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Absolution:
The Moment of Decisive Significance

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Absolution:
The Moment of Decisive Significance
Lance Allan Kair

Lance A. Kair
2016

Copyright 2016 Lance A. Kair


All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be
reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express
written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations
in a book review, blog or scholarly journal.
First Printing: MAY 2016
ISBN 978-1-365-09562-7
Lance A. Kair
Louisville, Colorado, 80027. U.S.A.
www.secondmusic.com

To my wife and daughter, without whom I would never


have lived.

Contents

Acknowledgements ..................................................................ix
PART ONE......................................................................................1
Prelude.........................................................................................3
In The Beginning....................................................................9
The Appropriation of Discourse .................................21
PART TWO...................................................................................25
The Virgin Birth...................................................................43
The King of the Jews .........................................................53
The Ministry...............................................................................63
The Passover..............................................................................77
Thought: Of the Subject In-Itself................................99
The Disciple..........................................................................105
Gethsemane..........................................................................111
Doubt .........................................................................................119
The Departure ....................................................................135
The Wisdom of Peter ............................................................153
PART THREE ..........................................................................177
The Second Moment of Decisive Significance .179
Afterword ..................................................................................191
Notes.............................................................................................205

Acknowledgements
There is an odd sort of being that entertains
ideas. Often these ideas have a quality of faith, and indeed it
is these ideas that constitute faith in its most original sense,
a sense that has no object. A free floating anxiety, one might
say. It is gained from experiences that occur at a distance
and so rely upon and amount to the individual on a path,
knowing and questioning and doubting and knowing.
Through this process a being can come unto itself, and
thereby know itself, without recourse to any sort of faith;
that is, until the idea comes upon its own completion, its
own verification. Then even while one rallies to assert its
truth, here doubt come into play in a whole new way, for
then one realizes that indeed there was only an idea, at that,
upheld by faith.
To have people that merely repeat the same
words and say yes to the idea stated, do nothing for being.
To be, one must not only have had faith, but must be willing
to test it and then in the end let it go, no matter how the test
went, for there was really no test but that of an idea.
I wish to thank three bloggers, though they
probably wouldnt even know that they had a thanks
coming.
Dave at the extinct blog In the Salt Mine.
Dave at Big Story Guide bigstoryguide.wordpress.com
S.C.
Hickman
at
socialecologies.wordpress.com

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Alien

Ecologies

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PART ONE

For God, gave his only begotten Son.

Kair

Kair

Prelude
When undertaking any sort of venture one is often
persuaded to prepare. In the case of this essay, one might
upon being critically informed and perhaps be educated
upon certain academic or philosophical issues. But beware;
this kind of conventional approach might take on water
since through this essay we are often asked to stand on our
heads, to turn upside-down the notions by which we suppose
to have gained bearings, to put what seems first, last, and
last, first. Yet for sure; of what might constitute such
prepared information we can be pretty confident.
Theologians might be drawn to this title, as well as what we
could call spiritual or religious philosophers, but these
should not exclude epistemologists nor ontologists, nor
idealists nor realists. Indeed, none would be amiss by
gathering their theoretical forces, but they might, in fact,
miss the argument if not the point. This translation asks
from no other authority than the book itself, The Bible.
Those not informed of, ignorant of or plain antagonistic to
the philosophical discourse of the Western tradition, I might
suggest avoid this Prelude as well and the Afterword, and
move to the main body of the essay; you will have missed
nothing by doing so. The more strict academic philosophical
considerations I put forth do not add nor detract anything
important to the meaning of this essay; they merely enlarge
the possible ways we might speak about the situation at
hand.
*
We might be tempted to see this book as a type of
hermeneutical offering, or even Grammatological offering,
and likewise such an estimation would most likely not be far
off the mark. Jacques Derrida addresses Michel Foucault to
the same question upon criteria for the latters essay on
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madness; that is, the question of authorityi. See, though,


that this is not some discussion of uncountable references to
various Derridian or even post-modernist, structuralist, or
post-structuralist scripts; the first intent of this essay is not
scholarly argument of comparison and reference. You will
get little scholarly court volley here. The problem with that
method is any such reference compounds upon itself the
problem we treat, and specifically detracts from the meaning
of this essay; for, if indeed I were using some sort of method,
at that a hermeneutical method, I risk being seen by many if
not most to be referring to another authoritative lexicon, to
perhaps a more secular as opposed to religious, a liberality
opposed to conservatism, to this series of historical notes
instead of that, whereas I freely admit that I referred to no
such scholarly tradition but that which may have been of the
privilege (or poverty) having been raised Christian.
Ironically, though, many theoreticians in their various
places will not have missed any of this. Indeed, the
impossible situation is that there is nothing beyond or
outside of text. Nonetheless, I would say a better designation
of the issue, even if it is merely academic, is the term, for
text imagines that a mere mark likewise contains. Where a
mark may contain we have thereby extrapolated knowledge
into or against a sort of prehistory. Perhaps I am splitting
hairs, but I see the more proper rendering is more than the
symbol; rather, what moves beyond a particular ideological
comprehensive paradigm is meaning itself, and if there is
some sort of communication taking place then there must be
some terms of agreement.

The first order must be that there is agreement, and in as


much as there is agreement, that this is indeed the case, we
must then consider not so much communication through its
postmodern and post-postmodern reductive avenues.

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Neither the type of Jean-Francois Lyotard that asks how
communication takes place, nor of Alain Badiou and
Francois Laruelle, that develops reductions toward
particular communicative passes, stem queries outside of
the implicit assumption of a projected common form; which
is to say, the authors have not reflected upon their own
positions of assertion sufficiently enough to take to its end
the issue of the text. Indeed, the situation of history put
forth in passing by this essay is that they could not take it to
its end. Instead, the move here is more toward Lyotards
implication upon whether the case can be made to a court
that has no way of understanding the communication that is
offered, because thereby do such philosophical situations
become non-conventional historical marks, at times even,
desire-production hiatuses. Here then we need only give up
on the reduction and leave such ideological strides to the
Realist passes that stand upon conventional routes argued
by the post-postmodernsii. We must thereby consider
agreement that does not cohere in the common route.

Admitting, then, that there is indeed only always


discourse, even without some traditional philosophical
lineage, what reference I do mention outside the Bible is
usually for confirmation and or support of an idea that I
came upon as part of the same course by which I have
encountered the Bible itself, and that there is, has been and
will be so many more references that I could never hope of
listing into any sort of helpful bibliography, nor itemize such
clauses to have any meaning that would point to some
learning that I gained from the whole, effectively, infinite
library of authors and ideas that I have encountered in my
time. Since if there is nothing outside discourse, then there
is nothing that I have learned due to some other persons
idea, nothing that arises only out of the occasion of the text
guided by some teacher, some catalyzing agent.
Nevertheless, everything that has occurred does so by the
course of the terms of meaning, and then by extension, also

Absolution

by that which verifies that such a person of reference may


have been come upon by the same experience, nevermind
that this is impossible, given the situation that must be
argued. The point here is that no tradition is required; also,
if we must, that the distinction between secular and
religious ideals are now made moot. It might be evident by
now, if not by the end of the foregoing essay, then, that the
issue we treat here was dealt with historically, this is to say,
traditionally, in automatic recourse to a transcendent effect
that was taken to indicate a thing in-itself, that the terms
were granted and given by a transcendent object, if you
will, God, and despite what some philosophers might want
to say of Judaism, both the philosophers and the topic would
be seen wanting to hang onto this essential privilege. Hence
the imperative for a new way to approach the situation.
If any tradition is needed to come to the forgoing
conclusion, which is to say, to have a particular experience
upon this text, then it is a tradition that must be ideological
and so incorrect; hence the pass offered at least by Badiouiii.
Yet more, when the terms are considered, then the
incorrection will be seen in its confinement and the
remaining tradition would be one that is so broad as to
include Judaic discourses, but not so small as to exclude the
phenomenon of merely being human prior to the North
African Middle-Eurasian continental cultural pause or
existential hiatus that Judaism represents as an historical
moment of the human creature. This is to say, we will have
found the criterion for exiting the ideological ubiquity
posited by previous historical discourses, since if we are to
admit some essentially knowable history translated or
transcribed into the history that we know (regardless of
debate), then the phenomenon evidenced of Judaism has
yielded a subject inscribed by a particular meaning, of the
word, as this meaning does not unfold into a plethora of
divergent protestations, even as there might be an inscribed

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subject of multiple meanings; this is the meaning behind the
term colonize. On the contrary; it unfolds into exactly two
routes for meaning, as, again, Badiou, and indeed the author
of the blog In The Salt Mine has said, the issue is of the
twoiv.

Similarly unfortunate and unavoidable, if I had not


referred to some traditional compendium of interpretation
by which to substantiate this proposal, I would have most
likely lost the other half of readership, since then this essay
would leave open the possibility that the Gospels, at least,
recommend in their bare conventional instance of meaning;
which is to say, I would have no authority by which to offer
this essay but the disclaimer of fantasy and imagination.
This last then is the reason for the late 20th centurys
obsession with nihilism as well as the early 21st century
Object Oriented, post-humanist and the like discoursesv,
for the usual philosophical route is subject to the critique of
this essay, as we might see.
All the same and including the objections; the argument
that follows will be misinterpreted by many who wish to be
included, who wish to include all humanity.
So be it. I write what I write.
Besides; the interpretation I offer below might only
differ in the picture it presents, and not so much from the
traditional meanings and commentary that have been
offered throughout the ages.

