1.
The reader may recall that much of my recent philosophical activity has been
concerned with the axial distinctions between church-hegemonic and
state-subordinate society on the one hand and state-hegemonic and
church-subordinate society on the other hand, neither of which can really abide
or accept the other because they are largely if not completely opposite, as
opposite, in fact, as Ireland and Britain or, more specifically, Eire and the
United Kingdom. Therefore the one type of society tends to marginalize if
not exclude the other, since you cannot be both psychically free and
somatically free at the same time, nor indeed psychically bound and somatically
bound, the former the phenomenal counterpart, in church-hegemonic society, to
the noumenal heights of psychic freedom; the latter the phenomenal counterpart,
in state-hegemonic society, to the noumenal heights of somatic freedom - the
respective heights no less mutually exclusive than the respective depths, so to
speak, of what, in their noumenal/phenomenal totality, constitute two entirely
opposite types of axis.
2.
All this the reader should already have gleaned, and so I shall not waste his
time by repeating myself all over again, even if I think it expedient, for the
sake of a little extra clarification, to remind him that these axes come in
different guises, and that there is not, nor ever has been or could be, a
straight axial antithesis between phenomenal sensuality and noumenal
sensibility on the one hand and noumenal sensuality and phenomenal sensibility
on the other hand, the former significant of church-hegemonic criteria and the
latter its state-hegemonic counterpart and, in some sense, axial rival.
3.
For history shows us that in the more conventional worldly contexts of, for
instance, each traditional axial antithesis in the British Isles, a more
genuinely worldly, or phenomenal, position exists in relation to a
pseudo-overworldly position, be that position netherworldly in noumenal
sensuality or otherworldly in noumenal sensibility, so that far from a
phenomenally sensual/noumenally sensible antithesis on the one hand and a
noumenally sensual/phenomenally sensible antithesis on the other hand, one
finds genuine phenomenal sensuality existing in axial opposition to
pseudo-noumenal sensibility and, conversely, pseudo-noumenal sensuality
existing in axial opposition to genuine phenomenal sensibility, thereby
confirming a worldly status in which the phenomenal is alone genuine and the
noumenal pseudo.
4.
Thus the traditional church-hegemonic axis, which is also of necessity state
subordinate, is best characterized in terms of an axial polarity between
phenomenal sensuality and pseudo-noumenal sensibility, 'the meek' and 'the
pseudo-righteous', while the traditional state-hegemonic axis, which is also of
necessity church subordinate, may be characterized in terms of an axial
polarity between pseudo-noumenal sensuality and phenomenal sensibility, 'the
pseudo-vain' and 'the just'. Such is how it was and officially continues
to be within the British Isles, where the axial dichotomy between church- and
state-hegemonic criteria takes the respective forms of Roman Catholicism and
Constitutional Monarchy, Eire being a largely Roman Catholic country and the
United Kingdom, not least Britain, a Constitutional Monarchy with a
parliamentary democracy.
5.
Now if, as I believe, phenomenal sensuality exists in relation to
pseudo-noumenal sensibility, then that is the church-hegemonic worldly position
par excellence, in which things bog down in the phenomenally
sensual masses and such noumenally sensible salvation as the Catholic Church
provides is never more than pseudo, a matter merely of verbal absolution for
penitential contrition from a position centred in implicit transcendentalism
and even, where females are concerned, an equally implicit antifundamentalism
which, ever subjected to explicit constraints emanating from the Old Testament,
cannot and dare not 'come clean' about itself from fear of exposing its
pseudo-theocratic and, for females, pseudo-antiaristocratic limitations, as
having to do, in effect, with a God and an Antidevil - for the two are
correlative - that 'dares not speak its (freely psychic) name'.
6.
Likewise if, as I also believe, pseudo-noumenal sensuality exists in relation
to phenomenal sensibility, then that is the state-hegemonic worldly position par
excellence, in which things bog down in the phenomenally sensible masses and
such noumenally sensual undamnation as the Monarchic State provides and bears
witness to is never more than pseudo, a matter of constitutional figureheadship
from a position rooted in implicit materialism and even, where males are
concerned, anti-idealism which, ever subjected, for want of authoritarian
independence, to explicit constraints emanating from Parliament, cannot and
dare not 'come clean' about itself from fear of exposing its pseudo-autocratic
and, for males, pseudo-antitechnocratic limitations, as having to do, in
effect, with a Devil and an Antigod - for the two are correlative - that 'dares
not speak its (freely somatic) name'.
7.
