Part Four - Galileo, Descartes, and Giordano Bruno - Technical and magical mastery over nature
The magic is the result of gnosis and promotes pantheism
The torch of magic was not extinguish with the Renaissance, and it was taken up by Freemasonry, which would arise in London in 1717, certainly not without the memory of Bruno's stay at Oxford [1]. Moreover, the German idealists, also heirs of the Brothers of the Rosy Cross [2], did not fail to realize that they had been preceded by Bruno, such as Hegel and Schelling, who even dedicated a book in the form of a dialogue to Bruno [3]. Schelling assumes, like Bruno, from the Kabbalah, that God has a body. It is the same idea found in Spinoza, of God as the unique Substance composed of thought and extension. It is, in essence, the Cartesian concept of man, here understood as the unique substance instead of a combination of "res cogitans" and "res extensa."
According to Schelling, God is not a pure spirit distinct from nature and transcendent nature but is a spirit that becomes nature. In contrast, nature, in turn, is primordial or initial spirit, germinal, unconscious, and latent, ascending, evolving, and transcending to manifest itself as spirit and consciousness. In this, Schelling perfectly summarizes Bruno's pantheistic vision when illustrating his conception of nature in these terms. For this reason, he can say:
"This divine power that comprehends the whole contains not only nature but also the spiritual world and the soul that resides above them. Thus, they receive, with this union, a spatial relationship. The old belief in a place, a domicile of spirits, regains its importance and new confirmation. This is the ultimate intention, that everything will be led and transformed as much as possible into a visible, symbolic, and corporeal form. Corporeality is, according to an ancient saying, the purpose of the ways of God, who wants to manifest himself both in space or place and in time" [4].
"The general state of nature during this process, in which divine life, according to the supreme will, should realize itself in this external world, could not be a fixed and stationary state, but an eternal becoming, a permanent evolution. However, this evolution has its purpose, and this purpose, for nature, is the attainment of a perfect essence, a spiritual corporeality.
But even though nature can only reach its supreme expansion in the last stage of its evolution, it is not, at every moment of this one (evolution, Ed.), already as such a corporeal or spiritualized being. Immersing itself, in fact, in the higher and abandoning itself totally, it should transform itself, near it, into matter. Instead (nature, Ed.) is a matter that, to be clear, is in comparison to our all spirit and all life." [5].
"What is deeper and more original that we see emerging from this ineffability of the divine being and becoming manifest is this power of origin that attracts and embraces being, and repels it into the hidden and concealed. The original text of Scripture calls for the expansion of divine power heaven and earth, alluding thereby to the fact that once the entire visible universe was in this negation and was drawn out through subsequent evolution [6]. Yet, it is because of this that the universe still finds itself within it, and even now, this primordial negation is the mother and nurturer of the entire visible world" [7].
"God is not without space, not without time, not without self-movement, without passivity and receptivity; He is not without a mirror, without radiance: everything that the creature possesses in terms of qualities, organism, form, and transformation in its body, everything down to the smallest detail, God has in the spirit" [8].
For Bruno, as it will be for Spinoza and Schelling, there is no causal relationship between God and nature, such as that which exists between the Creator and the creature. Nature is not created by God out of nothing, and God could not exist without nature because God and nature are one Substance, one Being, one Whole, as already in Parmenides. And for Hegel, it will be the same: the Subject or the Concept.
Nature becomes God, and God becomes nature. Man is the point of passage between the two terms. He ascends towards God in spirit; he descends downwards as nature. God becomes nature in man, and nature becomes God in man. In this sense, the magical power to operate and ascend to God and to operate the divine characterizes the very essence of man.
However, in Bruno and Schelling, man desires and acts with divine force, giving rise to the magical ideal. In Spinoza, on the other hand, human will coincide with the intellect contemplating the necessary order of the divine Substance, resulting in gnosis but not magic. While in Bruno and Schelling, knowledge is reduced to power, in Spinoza, willingness is reduced to knowing. (Bold is mine, Ed.)
