a division whose assault led to the fall of Sebastopol. Maurice Mahan is a name of the Man Servant.

11. ipse: himself; truly himself; in his right mind; and Yspaddaden Penkawr, hawthorn as malevolent chief of gods (or giants) in Welsh myth.

12. quotidian:a quotidian fever or ague; Of things, acts, etc.: Of or pertaining to every day, daily; and quotidie (Latin), daily; and quotient, the ratio of two quantities to be divided.

13. brute: rough, rude; senseless, stupid.

14. layman: a man who is not a cleric; a man who is an ‘outsider’ or a non-expert in relation to some particular profession, art, or branch of knowledge; and Layamon (fl. 1200), author of middle English epic ‘Brut’, about eponymous founder of Britain, a refugee from Troy (modelled on Aeneid); and layaman (Middle English), lawman.

15. archdeaconry: the jurisdiction, or district under the ecclesiastical control, of an archdeacon.

16. yclept: known as, called.

17. Clio: proper name of the Muse of epic poetry and history; also of a sea-nymph, sister of Beroe.

18. clipping: a press cutting; the shortening of a word, etc.

19. Sulpician: one of a congregation of secular priests founded in Paris in 1642; and suspicious; and Sulpicius (121–88 B.C.), Roman orator, led a democratic revolt and was put to death by Sulla’s forces; and Sulpicius Severus (362–425), Latin monk, wrote Chronica from Creation to 403 A.D.

20. save: followed by an adverb or adverbial phrase or clause, expressing the manner, time, etc., in regard to which an exception is to be made; and except.

21. scan: to examine, consider, or discuss minutely.

22. Polycarp, St (69–155): bishop of Smyrna. Irenaeus knew Polycarp, Polycarp knew the apostle John. The 11th Britannica calls Polycarp ‘a living link’ in ‘a chain of tradition’. Joyce adds on St Patrick as another link, thus making four holy men.

23. Irenaeus, St, 2d-century bishop of Lyons, pupil of Polycarp; and Ardill: St. Patrick, A.D. 180 173: ‘eye-witnesses of the Word. Irenaeus looked into the eyes of Polycarp, Polycarp looked into the eyes of John, and John looked into the eyes of Christ’.

24. Ardill: St. Patrick, A.D. 180 174: ‘St. Patrick lived in the same country and at the same time as St. Irenaeus, and may have looked into his eyes’.

25. palmer: pilgrim who had returned from the Holy Land, in sign of which he carried a palm-branch or palm-leaf; also, an itinerant monk who travelled from shrine to shrine, under a perpetual vow of poverty.

26. yew: a tree of the genus Taxus widely distributed in the North Temperate Zone, having heavy elastic wood and dense dark-green foliage; often planted in churchyards, and regarded as symbolic of sadness; the wood of this tree, especially as the material of bows; and Monks, Fagin the Jew, the Artful Dodger — villains in ‘Oliver Twist’ by Charles Dickens.

27. archer: one who shoots with bow and arrows, especially one who uses them in war; a bowman.

28. Liffey river.

29. Butler: The Way of All Flesh

30. ISLAND BRIDGE: Aka Sarah Bridge, after the Countess of Westmoreland, who laid the first stone in 1791. Spans the Liffey near the South-East entrance (Island Bridge Gate) to Phoenix Park;and droichead (Irish), bridge.

31. quarrelsome.

32. BUTT BRIDGE:The last (and Eastmost) bridge as the Liffey flows except for the Loop Line Railway bridge. Erected 1879. named for the 19th-cent politician Isaac Butt.

33. last, and Genesis 21:5–7: Sarah laughed when God said she was to bear a child at age ninety; hence name Isaac (means ‘he laughed’).

34. minne (mini) (Gaelic), stuttering; and Minne (German),love.

35. exterior; and extorreo (Latin), to parch up, to be schorched; I am scorched.

36. monolith: a single block of stone, especially one of notable size, shaped into a pillar or monument’ and monologue intérieure (French), interior monologue.

37. inturned: turned inward

Julien Perrichon: Four lute pieces (1610) — YouTube

38. Perrichon: the female form of ‘Pierre’, a dancing song. ‘Bastienne’ is another dancing song. They occur, as Miss Jacquet says, in the Rabelais list, Buffalo Workbook #45 + Sainéan: La Langue de Rabelais I.207: ‘Les autres appellations de danses… se rapportent… A des noms propres d’hommes… Perrichon… A des noms propres de femmes… Bastienne’ (French ‘The other names of dances… correspond… To proper names of men… Perrichon… To proper names of women… Bastienne’).

39. airy: like air in its lightness and buoyancy (used appreciatively).

40. Sainéan: La Langue de Rabelais II.308: ‘Ricqueraque… synonyme de zig-zag… sert à Rabelais pour désigner l’amour et le mal qui en résulte’ (French ‘Ricqueraque… synonym of zig-zag… serves Rabelais to refer to love and its ill consequences’);and Sainéan: La Langue de Rabelais II.307: ‘Brimballer, faire l’amour, proprement sonner fortement les cloches’ (French ‘Brimballer, to make love, literally to ring the bells forcefully’); and Sainéan: La Langue de Rabelais II.298: ‘Jocquer, proprement jucher, percher’ (French ‘Jocquer, literally to roost, to perch’) and Sainéan: La Langue de Rabelais II.299: ‘Cas, joly cas, l’atto’ (French ‘Cas, joly cas, the sexual act’).

41. sayest thou.

42. dulcis amica (Latin): sweet girlfriend; and Sainéan: La Langue de Rabelais I.207: ‘Danses scolaires: Dulcis amica’ (French ‘School dances: Dulcis amica’); and {What do you say, sweet friend? [noises of the Liffey]}

43. Nile: which flows (after leaving the Nyanzas and Jebel) as the Abiad or White Nile, until it reaches Abu, the area of the first cataract, at which point the Nile Valley begins. Thus, a naturalistic explanation is given for the babbling waters flowing down into the valley, which the ancients saw as a vale or gulch of tears (Mark L. Troy).

44. World Atlas of Everyman’s Encyclopedia (1940), 28: ‘A, aa (Swedish and Danish Norwegian) river; ab (Persian) water, river; abu (Arabic) father; abiad (Arabic) white;… Bab-el-Mandeb (Arabic) ‘the gate of tears’’ (strait between Gulf of Aden and southern end of Red Sea).

45. BAB EL MANDEB: The strait between the South end of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden; Arab, ‘gate of tears’. According to legend, named from the deaths in the earthquake which separated Asia and Africa.

46. gulch: a narrow and deep ravine, with steep sides, marking the course of a torrent; esp. one containing a deposit of gold.

‘Clio, Muse of History’, 1800, Charles Meynier