Kair

In The Beginning
It may well be of humanity that we exist in a world
that is inconceivable in its absolution, that indeed, it is a
world of our own making. Singularly absent from any
conception of what such a world is, we may also have only
that world that has been passed down from the supposed
beginning of our heritage in life, and this then would be just
as unknowable as the world. Then, from the contradiction of
such an unknown past, our heritage would be at root a mere
living and not a human life as we make it, but a life as that
of a plant or a tree, in that is grows, does what it does, and is
as it is, making no real decision for its future. It is thus this
limit, that which proscribes its end as that which must be,
but cannot ever be, that reveals our lack, our effective
denial, and therefore, for the wise and truly free, the
necessity for absolution as well as its possibility.
The situation is intolerable to us, to our ever present
presumption of our own humanity, of our own preeminence.
Nevertheless, our rejection of this type of destiny arrives in
the two ways we may understand what humanity is.
Negated in our inception, our conception is the necessity of
consciousness against that which would be the basic life, of
which we are not but the conception. It may be that children
retain this basic life as they come into the world, ignorant, a
tabula rasa, if you will, genetically determined, if we can
really say this, to live exactly the life that is life eternally
interconnected and correspondent with all else, determined
and fixed in its course. But in that they are human, human
life, they become that which is human, which is
consciousness, which is human consciousness. Perhaps we
see this period of childhood as ignorance but definitely with
wonder, naive. Perhaps children come into the world as a
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sort of nether-being, of the basic life but also human, and the
distinction that comes to be known is exactly that which is
knowledge, the human life being itself human. Maybe
children are joined to humanity in this way of knowledge
and joined to life in being attached and dependent upon
their parents, having no opinion or novel thought as we
know it, but merely reflecting in their own being the life that
is humanity around them, their parents and family
primarily. That is, until the human life reaches a significant
point in the human life; perhaps this is puberty, perhaps a
little earlier, perhaps a little later, when the motion of
creation of life for being human must become more fully
human, in contra-distinction to the basic life, to further
humanity, for that much is lifes maxim, to further itself.
And perhaps there is this point when the human being as
such may part from the basic life that is held within a child.
This may amount to a decision, but decision would account
too much agency, for we are still dealing here with the life
itself, in a child at that but a decision nevertheless, that is
the mark between the heritage that is present in the
immediate parents and the immediate life that is present in
the child. We might call this point the moment of decisive
significance. Either way will always yield the human, but
hence we may have responsibility for the variation called
human individuality.
Such a significant event would have to do with the
moment when the human individual enters or becomes
human consciousness, that is conscious awareness of its
humanity. This is not so much a psychology of child
development or cognitive science as it is an indeterminable
moment in existence when the human being comes upon
itself, whatever the scientific stages of mental development.
Ones psychology has little to do with this moment, since
psychology takes manifestation as a means to determine an
aggregate plausibility of cause by which it can prescribe

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particular activity so to assert control of a mental issue or
problem and determine a future for an individual, even as it
implies the prescriptions, retroactively, as a description of
some truly real humanity, toward the future solution. Such
an endeavor excludes the exception where otherwise every
cause one would attribute to a state of affairs fails to account
for the next variation until it can determine another series
of causes. Twin children exposed to the same parenting can
nevertheless develop drastically different mentalities in one
case, and similar mannerisms in another; determination of
causes for such diversion or confluence, diagnosis and
application, are made upon the end events and extrapolated
into other posited similar cases and say little of actual cause.
We apply our best knowledge to the healthy growth of our
children, but how they actually manifest themselves in the
world is always based in chance and hope.

*
The weight of the world that is the greater general
heritage of humanity being human must be come upon by
the child, and in this time, also the life that is still dealing
with what it is to be human. Perhaps this is where the
weight is distributed, diffused if you will, such that Self and
Other become present or are presented to knowledge. The
tendency of life in the human would have it be merely life, so
the vector for being of any of the created species will have its
difficulty in becoming itself apart from mere life, a separate
entity in itself. In humans, consciousness may come upon
itself as it comes upon the human world, when the heritage
of the childs parents becomes situated in a polar awareness
for identity. At this time, the life in the child would be
presented to its consciousness, and in this, also the
awareness of its heritage as the rule of the parents, the
direction of the parents; the child is presented itself and the
heritage of the world, and the problem of how to deal with
the given world. The given human world must likewise
bifurcate; life becoming the human being as consciousness,

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the world of life cannot remain in itself as itself, but


necessarily must become the consciousness of the human
world. This consciousness is only the world heritage as
human and so would otherwise miss what world there could
be if it were only the life of the world, since this basic state
cannot be human. Consciousness has the world that
humanity may have a world by which to exist; it must have
its heritage, but this heritage, the heritage that is the basic
life as human, is insufficient to reveal itself as human, and
so must dismiss itself from itself again, as it did from the
basic life to be human, and bring the Other against itself to
be itself human. In other words, for there to be a human
being, it is not sufficient that the creature arrived in the
world for this move amounts to mere life that may be
human. Humanity arrives with knowledge, but this initial
knowledge is not knowledge of the world, but merely the
basic life as human in the world, of which the child repeats
in its conception, in its birth; humanity must have more
than consciousness, more than itself, it must have
knowledge of itself in the world. Even if this was a
simultaneous event, to our knowledge humanity must have
arrived in the world in this way, for, we, for meaning that
has any sense as we do know, could not have knowledge and
then human consciousness and we could not have the
human world and then life.
At this point we have the child coming to terms with
its humanity, which is the replaying of consciousness coming
upon itself, away from the basic life, and toward the creation
of the world.
The heritage of the world must reflect itself toward a
heritage of the human world; consciousness must take its
own establishment and establish an Other against it, or it
would fall back into the basic life and humanity would never
be. The growing child may embody a significance through,

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what we might call, a decision; uphold the residuum of the
basic life from its childhood and deal with the world by its
Self, or release the remnants of the basic life and deal with
the world by the heritage of the parents. This is why we can
say human

consciousness is the way of the Other, and why what is at


issue, then, is the nature of this Other. Yet the residuum of
life never leaves its manifestation, and the child is echoed in
the adult. The child who takes the parents heritage as the
means to deal with the world thus can be said to always
deny itself, which is to say, distance itself from the echo so
the basic life becomes an echo, for the sake of being human,
which is the orientation of being human in a world that is
not of its own making. This is a problem of an ability of
consciousness, its ability for conception. A concept cannot in
its inception over come the distance implemented by its
effect of coming to understand. Thus, the problems of this
route manifest as problems of relating objects to other
objects and thereby allows for psychology; such a science
serves to fill in the gaps between objects, an explanation
that arises out of the suture of faith (see below). As well, this
problem is compounded in that the individual then comes
upon the self, its Self, as an object, even as the residuum of
the basic life, the self, remains in the individual as its
foundations are denied in the taking the route of the
parents heritage. The self is then come upon as another
object, a subject-object, the separated element that is the
move into the route of the objective world of the fully
human. This then becomes the only issue we deal with in
existence.
On the other hand, the child who opts itself as the
way to deal with the world is undertaking, what to be
human is, an unnatural venture, since to be 'naturally'
human, one must relinquish that which upholds the basic
life reflected through consciousness as the unity of the

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world. The route of the Self, or perhaps the Subject, is thus


fraught with problems of consciousness because the basic life
is both being expressed in the human consciousness and
negotiating with the heritage that differentiates the world
through the object. The problem here is relating the Self,
which is the expressing of the basic life in the human
expression of life, and the object. So the child who takes the
route of the Self is never quite wholly or fully human
because human is that which has separated itself from, what
could be called, the heritage of the world, the consciousness
of the basic life, sufficiently enough to have the heritage of
the parents, such that the world becomes the Object which
is to say that the Object is never fully substantiated in such
a child but likewise the child never is able to quite become
fully itself human, since it is, nevertheless, human.
The child has sided with the basic life that lay within
it and so proceeds upon this truth against that truth of the
human heritage, which has renounced the basic life for its
humanity. Hence, the situation is that compounded upon
itself in the suggestion that there may be a human derived
knowledge of the world. The problem lay therefore between
these two elements of humanity; the human being that has
come upon its self in relation to the heritage of the world,
which is so because of consciousness and therefore
knowledge, and the human being that comes upon itself in
relation to the heritage of humanity, which rests in a
rejection of the basis of knowledge, namely, that the world
exists because of consciousness. In either we have an
irreducible condition, but by both we have a distinction that
can be acknowledged by one and not the other, since any
view is always forward, always of what is in front. While
what is found in relation to the heritage of the world and
retention of the basic life has its fully established identity
laid in front of it, as well as all the problem it comes across
but as well the history that becomes pronounced, for the

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human heritage what is in front has been placed there
through a displacement, which is, by denial of its actual
place for the sake of True Objects, namely, for the temporal
segregation of identity for past, present and future. This is
the reason that certain conventional (of the heritage of
humanity) investigations lead to nothing, because there is
really nothing to see but its own projections of meaning.

Both of these avenues, of the heritages of the world


and the human, reveal a movement of orientation: From
creation, which is of the minimal human, or back to
creation, which is the fully human. These movements are
ironic: Both move towards a creation of the world. The
former is creation as the human consciousness of the basic
life, and thus sees correspondence with creation moving
consciousness (subject) and form (object), and so does not
have the same separation which allows the Object (matter)
of the fully human. The minimal human is seen as
manifesting fate, as its inevitable activity, as moving
towards that which creation is moving in its movement; this
is a priori absolution, because the absolution is given prior to
experience as experience. The fully human looks upon or
back upon creation as an Object to gain and thus finds itself
in the function of time as progress; the past from which
things (the subject-object and the Object) came grants the
present in choice that further grants an uncertain future but
which progresses in knowledge of what the moment of
creation was/is. Thus the fully human moves towards
creation in that it seeks itself in the (past) moment of
creation and the future culmination of purpose, both of
which are always put off in seeking. Thus the fully human is
oriented upon a posteriori absolution, absolution that must
be gained and so will only occur after or because of
experience.
One might then suspect that the a priori view would
be the disadvantaged position, since it has but one sight, and

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the a posteriori that of a more comprehensive; this would


seems the most sensible of conclusions. Knowledge gained
after the fact appears to have more value than knowledge
which informs the fact; that experience may be created
through an act of will by considering past experience so as to
procure a bettering of experience through application of
what has been learned is the common sensibility of living.
One, in this way, would only see the childishness of the a
priori view. So indeed, we have our situation where by we
might see how such a distinction is made, for the fully is the
grown, is the actor, is the decision maker, is the
determinator of the future and thereby the past. Yet this one
can understand no a priori except within this scheme of free
activity, and thus is excluded from advantage, and is indeed
limited in its view in this manner. When one is subsumed in
this manner of coming upon reality, of the responsibility for
acting, of making proper decisions, he is removed from the
basic life. This separation is manifested through the terms of
decision and such terms limit what would otherwise be
known as the individuals freedom, for such freedom is
gained only through prior conditions which are denied in the
act of free choice, for the free choice extends itself into the
past such that I am and have been free. From the past she
gains a beginning upon which her activity may contribute or
detract, this as history offers the path and method by which
her activity may be valuable beyond her mere living, for
mere living also has a value. Such a history is de facto a
priori, it grants the individual the proper relations between
objects prior to her existence and so it is the basic Object
known to which the individual may then relate his
objectivity, her subject-object, in order to gain purpose for
herself in his activity. The individuals freedom stems from
knowledge of the past, yet while this knowledge of the past
is determined in the present, the condition of the past for
absolute free choice must be stable, and the contradiction of
this history which eternally enfolds upon itself shows the

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fallacy of a posteriori orientation: It is a priori. Further, such
a purpose based in history, in a meaningful creation, is
insufficient to provide an absolute purpose (except the
insufficiency of actual freedom which allows for a proper
ethics); to this end one must have a justified future, and this
future, as the necessary counterpart of the known past, so
far as the possible future cannot but exist without a known
past, is denied in the fully humans route, or orientation, as
it is provided the tentative present, and the segregated
reality given in this scheme of knowledge is then reflected in
the meaning of absolution. The wholeness of a posterior
absolution is suspended in basic ignorance, which is the
condition of the significant move away from the basic life.