Starting with Descartes, the development of idealism goes hand in hand with humanity's Promethean project to replace or be a god, first in the mastery of nature and ultimately in the creation of oneself and nature. The idealist remains well aware of the falsehood of these dreams. However, he enjoys entertaining them precisely because he likes living in fantasy outside of reality, or, as we could say today in the telematic era, he likes living in "virtual reality."
For example, Fichte imagines that the self places itself in antithesis to the non-self within itself. Marx conceives man as the product of his labor, through which, by revolutionary activity, he "reconciles his essence with his existence."
Even Hegel does not escape the perspective of magic when he conceives nature as an emanation of spirit:
"The idea, which is in itself, considered according to its unity, is intuition, and the intuitive idea is nature. But, as intuition, the idea is posited in the one-sided determination of immediacy or negation, through external reflection. However, the absolute freedom of the idea is that it does not pass only into life, nor does it let life appear only as finite knowing; but in the absolute truth of itself, it resolves to freely let out from itself the moment of its particularity or its first determination and its otherness: the immediate idea, which is its reflection, as nature" [9].
The idea, or spirit, negates itself as spirit everts itself, externalizes, self-particularizes, self-determines, materializes as nature, and returns to itself as spirit. This means that the human spirit as the absolute idea conceives, plans, posits, produces, and emanates nature and thus the material universe.
The philosopher who, better than any other, has explicated to the ultimate consequences the meaning of the Cartesian "cogito" is Giovanni Gentile, who summarizes in powerful expressions this ultimate significance, representing the highest aspiration of magical thought and, by the same token, human pride:
"If the idea is the idea or reason of the thing, the thing must be produced by the idea: the thought that is true thought must generate the being of which it is thought. This is precisely the meaning of the Cartesian "cogito": I – this reality that I am, the most certain that I can have, and if abandoned, I will lose every possibility of ascertaining any reality; the only fixed point to which I can anchor the world I think – this "I" I am, in the extent that I'm involved in the process of thinking: I realize it by thinking, with a thought that is the thought (the exact thought) of me. The Self is nothing but self-awareness, not as consciousness that presupposes the Self, its object, but rather as the consciousness itself that posits it" [10].
Gentile tells us that the power of my self-thinking is such that I actualize my self and thereby everything I think, namely the real in its entirety, which is deduced from and thus founded by this self. This is what Gentile calls "autoctisi."
However, as I have demonstrated in my previous studies, the Cartesian "cogito" does not establish any objective certainty, but rather a "forced" certainty, and therefore false. This certainty is caused, in fact, not by the intellect necessitated by the objective evidence of the external sensible entity before me (ob-iectum), which I sense with my senses, understand, and conceive with my intellect ("quidditas rei materialis", the quiddity of the material thing), but by the arbitrary and unjustified will to take a position in its favor.
Indeed, Descartes is not certain of thinking, as he would have us believe, but he is certain of doubting, therefore a certainty that serves no purpose. How does he emerge from doubt? Simply by returning to the spontaneous realism of reason, previously and foolishly cast into doubt.
Hence, the certainty of mathematical knowledge, leads him to his brilliant discoveries in this field and physics, akin to Galileo. However, in the realm of epistemology and consequently metaphysics, due to his skeptically veiled subjectivism falsely masquerading as certainty, he reverts to ancient Greek sophistry, already refuted by Aristotle, as Heidegger pointed out at the time. Consequently, in practice, he opens the way to magic by assigning to human will a power over bodies reduced to "res extensae," a power that does not belong to it, thus deceiving humanity into believing it can attain a power over nature that belongs only to God.
The Problem of Transhumanism
For several decades, the term "transhumanism" has circulated in the language of anthropology and ethics, representing a concept of humanity whose strength or power would consist not only in the ability to make the infinite the object of its knowledge and will – something that indeed constitutes the excellence of human dignity – but also in the possibility of becoming infinite itself. That is the possibility of achieving, through one's efforts, the condition of infinity as the fullness and final perfection of one's existence, with an evident confusion between thinking and being. This confusion is, in fact, characteristic of pantheistic idealism, whose origins in the West can be traced to Parmenides and in the East to the "Vedanta" philosophy of Indian philosophy.