Be that as it may, neither God nor the Devil are anywhere near genuine in the
traditional noumenal contexts of theocracy and autocracy in the British Isles,
and for the very simple reason that the God that dares not reveal itself from
fear of exposing its pseudo-theocratic limitations and less than true face, and
the Devil that dares not reveal itself from fear of exposing its
pseudo-autocratic limitations and effectively ugly face are only possible in
relation to very genuine orders of woman and man or, more correctly, phenomenal
manifestations of woman and antiman on the one hand and man and antiwoman on
the other hand.
8.
For it is not just an ascent from woman to God in church-hegemonic terms, as
though from bureaucracy to theocracy, or a descent from the Devil to man in
state-hegemonic terms, as though from autocracy to democracy, both of which
axial interpretations would be grossly reductionist in their respective
oversimplifications, but rather (when once the genuine vis-à-vis pseudo
dimensions have also been taken into account) of an ascent from antiman to
pseudo-God and woman to the pseudo-Antidevil in the one case, that of the
church-hegemonic axis, and of a descent from the pseudo-Devil to antiwoman and
pseudo-Antigod to man in the other case, that of the state-hegemonic axis.
9.
For what actually constitutes each type of worldly axis is not a simple
antithesis between bureaucracy and theocracy on the one hand and autocracy and
democracy on the other, but a gender link between pseudo-theocracy and
antimeritocracy where pseudo-God and antiman are concerned, as also between
pseudo-antiaristocracy and plutocracy where the pseudo-Antidevil and woman are
concerned in secondary church-hegemonic vein, and between pseudo-autocracy and
antibureaucracy where the pseudo-Devil and antiwoman are concerned, as also
between pseudo-antitheocracy and democracy where pseudo-Antigod and man are
concerned in secondary state-hegemonic vein.
10.
Thus far from a bureaucracy to theocracy axis of church-hegemonic criteria, we
find a pseudo-theocratic to antimeritocratic link of pseudo-divine and
antimasculine males in pseudo-metaphysics and antiphysics,
pseudo-transcendentalism and antihumanism, coupled, in secondary
church-hegemonic vein, to a pseudo-antiaristocratic to plutocratic link of
pseudo-antidiabolic and feminine females in pseudo-antimetachemistry and
chemistry, pseudo-antifundamentalism and nonconformism, not to mention, in
state-subordinate vein, a pseudo-technocratic to antidemocratic link of
pseudo-divine and antimasculine males in pseudo-metaphysics and antiphysics,
pseudo-antiidealism and antinaturalism, coupled, in secondary state-subordinate
vein, to a pseudo-antiautocratic to bureaucratic link of pseudo-antidiabolic
and feminine females in pseudo-antimetachemistry and chemistry,
pseudo-antimaterialism and realism.
11.
Conversely, far from an autocratic to democratic axis of state-hegemonic
criteria we find a pseudo-autocratic to anti-bureaucratic link of
pseudo-diabolic and antifeminine females in pseudo-metachemistry and
antichemistry, pseudo-materialism and antirealism, coupled, in secondary
state-hegemonic vein, to a pseudo-antitechnocratic to democratic link of
pseudo-antidivine and masculine males in pseudo-antimetaphysics and physics,
pseudo-antiidealism and naturalism, not to mention, in church-subordinate vein,
a pseudo-aristocratic to antiplutocratic link of pseudo-diabolic and
antifeminine females in pseudo-metachemistry and antichemistry,
pseudo-fundamentalism and antinonconformism, coupled, in secondary church-subordinate
vein, to a pseudo-antitheocratic to meritocratic link of pseudo-antidivine and
masculine males in pseudo-antimetaphysics and physics,
pseudo-antitranscendentalism and humanism.
12.
Therefore however we evaluate the two axes, whether in general or more
exactingly comprehensive terms, we arrive at the conclusion that the phenomenal
positions are alone genuine and the noumenal ones pseudo in what amounts to a
worldly system or historical manifestation of axial polarity, and largely
because it is reflective of relativity in relation to phenomenal criteria and
cannot be simultaneously absolutist in respect of the noumenal heights, heights
which are only properly or fully noumenal, whether with a bias towards the
Devil or, conversely, towards God, either side of the worldly mean of
natural/human phenomenality, and thus in relation to either pre-historical
criteria, as in the cosmic past, or post-historical criteria, as in the cyborg
present and, doubtless to a much greater and deeper extent, future.
13.
Thus the worldly manifestation of axial polarity, being phenomenally relative,
will always signify the opposition of genuine phenomenal sensuality to
pseudo-noumenal sensibility in the one case, that of church-hegemonic and
state-subordinate criteria, and, conversely, of pseudo-noumenal sensuality to
genuine phenomenal sensibility in the other case, that of state-hegemonic and
church-subordinate criteria.
14.