*
In this way we come upon a more precise meaning of
the term Absolute. In human heritage, of the fully human,
the absolute is found always at arms length in the Object
that is the basic life renounced as such: A moment of
creation or the beginning of the universe in one sense, and
truth of the objective of knowledge in the other. The
absolute, and thus human solvency, is seen as a point of
absolution, as a purpose, a goal, a sought after reconciliation
of Self. But this activity is always thwarted in the fully
human. An Absolute thus manifests as hope, and as the
attempt to bring everyone under one roof in the act of
helping, of asserting propriety, of promoting the best and
correct way against the come upon incorrection, and this
assertion is understood, as a sort of disclaimer, as an act of
selflessness. But in this act, the fully human contradicts
itself (again) by negating life again, asserting as it does the
object of Self against what might be not the self, the Other,
at once attempting a reconciliation rooted in a state of
separation, that which is the fully human and not the basic
life. Absolution, the effective arm of what is understood as
the Absolute, be it God or no-God, is peeled back upon the

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object-self (it leaves the subject-object while covering with by


a distanced view), so that guilt (anxiety of being incorrect
which is the condition of the fully human) is relieved (or at
least suspended) again a selfish motive so as to allow
the human to remain in its heritage; the object-self,
consistently asserted against the Object, becomes absolved
into the Object through, not renunciation of the Object, but
denial of its own objectivity and thus asserts the
compromised Subject, which is effectively the subject-object.
What the fully human is after with absolution is that
which cannot be: An absurdity, a contradiction of that by
which humanity exists. Just as its humanity comes about
through the relinquishing of the basic life and its
correspondent minimal humanity, for the sake of the
heritage that is the establishment of the Object, absolution
is the relinquishing of the Object, which for the fully human,
is impossible, absurd; the fully human cannot understand
what might actually be meant in its relinquishment. Rather,
in short, the route of the fully human seeks in absolution,
not so much acceptance of the Object, but possession,
ownership, retention, and control of the Object; it seeks
absolute knowledge that is absolute truth of the Object.
Whether it be some sort of spiritual essence, illusion, only
knowledge, human model or a type of empirical or scientific
control, this method will see a relinquishing of something as
the absolute contrariety of that by which the fully human
gains reality, because there is no absence of things.
Similarly, even when this endeavor (the method of
absolutely gaining or controlling the Object) is seen in its
implausibility, and the individual comes to accept a reality
of the Subject/Object duality, absolution is still seen in the
method of attaining the Object, and absolution becomes a
manner of dealing with life, with the Objects of life, of
negotiating the terms of existing, and one of these terms is
the essential segregation of the Subject and the Object,

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which can only occur so long as and is indeed the definition
which posits the method the subject remains a subjectobject. The problem of absolution, then, has to do with the
meaning involved with avoiding the recursive reduction of
the Subject to the subject-object.

*
Such it is that Christianity has been posed as the
paramount of religious knowledge. The problem that is most
insistent in humanity, whether it be philosophical or
religious, is this subject-object duality; the problem of
human knowledge is how to reconcile the individual human
being and the world around it, and this determines typically
an ethical method. While technology, and its ideological
counterparts, philosophy, critical theory and anthropology,
offers one manner of dealing with the problem, Christianity,
in so much as it deals directly with the thought and
consciousness itself, offers the most solvent solution to this
problem; it addresses the apparent duality by offering
absolution that itself speaks dualistically. It can be no
coincidence that Christ advocates becoming like a child in
order to enter the kingdom of heaven, and that Christians
may be born again. Yet, here we have issue put toward
another object: Heaven, the Kingdom, at that! Likewise, we
have
the
double
movement
of
absolution

20

The Appropriation of Discourse


For its namesake, the significance of Jesus Christ
would be that he was one who has retained the basic life as
he renounced the human heritage. He would therefore have
been speaking not of objects, but of himself, his Self, his own
condition as he was expressing the basic life within him, and
thus true absolution. Yet, in that he was speaking to
humanity, they would only hear of the Object, and he would
thereby become, the object that is himself, the means to
absolution.
If Jesus Christ is an example of the minimally
human self, he would have been speaking of his own
relation as human to the basic life, as well as his relation as
it confers his humanity to the heritage of humanity, the
Object, and his gaze and words would have been then cast
outward, that is, in both directions, at once upon his own
distance from the basic life, as well as humanitys distance
from the Object. He would further see that his personal
situation could not be otherwise because the basic life is the
limit of knowledge; which is to say that the limit of being
human is the basic life as human, or knowledge as
consciousness, but that this situation allowed him to see
that others situation could be otherwise. He would see that
the fact that he is human prevents the absolution he
understands and that precisely because of this paradox of
human existence he is absolvedvi; which is to say that not
only the purpose, the object, of absolution cannot be
actualized, but that because of this reality, of his being
knowledge and acceptance of the fallacy of objective
absolution, he is absolved from the responsibility ones being
may have to the Object, as this responsibility confers a
21

22

Absolution

particular method, and he would see also the humanity


which finds itself in that responsibility is therefore trapped
in an illusion that would claim the Object to be obtainable.
Thus we find the one who saves humanity from itself,
relieves the sin of separation, the one who redeems, the one
who reconciles the Self with the Absolute, the one who
absolves the distinction of duality, which is the Subject and
the Object; this distinction, that which posits a duality
within the possibility for absolution, thus becomes one of
purpose, a distinction that is indicative of orientation upon
the world.
Jesus Christ, himself in his situation, seeing as he
does the situation of the World, acts according to the dictates
of his circumstance, which is reconciled, whereas the Object
is never reconciled absolutely. Christ is absolved from his
responsibility to the Object, but is human so his
responsibility remains in his humanity: Christs
responsibility is to the Subject, which, oddly enough, is also
responsibility for the object. By this (his) nature, he sees his
problem but is reconciled in it (the problem that is his
humanity) and sees humanitys problem of not being so
reconciled. In the same way that human activity is
concerned with overcoming (purpose) or negotiating (ethics)
the duality, his reconciliation is the motion of his existence.
For himself, he has only to Be himself, one who is reconciled
and does not negotiate, that is, does not have a
responsibility to objects, which is the plight of the human
who has renounced the human heritage for the sake of the
basic life. By this, he cannot be but an example of that which
is not the human heritage, not the fully human. He cannot
speak except through renunciation; the human populous
that he occupies thus cannot miss this, but they, the
predominance of people, likewise, but counter-punctually,
cannot help but come upon him and his words, his
expressing of the renunciation, as pertaining to, that is,

23
Kair
expressing, a method for appropriating the Object, albeit in
a different way than they are used to. Since his expression is
exactly renunciation of the Object, the fully human will not
hear of this except in as much as such expression will denote
a method for negotiating objects, and this deaf orientation is
resolute in Being offended. Yet Jesus knows of his objectivity
and being so oriented, as he is, he has already given it up.
His life is only that he lives, is only that he expresses what
he is, as this is knowledge, and this expression of knowledge,
though conveyed in the objectivity of the fully human, does
not correspond with the knowledge of the Object, but
renounces it. So it is that the interaction of these polemics,
Jesus as reconciled to himself and Jesus as reflecting that
which is of the heritage and is not reconciled by the
knowledge of the Object, inevitably produces not only Jesus
coming complete in his minimal humanity by relinquishing
to the basic life that last vestige of being human, his
physical body, but also indicates, indeed fulfills, that
knowledge of the Object which designates Jesus but so
rejects him. The knowledge which confers upon him his
objectivity, which is the reconciliation, redemption, and
completion which Jesus himself is because of knowledge that
is the basic life, is that which so offends the humanity of the
Object. Hence, for the human heritage Jesus Christ becomes
a symbol of the human situation that refuses to admit, is
indeed incapable of acknowledging, its own basis of heritage
as such. Humanity therefore and thereby needs a redeemer,
a savior, who can absolve humanity from its sin, which is
the contradiction in discourse involved with a responsibility
to the Object, that worldly thing, as opposed to
responsibility to, what we could say is, God. Jesus Christ
becomes that thing, that human being, that son of god, that
sought after Object, which can relieve humanity of its
burden. The Absolution which Jesus Christ (the subjectobject) can bring creates and affirms reflexively the
condition of the world and God; that which may be the basic
life as an Object then, the thing to be attained, is God. And

24

Absolution

where there is no admittance of a God as such, the purpose


and efforts of human knowledge, its heritage, carry over in
to an effect that amounts to the potential to gain absolute
understanding of the World.
.

25

PART TWO

Did you say this yourself, or did others tell you.

26

27

The situation in which we find our humanity is


encompassed in Part One. It is the situation that occurs
when we have become fully invested in uncovering the
nature of the True Object. The result of coming upon reality
in such a way, for consciousness, is the silence which
accompanies the method. There will be those who will hear
in this essay the resonance of the Object, and there will be
those who hear another resonance, and together, by such
knowledge, this essay rings true. As long as the method
remains viable as the one and only route, the silence cannot
be spoken about, for it is that which allows the effort for the
Object. Thus it is that the child returns the voice of essence
to its vault so that it might hold the world, such as its
method is general and non-essential; so there are those who
acknowledge the silence and beckon to its knowing, and
those who leave the silence to its quietude and reach out
away into the void. The child comes to that moment of
significance which begins maturity, and from then on a
silence becomes him, in one way or another. The minimal
human moves into that which is most human in-itself. The
fully human finds its voice from the silence that allows for
the knowing of the Object, and by this he proposes to abolish
the silence, as a purpose to know the True Object in-itself,
and thereby realize himself as an object; though the silence
remains, it is denied. But either way, it is from this silence
that we come upon the world.
*
In the ideas of the study of human mythology it has
become commonplace that the story of Jesus Christ (indeed,
many Biblical stories) is seen to mimic and reverberate the
stories of other mythologies. There are many similarities
28

29
Kair
between Jesuss birth and, say, the Egyptian mythological
stories. The comparisons between mythologies are better
taken up by other, more scholarly authors. If there is some
sort of common human theme which is reflected in the
various mythologies then I see that to speak of one is to
speak of the significance of the others, and that to address
the specific theme in one is likewise addressing the
possibilities of the meaning of the themes in the others. I am
most familiar with Christianity and so will begin my
investigation here, if for the sake of convenience. I hope to
sometime be able to speak upon the other stories in the way
I have here. Such a view of Jesus Christ affords the
perfection of the story in that it fulfills not merely some
mythological or religious belief, for such a story of a
redeemer is but one possibility for a problem found in life,
but indeed addresses the significant problem of human
existence.