The confusion lies in blending epistemological self-transcendence with an absurd ontological self-transcendence that would surpass the finiteness of human nature and identify it with the infinity of divine nature. In this view, mankind would have the power to use his nature and that of the external world, which is entirely normal and legitimate, and the power of ontological determination. This would make him capable of obtaining performances and powers from human and external nature that exceed what is attested by ordinary experience and normal Galilean physical science – powers that would be the implementation of a supreme gnosis hidden in the human subconscious. Through a suitable Socratic method, this knowledge is supposed to be brought to consciousness for practical applications benefiting humanity. In essence, it is the ancient gnostic dream in knowledge and magical in practice – the ancient perspective suggested by the serpent in Eden to our ancestors.
Transhumanism opens the possibility of the hypothesis of the existence of extraterrestrial beings, presumed to be endowed with intelligence and power superior to those of terrestrial beings. I have repeatedly shown in this blog, including in discussions with readers, how such a hypothesis is unsustainable for both philosophical and theological reasons:
1) For philosophical reasons, there cannot exist an ontologically intermediate person between the rational animal and the angel. Between the subsisting spiritual form that characterizes the angel and the form that shapes the body, constituting the human being, there are no intermediate forms because the two forms are distinguished categorically: either with a body or without a body.
2) For theological reasons, Christian revelation reminds us of the fact that original sin, affects all of humanity. The guilt of this sin is transmitted from generation to generation, and its remedy, the grace of Christ, is capable of reaching all of humanity. Based on these premises, it is inconceivable that on other planets there could exist beings not originating from this Earth, as they too would be tainted by sin and in need of salvation through grace.
Transhumanism can be compared to Nietzsche's concept of the "Superman". Both envision humanity as the deity of nature, surpassing animality through the shaping power of the spirit in an unrelenting ascent to higher degrees of being. The difference lies in two elements: first, transhumanism aims at a collectively elevated humanity; the superman is the master of the human masses subject to his will for power. Second, transhumanism is an effect of technology, while superman is an effect of his will for power.
In essence, if we set aside the undeniable and significant benefits that a wise development and use of information technology can offer, transhumanism is nothing more than the product of an idealistic mindset that leads us outside of reality, causing us to confuse reality with dreams and imagination.
The human proposed by transhumanism, like that of Nietzsche, Darwin, or Hegel, derived from Descartes and the idealism that stems from him, is not the real, flesh-and-blood human with his limits and greatness, his powers and weaknesses. Instead, it is an idol or a pagan god, an Apollo, a Hermes, or a Mercury – an imaginary being giving rise to illusory hopes or irrational terrors. It is a fantastical and dreamed-up character, an amazing and prodigious and super gifted character like the one in American science fiction films, like the "Batman" of the magazines used in my teen, a creature that leads us into the "virtual reality," away from the awareness of our real duties, responsibilities, and possibilities. It is a monster designed to frighten vulnerable individuals and inflate the pride of those eager to outshine others and gain fame as geniuses and saviors of humanity.
Benedict XVI and Pope Francis Warn Against Transhumanism
Cardinal Ratzinger, in a speech to priests and seminarians in Palermo on March 15, 2000, cautioned against the illusory belief that machines could replace humans. He expressed horror at the prospect of reducing humans to machines:
"The machines that have been built impose this same law, the same law adopted in concentration camps. According to the logic of the machine, according to the masters of the machine, man must be interpreted by a computer, and this is only possible if man is translated into numbers. The Beast is a number, a being, certainly, but a number, and it transforms us into numbers. Our Father God, on the other hand, has a name and calls each of us by name. He is a person, and when He looks at each of us, He sees a person, an eternal person, a loved person."
In 2005, Benedict XVI, addressing the cardinals of the Council for Health Pastoral Care, reiterated
" the need to guard against the risks of a science and technology that claim complete autonomy from the moral norms inscribed like the human being." In 2015, as highlighted by "L'Osservatore Romano" in the commentary on the apostolic letter "Laudato Si'", Pope Francis proposed, furthering Benedict's discourse, "an integral ecology in which humanity is entrusted with the task of comprehensive care for creation." This concept, termed by the Pope as "integral ecology," involves the full personal and communal harmony of humans with nature, rationally used through the ever more advanced instruments of technology to the praise and glory of God, the Creator and wise ruler of the world"[11].