This suffices to explain the traditional antitheses, on each class level,
between Ireland and Britain, as, more specifically, with regard to
15.
When we come to examine the contemporary and effectively post-historical
situation in respect of countries like America, however, we find that the axial
polarity between genuine and pseudo is reversed in favour of the noumenal
heights; for it is now that we are entering upon an age which is the converse
of anything cosmic and pre-worldly, being, to all intents and purposes,
cyborgistic and post-worldly, in which absolutism is once again as genuine, if
on contrary terms, as it was in the pre-historical past, the past, one might
say, of Eastern as opposed to Western civilization, and relativity is
accordingly so compromised by the predominating prevalence of such absolutism
that its phenomenality, so to speak, is pseudo.
16.
This, at any rate, would explain the position of both the American caucasian
masses, extrapolated out, in pseudo-phenomenal vein, from a phenomenally
sensible North European and especially British tradition, and the Americanized
lapsed catholic masses of countries like Eire, whose pseudo-phenomenal
sensuality in the democratized, urbanized, and proletarianized environments in
which they live and work entitles us to regard them as in some sense
pseudo-meek, since what is seducing them to revel in the libertarian
productions of the - compared to Britain - more genuine noumenal sensuality of
the American so-called Dream, rooted in state-hegemonic criteria, is
simultaneously rendering them less than fit for or suited to the
pseudo-noumenal sensibility that would formerly have appealed to their less
urbanized counterparts in the further depths of phenomenal sensuality, when the
Catholic Church was able to 'save' from their sins and pseudo-crimes those who
had elected for salvation in what I have called the pseudo-noumenally sensible
terms of verbal absolution for penitential contrition.
17.
Little wonder, however, that with a pseudo-phenomenally sensible to noumenally
sensual axis of state-hegemonic criteria at work in the post-historical context
of American culture, with its cinematic licence and infinite variety of
celluloid and other synthetically elevated 'stars', there is less scope for
pseudo-noumenal sensibility to go about its pseudo-righteous business than was
formerly the case, and that the lapsed catholic pseudo-meek masses accordingly
find themselves bereft of a righteous alternative to their pseudo-phenomenally
sensual shortcomings, shortcomings which, bad enough in their own sinful and
pseudo-criminal terms, pale to comparative insignificance vis-à-vis the evil
and pseudo-foolish liberties which the principal exponents of that more genuine
noumenal sensuality are able to take in their own sphere of influence and which
now rain down upon them, these lapsed catholic and even effectively atheistic
pseudo-meek masses, in a never-ending barrage of somatic freedoms, of undamned
and counter-unsaved liberties, as a testimony to the infinite ingenuity for
immorality and vice of state-hegemonic criteria.
18.
Unlike their phenomenally sensual counterparts of the Catholic tradition,
however, the pseudo-meek do not live in a state-subordinate/church-hegemonic
context or society but effectively, if not literally, in one which defers, in
quasi-state hegemonic vein, to the more genuine state-hegemonic criteria
issuing from the somatic freedoms of noumenal sensuality, not least in its
American and therefore principal contemporary manifestations. Therefore
these lapsed Catholic or un-Catholic pseudo-phenomenally sensual masses find
themselves deferring, via American and, indeed, Anglo-American pressures, to
state-hegemonic criteria in such fashion that not only is the traditional
Church-hegemonic axis to which they would formerly have pertained of less
relevance to them, but the very secular freedoms which have been opened up, in
the republican-state context, now permit alternative ideologies or movements from
that of the conventional or traditional institutions to carve a niche for
themselves and effectively set themselves up in the name of the People or, more
specifically, the deliverance of the People from commercial exploitation and
moral corruption.
19.
To begin with, such alternatives tended to be socialistic or even Marxistic,
but time has found them out and exposed their limitations and even irrelevance
from an Irish point of view. By which I mean that while the traditional
church-hegemonic/state-subordinate criteria of what is, in effect, an ascending
axis from phenomenal sensuality to pseudo-noumenal sensibility may no longer be
relevant to the urbanized and proletarianized masses, it is still responsible
in no small degree for the existence of such an axis in the first place, and
that even the pseudo-phenomenally sensual masses partly owe their origins to it
and have a place on it in what I tend to regard as a more elevated position
vis-à-vis that more genuine phenomenal sensuality of the genuine meek, whether
or not any such still exist.
20.