The story reveals a condition of human existence that


cannot be overcome but which constantly presents itself; it
establishes the present as the past projected into future. The
story itself speaks of itself as a present past while speaking
of our present, and indicates by this the eternal moment of
human existencevii. The coming of a messiah takes from the
past prophesies and accounts for it in the present. As we
read we come upon a history that informs ourselves as of a
past, but this is an Object of our humanity, informing us of a
history. At the same time an elusion is denied, one that
works on us as we put it off, informing us of what we would
not know because we have set aside the basic life for our
humanity. This elusion is the story I wish to explore here.
For it is by the story that we avoid our selves as fully
human; it allows the individual to remain silent in-itself.
The story becomes a mirror in to which we look, as fully
human, and forget our selves, identifying that which is our
Being with the being of the image. We then make our cause
the speaking of the image. It is just this image I wish to

30

Absolution

avoid in this essay, as I attempt to give voice to that which


has been essentially silent.
*
In reading the story of Christ, as with many Biblical
stories, an interesting issue arises; how can the author know
this? And if this is not known, who am I as the reader? For
the believers, often this question is not asked; the story is
taken as a record of fact, of a history that is true; the author
and the reader are seen as complicit in a method of
conveyance of truth. But again, the exploration of this essay
attempts to avoid these more objective realities, because I
might say that indeed it is true, but then I beg the question
of my being a believer or a skeptic, and I would cause all
sorts of confusion where I seek to be clear. So I ask, first,
how is this story coming to me? Through the author and the
scribes and the translators yes, but this is not my question
either. As I read it, it has significance to me as it has had
significance to others and that it has a most significant
significance in this way. Even if I deny that the story is true,
in a faithful way, that is, a religious, institutional, way, I
still have here, before me, the story in its totality, of all the
teachings about it, the history I indicate above, and the text
itself and that I could have gotten it for free merely upon
the asking. Here is the story that has effected and
influenced effecting and influencing my life, my history
as well as what I know as American and European history, if
not world history; here is the story before me, in front of me
in this book. The story is coming to me as I have come upon
it.
Then, going backwards, the Gospels of the New
Testament are presented to me. The narrators tell me the
story. In so much as I may doubt the veracity of the
historical truth as a tenant of faith, I have to ask how they

31
Kair
knew this story. If there was a Jesus Christ, how did they
know of what happened at his birth? They were not there;
how were they privy to all the various circumstances and
situations? Indeed, here I must give them the benefit of the
doubt and assume that they were there for at least some of
it, but then how come they, the authors, are not mentioned
or implied in the story? Were they acting as journalists?
Even if they were merely recording the events, even if some
sort of cultural norm prescribed a certain anonymity, I
cannot but see that if they were there for the events of
Jesuss life, they most likely were not there for his birth.
Even behind the historians revealing that the gospels were
most likely written after Jesuss death and probably the
death of the apostles, it is not difficult to understand that
the authors were probably given or accumulated the story
through a conglomerate of stories, such that the gospels
themselves were the closest rendition of what actual story
was itself available, and, then again, perhaps the event of
Jesuss life was so profound that the story remained
sufficiently viable to be brought to the authors intact, but it
may also be that the story had come to them in just that
particular way, baring little or no resemblance to an actual
event. In sum; at minimum it was a profoundly impactful
story.

Three of the authors of the Gospels (Mathew, Mark


and John) are so moved that they speak without feeling they
have to qualify their authorship personally, but Luke grants
readers purchase upon what may be going on there. Luke
gives us an insight to what may have been actually
occurring in the writing; right off in the first lines, he
qualifies:
Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set
forth in order a declaration of those things which
are most surely believed among us, even as they
delivered them unto us, which from the beginning

32

Absolution

were eyewitnesses, and ministries of the word; it


seemed good to me also, having had perfect
understanding of all things from the very first, to
write unto thee in orderthat thou mightiest
know the certainty of those things, wherein thou
hast been instructed.viii
The liberties I take upon the text may seem
exaggerated to some, but the reading put forth in this essay
may just come to have a more significant ring than
traditional religious or historical interpretations. It is
obvious that Luke had heard this story as it was passed
down from those who were there and subsequent preachers.
We ask, why? So what if a story was passed down? There
seems no need for Luke to continue passing it along by
taking the time to write it out; all the traditionally
significant stories were recorded by scribes; he is not part of
some unbroken oral lineage, in fact, this sect that will
become Christianity has no lineage at this point, or at least
no claimed, overt, lineage, no responsibility to the tradition
that has come to him intact; what will be Christianity is
most likely a break (a renunciation?) from what has been
given to him; in fact, it is exceedingly obvious that the most
proximate and relevant cultural and ideological tradition
(Judaism) is at great odds with its progeny. Granted, we
may and should seek similarities all through the ancient
world as to what was going on culturally, locally and across
the world, to see how this story came about, but still, there
was no vested cultural-traditional (read: institutional)
interest in his recording this specific story. And, it is indeed
that this story is linking what has come to be seen as a true
history as prophesy to the actuality of its meaning in the
present, aside from what direct institutional or cultural
heritage has brought him. The story was not merely
significant from some historical sense, because, as this story

33
Kair
came to Luke, he had a perfect understanding of all things
[of Christ] from the very first, and though many before him
have set forth a declaration of what we surely believe,
Luke thought it would be good to put it in writing that thou
might know the certainty of those things, wherein thou has
been instructed. It is not so much that here was a story
which made sense to him, but that Luke already knew
perfectly the meaning of what had been brought to him. He
again indicates his position in the matter by stating his
intensions for others: In that thou has been instructed and
know of these events, here I will tell you so you may know
the certainty of those things, as I, Luke, have had a perfect
understanding of these things from the very first.

*
The genealogy given in Mathew of the lineage of Jesus
can be seen as a justification of experience. Perhaps the
author was given this lineage that had been kept since the
time of Abraham, but this seems implausible since more
contemporary authors have attempted the same type of
lineages to justify their faith; but it is possible. In any case,
such a recording must be seen in the context of the
individual attempting to reconcile the object of his faith to a
reality so that his faith rings actually true, instead of just
faithfully true. No one would attempt to draw a conclusion of
this nature if something within the person did not require it,
did not compel the person to see such a connection. He must
have felt a need as well as a reason to propose a lineage for
Jesus. The author must have been, at once, attempting to
justify his own faith, in that, one, there was an impulsive
sense about the whole thing, two, the significance of Jesus
must have some linkage to the holy past, but also, three,
that the author had such a significance in his being of faith;
he was compelled to let others know of the reality of the
significance. It seems unlikely that it is merely an intention
for propaganda, merely as some power play. The faith of the

34

Absolution

author was enough, and in so much as faith makes trueix,


such a truth must also be proven for others to know. The
purpose is the same as Lukes introduction, and indeed, in
his third chapter, Luke also gives a genealogy.
Yet, an analysis of this sort is neither here nor there;
it tends to argue over the True Object, which is the plight of
more scholarly endeavors. If the author was merely a scribe,
a transcriptionist, then we can set aside the meaning of the
story in the impersonality that occurs in the printing
presses; the pressings merely indicate that somehow the text
seems important, so let us discuss it. For all this, we could
say that the latest issue of People is just as important. No;
I, as Luke, Matthew, Mark and John were presented, have
been presented with this story. The authors present us this
story because they are attempting to deal with an
experience, to situate it in space, to reconcile the Object to
their experience of truth, by reconciling human experience to
such truth of the story. In this same way, I attempt to
diffuse the historical intent and infuse what meaning may
be gained by the attempt itself.
We have the authors of the Gospels telling us their
own experience through the authority of the storyx. This
feature, along with the bare fact of any encountering it as
such, indicates that the actuality of which the story tells
marks a point in the development of humanity. If Jesus can
be said to be an individual who renounced the human
heritage of the Object, for the sake of the basic life, then we
can see that the authors we speak of, by which the story of
Christ comes to us, understand what this move is but are
unable to reconcile it entirely with their beingxi. Here
exhibits the fault of the traditional Christ narrative; it
indicates the possibility of such an individual, but through
the individual who is not that possibility. But I have
indicated above in Part 1 that Jesus himself, as a renouncer

35
Kair
of the Object, was likewise caught in this same dilemma. We
should see then that Jesus did not write this story about
himself, nor did he ask anyone to write it; in fact, as we will
see, he was appealing only to that experience which already
existed in his apostles because of the nature of his Being
and because of this basic experience the story is written. So,
if we also consider that the story of Jesus contains elements
that are similar and indeed carry over from other earlier
stories from other lands and cultures, it might be seen that
the story of Jesus may have been less a story about an
actual, single person, but an after the fact conflation of
history recording what had been come upon and being
expressed as such by a few people, exercising their own
minimally human existence in correspondence with the
actual human events which reflected and are responsible for
the resonance of stories prior and leading up to that time of
Christ, and that the writers of the Gospels were likewise
such individuals.