Wikipedia [12] also reports on a series of acts and contacts that the Holy Father had with prominent figures in transhumanism, aiming to appreciate the positive aspects it may offer for the good of humanity. However, Pope Francis clearly warns us of the dangers hidden in the uncritical and indiscriminate acceptance of the concepts and perspectives of transhumanism.
No one doubts the significant benefits that cybernetics provides for the care of physical and mental health, medicine, surgery, the proper functioning of the autonomic nervous system, brain physiology, technological development, various forms and applications of industry and engineering, communications, transportation means, space exploration, research on the elementary constituents of material substance, and the rational control and utilization of natural forces.
It is evident that the Church, having the primary task of caring for the spiritual health of humanity in light of divine revelation, cannot disregard, albeit indirectly and leaving room for competent authorities to act and decide legitimately, the physical health of a creature like the human being. By the will of its Creator, human life, in itself and its relationship with nature, cannot appropriately exercise its spiritual and moral life except based on suitable physical well-being arising from proper care for the body and the good governance and ordering of nature. This discipline is now called "ecology," considering that, according to Christian revelation, the eschatological condition of man and woman envisions dwelling in a physical universe no longer in conflict with humans but once again subjected to humans, according to the original divine plan outlined in Scripture in the Edenic life.
In light of these principles, Pope Francis, in addition to enlightening us with his teachings, has demonstrated great activity in addressing and resolving this highly delicate issue fruitfully, avoiding dangers. He has engaged in a series of high-level meetings and contacts, whether personal or through Vatican entities, with prominent figures on the international stage and representatives of transhumanist thought and the so-called "metaverse."
Pope Francis has initiated a series of contacts with global leaders responsible for the health of the planet and its rational utilization for the benefit of humanity. Here is a brief overview of Pope Francis's actions regarding the handling of this extremely delicate issue.
In 2016, he had an audience with Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, the proponent of the so-called "metaverse"[13], which is a project aiming to humanize nature through telematics.
In 2018, the Pope received a significant donation of 15 million dollars for three Catholic associations from Jeff Bezos of Amazon, who invested 3 billion dollars in a transhumanist biotechnology startup aimed at extending human lifespan.
In 2019, the Holy See promoted a conference on "ethics and robotics," and the following year, it signed the Ethical Charter on Artificial Intelligence with IBM and Microsoft. The Pope referred to technology populating the digital galaxy as a "gift from God."
In 2020, the Holy See joined the Council for Inclusive Capitalism, which includes the Rockefeller Foundation (David Rockefeller founded the Bilderberg Club) and banking heiress Lynn Forester de Rothschild. In the same year, for the first time, a Pope addressed the Davos World Economic Forum, sending a message directly to Klaus Schwab, the leader of transhumanism and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which involves the fusion of the physical with the biological and digital – in other words, the cyborg. Pope Francis expressed hope:
"May your deliberations lead to growth in solidarity, especially with the most needy who experience social and economic injustice, and whose very existence is threatened."
In 2021, the RenAIssance Foundation was established in the Vatican, where "AI" stands for Artificial Intelligence. At the Teutonic College in the Vatican, an event titled "The Code for the Metaverse: Programming Our Future Forever" was held, featuring speakers who authored the book "The Code of the Metaverse."
Finally, in the recently concluded year, Pope Francis also met with the magnate of Neuralink and Starlink, Elon Musk, the promoter of the microchip implanted in the human brain, an electronic device designed to activate brain functions.
It is essential to highlight the speech delivered by the Pope to the Max Planck Society on February 23rd:
"The announcement of the imminent birth of the so-called 'hybrid thought,' resulting from the hybridization of biological and non-biological thought, which would allow humans not to be supplanted by Artificial Intelligence, raises questions of great relevance both ethically and socially."
