THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN 'PLEBS' AND 'NOBS'

The distinction between the plebeian and the noble - in short, between 'plebs' and 'nobs', is essentially one between the ethereal and the corporeal, whether in relation to the concrete or to the abstract, viz. autocracy or theocracy in the case of the noble, and democracy or plutocracy in that of the plebeian, as, hegemonically speaking, between science and religion on the one hand, and politics and economics on the other.

Thus whilst science and religion correspond to antithetical modes of nobility, their plebeian counterparts 'down below', in the realm of the corporeal, are decidedly politics and economics, neither of which professions will normally appeal to a gentleman, be he of autocratic or theocratic disposition, which, incidentally, is nothing less than an alpha/omega antithesis between objectivity and subjectivity, soma and psyche, particles and wavicles, or, as noted above, the concrete and the abstract, each of which is as incompatible with the other as ... politics and economics - indeed, even more so, since corresponding, in their opposite ways, to the absolutism (3:1) of the ethereal rather than to the relativism (2½:1½) of the corporeal, whether with a bias, under female hegemonic criteria, for soma or, conversely, with one, under male hegemonic criteria, for psyche - a distinction, after all, between sensuality and sensibility.

Thus the distinction, to return to my opening argument, between 'plebs' and 'nobs' is one between the noumenal and the phenomenal, space/time in the antithetical case of nobles, and volume/mass in the antithetical case of plebeians, with space axially polar, on a female/male gender basis, to mass in relation to state-hegemonic criteria, and volume axially polar, on a like female/male basis, to time in relation to church-hegemonic criteria, the plebeian and the noble not existing in complete isolation from one another, but axially interdependent on opposite gender-conditioned terms which remain, to all intents and purposes, mutually incompatible.

Therefore whilst science and religion correspond to incompatible modes of nobility, and politics and economics to incompatible plebeian antitheses, the polarity, axially considered, between science and economics on the one hand, and politics and religion on the other remains as testimony to the interdependence of nobles and plebeians of one type or the other who are nonetheless incompatible with their antithetical counterparts. It is precisely in polarity that the one kind of axial interdependence is established and maintained in the face of the other kind, thereby defying an outright opposition of nobles to plebeians or vice versa.