*
To more fully describe this motion, I would like to
draw an analogy. I am not a scholar of contemporary
popular culture and I am sure the picture I pose here could
be ripped apart in any number of ways. Keep in mind that I
am not attempting to draw a correspondence between
objects, but rather to indicate the process of meaning by
which such conflation may have occurred. Take the example
of the development of popular genres in music through the
20th century; here we have a development that was long in
the making before such genres were established. One could
easily make a cultural analysis that stems from the
Industrial Revolution a hundred years prior to what became
our current state of music, or mode of presentation, which
moves through the local cultures into, say, folk music, such
as the blues, country-western, bluegrass, swing, jazz then
rock and roll, to perhaps the more directly artistic music

36

Absolution

communities of the Beatniks, the close following with the


Beat Writers, the golden eras of jazz and rock and roll
itself, the Hippies, or counter cultural movement of the 60s,
soul, funk, the emergence on the scene in the 70s of New
Music, Gospel, Funk, Punk Rock, Heavy Metal and New
Wave, Disco, Rap, Hip-Hop, these moving into House or
modern club dance music and Grunge or Alternative music,
to the proper scenes we have now, the genres so numerous
and intermingling they seem to defy their own distinctions.
Of course, many would have their opinions about what
actually constitutes any of these genres or a history thereof,
and Im sure many others could be found, but these that I
have listed most probably fit into a general, if not outdated,
scheme that most could recognize.
At root is the indication that a number of people,
hardly the majority, came upon an experience in themselves,
and came together by the mere circumstance of acting out of
such an experience. Each genre began in this loose
association, if we can call it that, drew others, who may or
may not have had the same experience, and somehow
developed an articulation of what they were doing to thus
become a genre. By virtue of the nature of the originating
experiences and the phenomena of the meaningful subject,
and in a manner of speaking, the majority of people was
looking for the experience, but could not have it, and this is
due exactly to the identification of the genre as it
simultaneously becomes a vehicle for the expression of
power. If there indeed was any group that could be said to
have had the same experience and who coincidentally were
looking came to be the loose association, and once it was
defined, those who came after were those, more and more,
who do not understand. The defining of reality in such a
way that the group of such an experience became a group
and defined a genre, thereby excluded those who came after,
even though these subsequent individuals also contributed

37
Kair
to the establishment of the genre. Soon the experience that
was the event of the loose originating group had passed and
left only the idea of the experience in the definition of what
it was, as if it still is. Still others felt they too had the same
experience but were excluded by the mere fact of the genre
defined as it is, but the experience could not be dismissed,
and thus what may be seen as similar experiences tending
toward unity in the same way were catalyzed into new forms
of expression, each new experience drawing the included
and defining itself by the excluded a genre, new loose
associations arose around the rejection, creating further
new genres. Jazz and bluegrass, city and rural music, let to
Rock and Roll, which became rock; rock let to Heavy
Metal and Punk; Disco to dance music; rap and disco
morphed into house music and Hip Hop, which perhaps
contributed to the Rave scene; etcetera. Despite what and
where charting flows, the list of permutations goes on.

This process is of the identification of things to relate


the experience, which grants the relation of objects to other
objects, sounds to sounds, looks to looks, and draws out the
labels, the genres, from their more organic bearings; as we
hear often, for example: They were rap before there was
rap. The solution people look for, the real thing of the
identified genre, is already dissolved in the label, and the
denial of this fact works to continue to re-establish it,
coalesce what it could have been that was missed into
something that others could have, and thereby effects
definition; ironically, the method for which producing the
differentiation. Yet within this type of movement, there are
those who are drawn who indeed have had the experience
and the event, as such differentiation might be occurring,
and thus do fall into the attempt to find it in a thing, the
labeled genre, and remain in the experience itself, as the
event, as the movement for definition carries on. Again,
then, these essential experiencers often reject the Object
that has been made of the previous moment that has been

38

Absolution

made generic, and thus move into the new form of the basic
experience, lending as it happens to another definition of
popular genre, all the while continually falling away into
silencexii.
Again, this is so much only to indicate a process by
which humanity shows up in the world, and not necessarily
a direct comparison of things similarity of meaning. Yet,
attending the difference between the development of 20th
century genres and the development of sects of Christianity,
we might see a difference in orientation upon the world. The
motion of differentiation occurs from a most basic level from
experience to definition. Genres are necessarily fleeting and
of the past, made into a history for historys sake, by which
others may now establish the new, where by labels then
occur simultaneous with the experience, which are really the
indicator of the passed event. Christianity lacks this
secular quality for success, but if we look at the Protestant
Reformation we might see a similar generic process
occurring here too. Experience is often set aside for the
definition; the continuing effervescent cycle of definition
emphasizes the Object as the pre-existence by which we may
come into the world; e.g. blues and jazz were pre-existing
objects that allowed rock and roll; Catholicism a pre-existing
condition for Protestantism. Thus it may be said that there
is no originating experience, but that this too was itself a
response to a definition, a genre, a thing, an Object; the
problem thus only concerns by where or when we decide to
stop the cycle and begin to define. By this apparent reality,
the experience is relegated to a passing fashion, a generic
fancy, and the definition is held for what is real and lasting,
as if the definition holds within it as it is passed along, what
is true.
Hence, we have the heritage of the world of the
human being. The fully human sees itself in the Object

39
Kair
through a denied effect and attempts to surmount the denial
and reconcile itself through a relation of objects; the
minimally human renounces the Object and is reconciled by
the basic life in experience as objects are integral to this
experience. So it is upon consideration of these two routes
that a conflation of these two humanities perhaps implies for
Christianity that there was no individual person that was a
singular Christ but that the term was more an identifier of a
motion, indeed, an experience come upon by a few
individuals reconciled in the basic life, who renounced the
Object as the means for absolution, that Jesus was perhaps
one who was more vocal and overt in the experience. The
more fully human element, the majority, in the effort to
reconcile their being to the Object, thus defines the Object
toward and upon a path of truth that at best is fleeting but
typically never is found and the basic experience of
individuals is taken up and again conflated as an Object, i.e.
traditional religious dogma. Hence, what occurs is an ironic
movement of humanity where to speak about one is to speak
about the other, and where the meaning of the story of
Christ becomes a desired object in one, based in the hope for
reconciliation, and for the other, a present reconciled reality:
A common history divided in the potential of denial.

Indeed, as this process (of essential and generic


vacillation, where the essential experience is always
extricating itself from the developed generic and the generic
out of the essential) becomes more definitely identified, the
essential originating experience itself becomes objectified as
the process is defined. The individual is gradually pushed
out of its ability for essential experience, arises out of its
being, of its subject-hood, and through this process becomes
marginalized to the extreme, which can be to say, to
transcendence. Such extremity is eventually discounted and
excluded and the essential motion of the individual has no
other option for its experience than to recoup the objectifying
element better to join them if you cant beat them, might

40

Absolution

be an appropriate expression for this last ditch effort: This is


the fully human process of history in reality. Hence we have
the types of motion whereby history is wrought; for example,
the moment of the Western mode of pop-art in the 20th
century leading to our current state of social-art-media
where ones identity is specifically and inextricably
connected with an object-genre. In the opposite motion, we
have the example of a type of 'essentialist' Christian, say,
Martin Luther, precipitating from Catholicism in this way to
form what would come to be known as Lutheranism. And
likewise, as the essential nature of the experience avoids the
generic position, we see in the 18th-20th centuries
Christianity that itself diversified, then, impotent in its
diffusion, was rejected for spiritualism and paganism that
was then recouped in the late 20th century in New Age and
'Fundamentalism', all of which definition lead to the
extremity again, continually reifying as it appears again,
the proof of a transcendent truth. Hopefully, finally, we
might now negotiate the objects in such a way where the
human being is recouped away from the Object in the
explication offered in this essay, a manner that establishes
as it manifests again an essential partition in meaning, an
irreconcilable condition of being human whereby reality
upholds a firm universal definition of itself, and only itself.
*
What we see in the introductions of the Gospels is an
exemplification of the kind of motion described above. The
Gospels evidence or tell of a significant moment in existence
that not only shows up in world history but in the single
human life. They, including subsequent New Testament
books, tell of this motion; it is a motion of silence wherein
the individual may come upon the moment of decisive
significance; which is to say, if the moment is to occur then it
is when that which has been silent speaks if it does not

41
Kair
speak, then history is reified in the heritage of the Object
(the fully human heritage) and the moment is dissolved into
the infinity that is the potential of every moment. Jesus
presents that silent voice as Christ; the apostles the
reification of the Object and the recurrent extrication from
it; together they illustrate the human existential constant.
That which is most absurd, the silent voice, a denial of the
human heritage, is either vehemently enacted upon, or it
retains its silence, that is, remains an invalid object, and is
enfolded into the sanity and sensibility of the heritage,
unknown and un-ventured: It remains silent. So the
remaining silent is the issue, and is what I endeavor to
enlightenxiii. The guardian of the Object rests upon the
silence as the objective of knowledge, to uncover that which
is covered in silence, that which is unknown in potential, so
it has the world of Objects to negotiate and information to
learn. She is on the new road, mapping the path; yet she
rides upon the silence that is never heard, even as she sees
the silence is gaining voice through her discovery. This is the
meaning of transcendence, of the transcendental clause. As
she moves, the silence thus remains silent at all times and
decision has no significance but against that which has been
mapped; though she sees toward the new as an experience,
she merely repeats the old in experience. The renouncer is
of a different stature. The Object has been mapped; the
silence heard. His plight has to do with the silence; he is the
speaker of the silence. Though he sees the old as his
experience, he repeats the new in his experience.

The problem of that which remains has to do with


distinguishing between these positions it has to do with
decisive significance since they (the positions) at once,
again, describe both; as each description of position taken on
its own may apply to either polemic, when the other is read
the reader comes upon a paradox. The problem for the
reader must be in what place either clause-meaning must
fall, which clause-meaning sticks with which subject (which

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real subject-object). If such a decision is not come upon then


the reader has the already-made decision of the heritage
that sees the paradox as merely interesting, but not
significant. The human heritage will avoid the significance
of the moment: When one description is attached to a
specific identifying meaning (that is, one of the object-terms,
or maybe pre-positions), the other description then moves to
describe its counterpart, yet, when the clauses are
separated, each describes the same, but either, identity. Like
chasing the end of a rainbow, the reader chases to define
the one clause and inevitably only reveals the other end, as
the one before him disappears. The reader typically, usually,
normally cannot but look at only one at a time, through one
at a time, the other always just out of sight in the periphery.
As we move to describe these two positions away from
ambiguity between them, in order to distinguish each, the
minimal and the fully human, the meanings drawn by the
reader from the defining clauses conflate, and it is this
conflation which routinely identifies the Object, and that
which is silent routinely remains silent. Thus, that which we
seek to identify and to give voice to here is that periphery,
that first and final object, that meaning which cannot be
held in its place but which is always identified like an echo
in the reserved clause. Yet, the fully human will be stuck in
the certitude of the object and will not understand what has
been given here as he will continue to seek the truth in the
generic. Hence, we have the polemics indicated, and we have
the
route
before
us.