The fusion of human cognitive ability with machine computational power would substantially alter the Homo "sapiens" species. Hence, the Pope's alarm, stating:
"We cannot then avoid addressing the ultimate question, that is, the direction of what is happening before our eyes. ... If for those who identify with the transhumanist project, all this does not cause concern, the same cannot be said for those who instead strive to advance the neo-humanist project, according to which the gap between action and intelligence cannot be accepted. ... If the ability to solve problems is separated from the need to be intelligent in doing so, what is annulled is intentionality and therefore the ethics of action."
In the text, the Pope finally condemns the spread,
"in the realms of big science, of a 'technical' responsibility principle that does not admit the moral judgment of what is good and evil. The actions, especially of large organizations, should be evaluated only in functional terms, as if everything possible were, by that fact alone, ethically permissible. ... The Church can never accept such a position, the tragic consequences of which we have already had far too many proofs."
Here is Pope Francis's final admonition:
"It is rather a responsibility as taking care of the other, and not just as giving an account of what one has done, that we must bring back to the center of our culture today. Because one is responsible not only for what one does but above all for what one does not do, even though one could do it."
End of Part Four (4/5)
Fr. Giovanni Cavalcoli OP
Fontanellato, May 10, 2023
source:
https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/galileo-cartesio-e-giordano-bruno_16.html
[1] As attested by Frances Yates in her book "Giordano Bruno e la tradizione ermetica" (Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition), Laterza Editions, Bari 1992.
[2] An esoteric secret society born in the early 17th century in France with progressive humanitarian goals, based on a rational practice involving magical control over nature and the participation of divine power through a conception of man as a finite spirit communicating with the Infinite Spirit. Freemasonry embraced this ideal, placing it at the 18th degree of the Masonic hierarchy with the title of Knight of the Rose Cross. The symbol of the conjunction of the Rose (positive) with the Cross (negative) represents the concept that the positive arises from the negative. In this sense, Hegel shows Rosicrucian influence when he speaks of the "magical (ungeheuer) power of the negative" (Phenomenology of Spirit, La Nuova Italia, Florence 1988, vol. I, p.26). Hegel does not fail to highlight this principle of Bruno's magic in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, La Nuova Italia, Florence 1985, vol. I, pp.220, 225. However, Hegel may refer to the "sub contraria specie" of Luther, an expression with which he means that God on the cross appears in a way contrary to what He is. Anyway, similarly, Bruno states that "deep magic is knowing how to draw the opposite after finding the point of union" (quoted by Michele Ciliberto, Giordano Bruno, Laterza, Bari 1992, p.100). Hegelian dialectic is a magical operation. In this sense, Julius Evola is right to speak of "magic" regarding German idealism.
[3] "Bruno or the Divine and Natural Principle of Things," Spano Editions, Milan, undated.
[4] Quoted by Ernst Benz, "Le fonti mistiche della filosofia romantica tedesca" (The Mystical Sources of German Romantic Philosophy), Spano Editions, Milan, undated, p.78.
[5] Ibid., p.83.
[6] Here, Schelling probably alludes to his thesis that evil is originally in God but overcome by His good will. It seems to find here that the originality of the negative as a factor of positivity that we have seen in Bruno's magic and return in Hegelian dialectic.
[7] Benz, op. cit., p.85.
[8] Ibid., p.90.
[9] "Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline," Laterza, Bari 1963, p.199.
[10] "L’attualismo," Bompiani Editions, Milan 2015, p.167.
[11] From Wikipedia.
[12] Under the entry "TRANSHUMANISM."
[13] Wikipedia under the entry "METAVERSE" helps us understand what it is. Essentially, it is a worldview of the physical world and the prospect of operating on it based on idealistic grounds, that is, the project of homogenizing, based on Berkeley's principle "esse est percipi," and through the use of cybernetics, the objective physical reality, independent of our mind, with a so-called "virtual" reality, which is the cybernetic reproduction of the former, in such a way that it can be manipulated creatively and illusorily to give us the impression of experiencing reality as it exists outside us. This program of rebuilding sensible contact with reality through cybernetics aims to replace external reality with a cybernetic reconstruction of the same reality, in such a way that the subject no longer lives in reality but in a fake reality constructed by the machine. From this, it is not far-fetched to imagine a prospect of magical control over nature.