For, in truth, there can be no Marxistic socialism for those who pertain to the
ascending axis in question, since the whole theory and practice of Marxism
stems from liberal humanism and parliamentary democracy as, in no small
measure, its proletarian and social democratic offshoot, and what is that if
not the genuine phenomenal sensibility that forms a parliamentary/puritan
antithesis to, or polarity with, the monarchic/anglican pseudo-noumenal
sensuality at the apex of traditional state-hegemonic criteria in Britain and,
in particular, England. Therefore not only is Marxism axially irrelevant
to the pseudo-meek lapsed catholic masses of countries like Eire; it is in
consequence of its secular origins ideologically and ethnically irrelevant,
since stemming from a state-hegemonic tradition which simply transforms
bourgeois relativity into proletarian absolutism, and interprets life solely
from the standpoint of economics and hence the creation and/or distribution of
wealth.
21. Besides, how woefully reductionist to humanistic
criteria is the Marxist interpretation of class warfare in terms of the
exploitation of man by man, of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie! This
is in effect the reductionism of phenomenal sensibility, whether or not such
reductionism ends-up straining away from its properly parliamentary/puritan
manifestation on neo-noumenally sensual terms and reintroduces, in
Bolshevik-like vein, a kind of neo-autocratic subversion of democracy.
For such a reductionism is the product, in large part, of humanism, of the
failure of Western civilization to address 'God building' largely because it
believes that 'God is dead', when all it has actually and unwittingly turned
against and effectively killed off is the hype of Devil the Mother as God and
the Son of Devil the Mother as the Son of God, and foolishly supposed, in its
humanistic fatality, religion to be a closed issue, with humanism as its
logical replacement!
22.
And consequently, in all too reductionist vein, exploitation is conceived in
humanist terms, with the exploitation of man by man, the proletariat by the
bourgeoisie, being the problem that has to be addressed and, if possible,
solved on the basis of socialist revolution and a social democratic form of
representative government that reflects the concerns of proletarian
humanism. And so they dead-end themselves in an extrapolation from
phenomenal sensibility that, far from tending back up the diagonally descending
state-hegemonic axis in pseudo-phenomenally sensible vein, like the
pseudo-worldly wisdom of the American extrapolation from European and, in
particular, British polity, tends down from it towards a neo-noumenally sensual
nadir which is the all-too-earthly omega point of the world and, hence, of
Western civilization, the earth that is bound for an earthly hell in due
Marxist-Leninist and/or Stalinist vein.
23.
Such farcical reductionism, whilst it might suffice for those who appertain to phenomenal
sensibility, whether as liberal bourgeoisie or social proletariat, does scant
justice to the pseudo-phenomenally sensual pseudo-meek of the other, and
traditionally Church-hegemonic, axis, who have, in any case, less to do with
man and antiwoman, physics and antichemistry, than with woman and antiman,
chemistry and antiphysics, and who, as women and antimen, are preyed upon, from
the noumenally sensual heights of a more genuine 'Vanity Fair', less by
corrupted reproductions of themselves than by devils and antigods, the
metachemical and the antimetaphysical exploiters, who profit from the financial
assistance less, in the American context, of men and antiwoman than of
pseudo-men and pseudo-antiwomen, the sorts of pseudo-physical and pseudo-antichemical
elevated extrapolations from traditional or conventional phenomenally sensible
criteria that now constitute the principal partnership in the exploitation of
the pseudo-phenomenally sensual masses from a contrary axial standpoint.
24.
Therefore far from the exploitation of man by man, of proletariat by
bourgeoisie in phenomenal sensibility, one has a situation in which
pseudo-women and pseudo-antimen are being exploited - and morally corrupted -
by genuine devils and antigods whose immoral liberties are financially aided
and abetted by the pseudo-men and pseudo-antiwomen of what is now an
American-dominated state-hegemonic axis which stretches from pseudo-phenomenal
sensibility to noumenal sensuality and even, in reverse terms, from noumenal
sensuality to pseudo-phenomenal sensibility, so much is American culture in the
grip of the metachemical/antimetaphysical Few as against the
pseudo-physical/antichemical Many.
25.
However that may be, one cannot seriously regard the quasi-state-hegemonic
situation which has opened up, or been opened up in consequence of
American-type pressures, in countries like Eire as justifying a Marxist or
socialist approach to the problem of commercial exploitation, for - Anglo-Irish
exceptions to the rule notwithstanding - the Irish people do not and cannot
relate to what properly appertains, in blatantly un-Catholic vein, to the
British and, in a wider context, Anglo-American axis of state-hegemonic
criteria, and any move in that contrary direction can only be regarded as ethnically
subversive and potentially traitorous, serving merely to advance Anglo-American
criteria at the expense of what properly characterizes Ireland as, when true to
itself, a male-led and deeply moralistic society concerned with 'world
overcoming' and an accommodation, no matter how imperfectly realized, with the
salvation of the self in the psychic freedom of grace and, for females,
pseudo-punishment, as germane to what has been characterized as pseudo-noumenal
sensibility.