The Virgin Birth


The pervasiveness of the Object designates the
meaning of faith; faith determines what is true; faith
informs truth; faith makes true. It is from the depth of the
silence that we come upon our being in the world. In so
much as we understand our self in reference to a history, we
have faith in the Object and will explain away any
inconsistencies to avoid the inconsistencies by which we
make the explanation possible. Such inconsistencies we have
indicated earlier in this essay. Either the individual will
decide upon the ridiculousness, the absurdity, of such a
proposal, that it really indicates nothing other than the
inconsistency itself, or the meaning of the situation will
relieve the individual of the (prior, objectival, traditional,
historical) rational weight of decision upon the matter.
We come now upon the significance of the Virgin
Birth. The Virgin Birth is proposed to signify that Jesus was
from the start not merely human; which is to say, even as a
child in the potential of his being an adult, never could he be
fully human. Let us look at this. He was born of one without
another, but by the other he was born; how could Jesus
speak of this? He was born unnaturally. How can one speak
of himself as having an unnatural origin? Though he would
speak of it, it would be entirely natural to him and it would
only be in reference to what he comes upon in others that he
would know that his origin is unnatural. If he were to
believe these people who told him of his unnatural birth, it
would make no sense to him since to him it was entirely
natural and thus, if he were to speak of his being birthed by
a virgin, he would, in every case, be lying; which is to say, at
43

44

Absolution

odds with himself and asserting a propriety over the truth of


the matter. Since being conceived without (at least) two
people having had intercourse (discourse) is unnatrural, he
would have to be speaking in a manner that no one could
understand; he would have to be speaking from a place of
contradiction, from a place that the fully human method for
understanding reality marks as false.
Let us unpack this situation. There is no human that
could be born that was not consummated by a man and a
woman. Yet here Jesus is; a human. He is a human who was
born of a virgin, of a woman who was never known by a
man. Of course this must be divine intervention. Yet, if we
have not been forthright in this essay so far, then we should
be clear: If here we are realizing the total situation, that is,
if Jesus is indeed human at some level and he is thoughtful
as such creatures are, then if he were to believe that he was
born by divine intervention and speak of it, at some level of
his interest for others he would also be lying, since every
aspect of his humanity would be incapable of overcoming the
discrepancy that occurred in his knowing that he was born
of a virgin: A virgin does not give birth to a child, and to
repeat: By all natural conceptual rights, there is no
conception without a conventional history of previous
concepts, of prior ideas that inform the concept of a
tradition, of a human interaction. We cannot dismiss from
what is able to have meaning that there are fundamental
bases of being human, and that these bases must have some
sort of foundation in sex, and by conventional default,
gender. Hence, where Christ was born of a virgin, there does
conception arise by an unnatural route; and this is exactly
the situation we have before us. Where there may be what is
natural, there do we have a particular orientation upon the
situation wherein we may find ourselves, a situation that is
held within a particular conceptual frame of reference. The
paradox presented, then, which only occurs while

45
Kair
referencing the fully human scheme of meaning, is solved
through again imbuing an ability for a term to indicate
something absolutely true, seeing terms as evidence of truth
self-evidently (in potential), but albeit redundantly, this
time, something supernatural, or something that lay outside
the capacity and or purview of our ability to know of it. And
likewise and correspondently we have an introduction of a
kind of paganism, which is to say, a kind of pluralistic
knowing that is not based in a monastic order of things. So
against this potential for reaching out, evidently, that is,
apparently, which is to say, to refer to that which can be
conveyed honestly, there is no one God, no possibility of an
entity that is separate from our known existing universe;
every possibility of such an entity collapses within the
possibility involved in exactly what I know as an extant,
that any such entity becomes again another item entirely
contained with the knowledge of it. In this knowing, the
terms become the issue, and in this knowing, no divine
intervention occurred because divinity is always in reference
to what is humanly known and what is humanly known has
been conceived as a condition of previous ideas, previous
historical terms. But in Jesus this is all there is: He knows
that he was born of a virgin or does he? Again, in one
sense, in order for him to know this, he would have to have
been told; he would not have known this from experience
except that his experience was becoming a certain age so he
could understand what it meant when he was told. This
would imply that his mother probably told him, or perhaps a
close family friend; but at all times he would already have a
context to be able to know anything at all. So this is not
anything that we can really imagine as a normal situation;
this is not that Mary had a fling one night or that she was
raped. Indeed, if this was the case, she may have well told
Jesus that she was a virgin but conceived him; perhaps we
could then make a psychological correlation to Jesus during
his ministry associating with a whore. But this is great
speculation; we stick with the story that is come upon. Why

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Absolution

would Jesuss life be told in the context of being born of a


virgin if such an expression, an expression which posits God,
an actual divinity, is merely an expression of a totally
inclusive existence? Rather, the question becomes: Can we
see that the alternate explanation offered through this
essay, apart from religious faith, is at least equally
plausible, and in being so, thus more probable? That Chirst
Jesus was conceived apart from the historical tradition of a
prior ideal state, and that arising within that real state he
was thus born of a virgin. It is the inclusivity that marks the
place and point of intervention of God, because what is not
included by this world, this state of conception, is indeed
what the historicity of the matter produces, what this essay
attempts to shed light upon.
Further, the story tells of Jesus's birth. There is
nothing written to conclude about what Jesus may have
known about it. And what we have said earlier: Was there a
reporter who hung around Jesuss parents from the
beginning and then caught up with him later? Even if this
were a story passed down intact, what single person or
group could or would have been so keen and open minded as
to notice Jesuss and Johns parents strange events, and
then to not say anything about it to any one, even in support
of the auspiciousness, then to further follow them (in the
margin, mind you) until Jesus was born, and then even unto
John's and Jesus meeting at the stream? Even given our
idea of the verbal traditions of ancient cultures, where in
this case someone witnessing Mary, a virgin giving birth,
the event so miraculous, then passed it on and through 30
and more years the story remained a faithful telling of the
true event, we have to wonder just how effective such a
verbal tradition may be, since we must ask if the the skills
required of such a cultural memory might have faded as the
reliance upon book script had proved itself. If merely rumor
or what we might call urban legend, we should be even

47
Kair
more skeptical of the veracity of the actual event. Never
mind that at the time there was no way to verify that indeed
Mary had the experience the Bible tells; again, the same
critique could be applied, i.e. was someone there to witness
Marys encounter with an angel? Indeed; the experience
such as proposed of Mary is also included in the subject of
this essay. It seems entirely far fetched to even imagine that
the story of the virgin birth could have stayed attached and
consistent with a single individual so as to constitute an
autobiographical account. At best, given what we know of
verbal traditions and the tendency for fully human attitudes
to be impressed, we could have the seeds for the emergence
of a generic mythology of faith.

We must throw away such mythological suppositions


and investigations; we can no longer afford to rest our heads
in speculative logicking of what-ifs, and equally devious
religious evidential hearings. In order to remain consistent
with what humanity is, then in that a human is now and
was a human at all times in history, we should see that the
conception of history as progress in understanding occurs
through words, and words, though they are seen or
understood to refer to an object, the issue of what such terms
gain merely reveals the exegesis of this essay: To wit, terms
either gain the True Object, or terms only gain other terms.
Here we argue the latter, so in that there may be a God, we
must excise this term from our historical meaning and bring
it up to date: The effect of God is constant, but terms tend to
convey stability in history such that we see the term God as
changing or becoming involved as an anachronistic ideaxiv
against the progress of knowledgexv. There is the knowledge
contained in the story, of Jesuss knowledge of himself; then
there is the knowledge of Jesus that others know. There are
those who see this story as telling the truth of the matter,
but we leave this alone directly as the explication of this
essay concerning faith will fill this out. More pertinent is the
truth which allows for such manifestations. This may be

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Absolution

called existential knowledge, which is itself based in a faith


that explains Jesus in the way we have proposed: Jesus born
of a virgin presents the absurdity that some extra-universal
element was involved, but also not able to be involved. In
truth, before anyone could speak of this situation they would
be struck dumb, incapable of speaking anything sensible
about it. If one were to say God, then he would be lying and
covering this lie through his own hypocrisy; he could only
say God in as much as he believed that such an entity
existed, and such a belief, in reference to the possibility of
being known, manifests as belief only the reflection in what
is denied; if it has to be believed then there is something
about it that is missing, but what it is that is missing in
order for there to require belief is denied in the act of
believing: That which is denied is the same that offends the
rationality of the Object. The Object always depends upon a
transcendental source, or creator of meaning, that not only
can argue first cause but also in the absence of logic ends
upon supplying the basis of rationality that we call as a
catalyst for rational thinking intuition and/or inspired
thought. This is to say, the notion of rationality being based
in having and inherent blind spot is offensivexvi: So much
as Jesus has become human, God is denied. Belief arises
when one has to make a decision based upon a situation that
is inexplicable, a rational choice within an absurd situation,
and the choice transforms the absurd into the rational, so
that the terms of the choice re-invent, re-establish and represent what was absurd in terms that relate True Objects
of reality.
*
This is not a story written First Person, by Jesus
about himself. But it does implicate a person of significance:
He who has been born of a virgin has made the absurd
decision that could not be made because the Object has been

49
Kair
rejected from birth. Again, the positions conflate. The fully
human makes the decision into the history of the Object and
so develops religion and ideology around the objective of a
woman who has not had sexual intercourse giving birth to a
son. In so taking this route the fully human could not have
decided to consider this situation any other way, that is,
without considering the objective truth, that we have, at
least, a story about it, of the given virgin birth. A decision
not based upon this truth is taken to be absurd, or in other
words, not valid, meaning, there is no decision to be had.
Here, then we have the minimal human who has renounced
the Object through a moment of significance and so makes
the decision that could not be made because it is absurd.

The significance of the virgin birth occurs in the


distinction between the fully and the minimal human, that
is, as we find ourselves in existence. The fully human will
see this exegesis of the virgin birth as interesting; the
minimal human will not. The minimal will find it
significant. Hence, the minimal will be effected in
knowledge; such knowledge will be significant enough to be
accompanied by an experience, and this experience will
amount to his realization of his own virgin birth. The fully
human, attached to his story, may find it curious, but will
see the virgin birth as referring to the story of Jesus that we
find in the mytho-historical book we call the Bible, and will
either merely be interested in the curious idea presented in
this essay, or be offended and write it off as ridiculous.
*
If I am attempting to avoid the object of history as an
Object of faith and stay in the fact of history, in as much as I
am addressing absolution, that which reconciles the Object
to existencexvii, I must then be speaking not so much of
Jesuss objectivity as a man-god, nor his mythological aspect;
for, when I do this in an honest dialogue, I can only reduce

50

Absolution

such things back in to the historical analysis and maintain


the Object as such that I recourse back into a religious faith.
I must be speaking about something else.
When I consider my place, my situation, here, reading
about this virgin birth, and couple it with the fact of the
significance of this story, as well as that it is somehow a
spiritual venture, I reflect upon myself. I see then what
may be the reflection and I become that which I am with
minimal qualification in knowledge. I remove myself from
the potential of my Self as the Object of history and I am
come upon myself, by myself, as a being that is separated
from its birth; that is, the physical birth that I know of my
history is exactly that: A story. I have been removed from
the actuality of my own birth and my ability to remember it,
and in this feature of my being, I am left with an
inevitability of knowing that at some point I came upon
myself as myself. As a child, I may have had some idea of
self, but it was intact as its own, in childish thinking and
awareness of the world. At some point in my life I became
myself, the self I know, the self as a history, the self that
comes upon itself in decision and consideration of the world.
Then, with some awareness, at some point I can look back
upon my own life and see that I have been separated from
my birth. Indeed, this is what Jean-Paul Sartre indicates
when he speaks of having been thrown into existence; I am
here, now, but I cannot, that is, I am incapable, and I may
not know exactly how I got here. I am not allowed to have a
past cause, in the proper sense of being able to fully grasp
and hold a substantial and grounded past, because the
limitation of my knowing prevents me from going beyond a
present; that is, unless I reflect upon a history (an object in
which I have faith that it is true) of myself. But this must
have been told to me through a number of helpers (which,
interestingly enough, whether it be from parents, family,
teachers, books or whatever, from my historical position of

51
Kair
childish ignorance, are wise men), and then I am left with
the fact that I am only that history to the extent that I am
knowing that of me; I am initiated and taught into the
human heritage and associate what knowledge I do gain of
my own experience with that quality of knowledge that I
have learned from others of True Objects. I am thus not
separated from my birth nor thrown into any existence as I
am asserting myself as the Object of myself in relation to
other Objects.

Hence, we have the singular idea of the virgin birth


of myself in existence that speaks of difference in the same
address. This is a singular concept through which is
organized a meaning of world so as to necessitate a different
world altogether, one that while offering a particularly
different view, which is to say, one that may be viewed as
taking place within a common one world, nevertheless
likewise is different, a view in which the whole world resides
effectively. This effect occurs upon a scheme of concepts the
terms of which cannot be implemented upon or towards an
organization of True Objects, but can only do the work
within the historicity wherein such organization arises. So
in speaking of the virgin birth, on one hand, I am separated
from myself as a newborn and am thus here suddenly
being, and on the other hand, I am informed of my birth (the
time, the circumstances of the event, as well as the nature
of sex) through others who tell me of it as if from nowhere;
yet also, even as I may come upon my own experience, their
existence and their ability to inform me comes to me as a
pre-existing condition for myself. The former informs Being
itself to itself; the latter is informed of itself Being by an
other, and by virtue of this fact is being informed by a
relation of Objects. And although we are speaking very close
to the margin for distinction, in the attempt to be clear by
definition, for the dialectic, the former is of the minimal
human, the latter, the fully human. Hence we can observe,
in the relation of Objects, the history of the fully human

52

Absolution

individual is commensurate with the Law, or in other terms,


the voiced rules by which objects may be related and remain
true, and the minimal is the typically marginalized human,
which remains silent. It is when silence speaks that its
knowledge, appearing from seemingly nowhere, from an
unspoken history, as if from a virginity, brings reality into
question.
*
The noted analogy to this (our) virginal existential
situation is the Story. All stories begin somewhere but at no
time are we to figure that the beginning of the story is The
beginning of everything, as if there was nothing before the
story began. In this way, any story is not separate from the
story, because the effect of the story is that there can be no
other story. The story begins as if from nowhere; even if the
story attempts to place itself in an historical context, this
also merely begins the story and no matter where or when
the story begins, it always supplies the story. Such historical
contextualization supplies a reasonable doubt for the storys
validity, but not of its, the story itself, truth, for a story may
be fiction or non-fiction, rather, the validity of its truth as
relevant to the history in which it is placed thereby grants
an implicit truthfulness for a history by virtue of its being
embedded within the larger story, which is then the truth
of history. This basis called history need not be an intact or
identifiable entity; its functioning supplies the unattainable
Object, and thus the sought but never attained absolution.
In both cases, the story or the history, the beginning arrives
as if from nowhere, from no actual beginning and only a
beginning manifest of the story.

53

Kair

The King of the Jews


Three wise men came from the East to Herod asking
where the King of the Jews, Jesus, might be, that they may
worship him, and Herod sent them out to find Jesus and
report back to him where he is. Right from the start, we
have an implicit double narrative. Herod is the King of the
Jews, yet the wise men come to him asking where the King
of the Jews may be, probably in all innocence and naivety,
figuring that Herod, a Jew, would understand the
prophesies and would likewise be eager to find the true
king. But Herod has a more sinister motive; he is instead
threatened by this and so will kill the child Jesus; the wise
men have a dream and do not report back to him. In this we
may see that what might be the King is but a ruler (a
sovereign, but also the measure), a negotiator of Objects,
or rather subjects (subject-objects), the Jews, and Herod
does not wish to lose his place and purpose by conceding that
such prophesies are true. Perhaps this is merely because he
is a power monger, but it could be seen also, perhaps, that
such prophesy has become institutionalized, that the
religion has become a civility, a modern social network of
laws and rules, that such a prophecy is given lip service for
the sake of rule and not so much because the prophesy may
actually come true, or that such worship of God is more than
the state business. Indeed, the real everyday life of the
Object tends to discount miracles.
If we can see this, then we can see an opposition
between the wise men, who seek truth, and the King who
maintains the rules over Objects (and subject-objects), which
are the asserted truth, and that such polemics indicate the
need for reconciliation that is the condition of existence. The
King of Objects wishes to find the true King of Subjects so he
can destroy him, and indeed the King of Objects sends

54

Absolution

others he does not go himself to find the King of


Subjects, but they do not report back to him when they do.
Following the impetus of this essay, we might see this part
of the story reflecting our existential situationxviii. Assuming
we are indeed born of parents into the world, we are thereby
brought to our humanity by their heritage, by the rules of
the world that are definitions about relations between
objects; as children, we are subjects of the object, the king
that is the rules of the relations, of how things are, the truth
of reality. Similarly, though, in so much as we live, grow and
develop, at some point we come upon ourselves somehow
more than the rules which have determined us. In this
glimpse of ourselves, we may look out into the world and
wonder what this oddity is, and in this moment become the
king of objects in search for the king of subjects. It is a
reflection of that state of affairs in which we find ourselves.
Perhaps we have heard of spiritual things, or were taught
them, but this only aggravates our situation, for, to be
honest, the emissaries of our thought, so conditioned and
permeated by the truth of the Object, the rule of reality,
though seeking what may be true beyond the unsettling
arena of objective rules, return to us only the results of the
rules and not the truth that was hoped for, or rather what is
returned is indeed what we hoped for. In effect, we have
killed the child who would replace our truth of the object,
the rules, with new rules as yet unknown to us. Where we
are not able to be honest, thereby do we then retain and
uphold the truth of the rules as well as their ubiquity and
we find spirituality. But the story of Jesus, the one who has
gained absolution, or is otherwise absolved, tells us that the
emissaries do not return; so also, paradoxically, the
emissaries, our thoughts, the wise men that somehow see
something more than the rulesxix, that we sent out to look for
this new king, saw in a dream as thoughts betray
motives that are perhaps unknown to the thoughts
themselves and despite them will defeat them and so must

55
Kair
be denied as actually real that the king will not receive its
dethroning, so the emissaries do not return. So it is when we
are able to be honest and not stop short, then the fully
human situation of reality prevents the emissaries from
returning because of the insistence of its rules, which will
effectively kill the Subject-king if the emissaries were to
return with information of him. Further, in retrograde,
assuming there are parents who are the de facto effective
kings of the object, the conveyors of the true heritage for the
children, the potential for the children to come upon that
moment of decision discussed in the beginning of this essay,
likewise repeats this part of the story of Christ in the eternal
repetition of human life because typically the majority of
humanity, the fully human, never encounters the first
moment of significance due to the decision involved of being
oriented upon the true history of the Objectxx.

Nevertheless, as we will hopefully see through this


essay to significance, even though the wise men do not
return to Herod, he, the King of Objects, dies anyways, and
then the true king, the message at the beginning that was
not returned by the wise men, returns. The tale of human
existence reverberates in its own mythology; the story
cannot be extricated from our story. This returning also
occurs reflective of the orientation, and can be designated as
the first and second moment of decisive significance. The
first occurs consistent with experience such that the person
comes into their purpose as they were always of it, and in
the story, this is Jesus Christ. The second moment (termed
consecutively as an existential moment, not a human
temporal moment; for the benefactor of this second type, it
appears as a first moment, but it is categorically of the
second type) occurs upon a realization that the True Object
has failed or its integrity has been compromised. As we will
see, this is represented by Pilate.
*

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Absolution

Joseph is told by God to leave their country until


Herod is dead. Joseph is the surrogate father who is placed
in the auspicious position of being at once the human male
figure in the triune family nucleus, as this contains a
spiritual necessity, of the basic life, of being human, but
also the objective, that is, the proper, the of the rules,
father for the purposes of heritage in societyxxi; Joseph is
Jesuss father but he is not his father. This is indicated by
there being in the story of the virgin birth the ethereal or
maybe heavenly father, God, and the physical father,
Joseph. He is a symbol of our existential situation, of the
significance of Jesus as the minimal human. He is to serve
the objective intent of the basic life contrary to the rules of
the king in that he is to take Jesus away from the land over
which the king presides until the king dies. Again, the figure
of Joseph acts at once within two purposes; he is to protect
his sons life as any father would, and likewise Joseph
keeps the child from the dominion of the rules of the object
until such ruler is gone: he harbors the king of subjects.
Extended to the individual child becoming human, the
human being remains under the dominion of the Object until
such time as the rules of the object are gone, which is to say,
the child under the heritage of the parents hides away until
that time of the decision, whence we find that there was no
decision. So, not only the does the (minimal human) child
'hide' away from its biological parents until such time that
he comes upon a decision of his self, a decision that is come
upon but that is already made because of his existential
orientation, but also, Joseph and Mary as the parents
'unconsummated' of the child, reflect another heritage, a
separate 'kingdom', a different reality, a different set of rules
by which reality is true they hide the child until that same
significant time when the King of the rules of (Object)
Reality has died which is really that time when the child
comes unto itself. The father in heaven has held the child

57
Kair
away from the rules of the Object, such that when the
heritage is come upon at that time of decision, the rules of
the Object, the king of such arena of the fully human, has
died, thus no decision is found, no choice to be made. We
will see how this plays also later in the story of Peter and
Judas. For now, similarly, and ironically, to repeat, the
individual will remain under the dominion of the king of the
Object, the rules that govern the relations between objects,
until that time when the king has died. This is the double
sided imperative that runs through the story of the existence
of being human.

The wise men can be seen also as the keepers of the


gate, so to speak; those who lie within the silence and in
speaking reveal its dualistic nature are the ones who, to the
individual child, somehow know of our birth and tell us of its
nature. The wise men bring spiritually significant objects,
incense, auspicious or otherwise 'holy' objects as presents at
Jesus's birth. When they speak the individual is come upon
mysteriously by his or her own existence, and this process
occurs in the child subtly, until it becomes knowledge that
appears from nowhere yet intact for giving the child its
humanity. Such wisdom confers the individual the first
moment of decisive significance, and thus is told, unfolding
as it is determined to occur, of the Christ story. This is the
mythology of our existence; wise men only appear within
the context of a particular story. Either we come upon no
decision and so maintain the heritage of the Object, or we
are come upon by a decision that cannot be made and
renounce the Object.
*
Resuming with the narrative, when this moment has
been come upon by the individual, the time has come to
repent of the Object; to repent is to speak what has been
heretofore silentxxii. So we see that later, when Herod dies,

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Absolution

John begins to preach that the time has comexxiii. Now,


when he speaks to the Pharisees and Sadducees who have
come to be baptized, he is telling them that there is almost
no need for them to be here seeking baptism O generation
of vipers, and that they should have left when they first
heard. But they evidently have not 'fleed' because they feel
they might possibly have something to gain from baptism
and Jesus; but Jesus understands their motive, and
addresses it. When he calls them out in their own deception:
Bring forth fruits worthy of repentance, and
begin not to say within yourselves, We have
Abraham as our father...xxiv
he is saying that though indeed the priests have come for
want of repentance, the 'fruits' they bring to repent of, or
rather, what they see as repentance, are 'bad fruit'xxv. It is
not sufficient to have Abraham as their father; the heritage
that is Abraham acting as their father, the rule barer, and
thus the implication of their being law abiding, does not
relate the reconciliation they preach in the truth of the
rules, but moreso that from these stones, that is, the earth
itself but also the bad seeds of the bad fruit that the Jewish
clergy produce, God himself will raise up children unto
Abraham; God himself will raise the children to maturity,
will redeem those who have been submitted to the rules of
the Jewish temple. Repentance is implied in our context as a
means to reconciliation, to prepare oneself for absolution,
and that such preparedness does not come through the rules
of the temple, what we can say are the rules that grant real
Objects. Thus, John baptizes with water to cleanse those
who are dirty from the stones, but, he says, the one is
coming who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
So when Jesus arrives at the pool where John is baptizing,
like Luke who knew perfectly from the start, John is
confirmed and validated in his faith. That John has done all

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that he can do is verified and in this moment, and Jesus is
likewise confirmed in his destiny.

The book of John confirms this interpretation, that


baptism without a relinquishing of the rules of the True
Object, the heritage of the fully human, is insufficient. Here,
in the beginning of the story, Jesus is foreshadowing Pilate
through the interactions with one who appears, in this
beginning, as an officer of the Law who wishes to
understand Jesus, and as Jesus speaks to him he speaks of
the Object unto which he, a Pharisee, is subject, and thus is
confronting them with the emptiness of the Jewish law, a
law which proclaims spirit but which is invested only in
material.
The third chapter of Johnxxvi has a Pharisee named
Nicodemus coming to Jesus the night before the baptismal
scene with John, because he feels Jesus must be a teacher
from God, yet asking him how this can be so. But Jesus
denies him as he does the group of them the next day, as we
see in Matthew and Luke (which we can assume happened
the next day). Jesus pulls no punches and lays the problem
right out for him that he might know it, and identifies a
catalyzing statement for this essay.
Except a man be born again, he cannot see the
kingdom of God.
Nicodemus has come in askance of Jesus and Jesus
answers that his question is rooted in his own ignorance,
that he is incapable of understanding because he has not
been born again. Exhibiting his density, Nicodemus prods
further and asks how can one be born when he is old? Can
he enter the second time into his mother's womb be born?
And again, Jesus points to the discrepancy involved in his
attempt to understand; he is saying where the Object is true,
likewise spirit is attained through the law of the true object;
thus you (Nicodemus) should marvel not that I said...Ye
must be born again, for if you understood, Jesus in effect

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continuing, it would be unnecessary for me to continue on in


this way, for you would see that what you understand as
reality, flesh/object and spirit, prevents you from
understanding what I am saying.
Jesus then further exemplifies the discrepancy by
describing a state of being that is foreign to Nicodemus, as
well as the nature of his inability to understand.
The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou
hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell
whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is
everyone that is born of the spirit.
And, of course, Nicodemus asks, how can this be? And
Jesus again confronts him with the ineptitude of the Law; he
mocks him and says,
Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not
these things?
It is obvious to Jesus that Nicodemus has come to speak
with him because Nicodemus has been moved by what he
says, but is incapable of receiving the true meaning. This is
because no one who is not of 'heaven' can receive 'heaven',
and only those who have come from 'heaven' will go to
'heaven'. Here then Jesus leads into stating the issue that
surrounds the discrepancy that defines the first and second
significant moments; in other words, in the context of this
essay, there is a minimal and fully human existence, where
the minimal accepts existence in its bare truth, and the fully
denies it, but that the fully human still may come to be able
to repent of the Object: Thus is required a significant
moment to overcome this discrepancy.
The Son of man exists by his own inclusion and thereby
knows of heaven and earth, because he is from both. Yet,

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because this evidently is often not seen or noticed, and thus
reveals that a (first) significant moment is not in effect, then
Jesus implicates a possibility of a second moment in John
3:14; And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
even so must the Son of man... he who is not inclusive of
himself, who has not come upon the significant moment
be lifted up, must come upon such a moment the staff
that became a serpent did so not through some considerate
metamorphosis, but suddenly changed from staff to snake
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have
eternal life. (Italics mine). And likewise, the Son of God. In
so much as there is a distinction between the Son of man
and the Son of God, and such a discrepancy is relied upon,
that is 'believed in', is seen and understood as designating
True Objects, objects that are set away from the individual
into reality such that the individual needs saving, just so
much is that person not saved, but rather, must be lifted
up, must be suddenly transformed. The terms 'eternal' and
'everlasting' ring within the dual voice, at once indicating
those who do not understand as evidenced by their assertion
of its truth or fallacy, as well as those who do, who have no
need to discern such ever-presence as true of false.

*
We have here, in this beginning of the story, a
statement of our present existential situation that has
played throughout history in some manner for every human
being. In Mathew, Jesus is born and then appears on the
scene after an announcement from a prophet who is
preaching that the rules of religion, the rules which allow a
negotiation of Objects and determine our being as subjects
(subject-objects), are not sufficient for preparing oneself for
absolution, that one cannot abide by the rules and still
repent; one cannot merely be a child of Abraham, one that
goes ignorantly and naively to be sacrificedxxvii. God himself,
whom Abraham communed with, spoke with, will raise those

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who repent, which is to say, renounce the rules that dictate


what it is to be (fully) human; but this preparation is indeed
not sufficient. It is not enough to renounce the rules for God
himself to raise the child, one must be a renouncer. John
reluctantly baptizes Jesus so that righteousness would be
fulfilled, but this is the righteousness that is not the
incorrect of the rules which maintain the separation of
humanity, that John would suffer his own baptizing through
the baptizing of the one who should baptize him. The rules
have been broken; that which had been held away for the
sake of John in his minimal humanity has been brought
forward, such that John then 'suffers' Jesus who has now
broken the rules by his direct occasion; John's prophecy and
purpose has come to an end. The King is but a servant,
needing of baptism, needing of his own removal from the
object for the sake of the object. By this action, God is
pleasedxxviii. Righteousness is not merely being correct with
reference to the rules of the relations between objects, but is
rather correct Being with reference, but contrary, to the
rules (heritage) by which one has gained their full humanity.

The Ministry
Once such an Object has been renounced, once the
human being has repented and prepared itself for
absolution, the belief has passed and the world of rules has
disappeared. This disappearance, though, is not that which
the modern sensibility 'being gone' would equate to insanity,
or a complete disassociation with the world, though from a
conventional disposition such a disappearance can be indeed
termed absurd if not insanexxix. The human being is always
involved with the actual world, as noted above. Such an
event of renouncing the object leaves the individual in an
odd sort of state (also discussed above). No object helps him
in to the world; interactions with other humans are strained;
the individual goes into himself, the reflection of the basic
life in humanity. The renouncer must come to terms with
how the world has disappeared and what that means to and
in terms of the human heritage.
*
Jesus proceeds to go out into the wilderness where he
encounters the tempter. He fasts for forty days and Jesus is
mocked for his faith. The devil tells him that if he is truly
the son of God then he should make bread out of stones,
then that he should jump off the roof of the temple, and then
offers him the kingdoms of the world. These are the
temptations that plague human heritage at every turn. One
is always dependent upon food; one is plagued by depression
or unhappiness; one would like to be all powerful and get
whatever he wants. So it seems right that Jesus the human
would have these temptations, for they are not the objects
that are the rules of humanity, but are indeed the very bases
of the rules that humanity encounters in living that he
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fights against: Hunger, sadness, and powerlessness. When


one renounces the Objects by which he is human, what is
left are these simple elements. The temptations reflect the
battle that the minimal-human grown child comes upon; in
that such a being is indeed human, caught, in a manner of
speaking, between the basic life and the heritage of
humanity, the infinity that is known because of the definite
heritage, that is, the basic life that is the unrenounced
humanity, develops the reflection of the basic life into a
polemical entity: The tempter, the devil, is presented
within the whole Object that has been renounced, the whole
of human heritage, as that which is able to grant the
individual that which eludes him, namely, freedom from
hunger, everlasting life/happiness and power over the world.
The tempter is the last Object that remains. One should
also notice the progression of these temptations; first Jesus
is tempted on the ground, then he is brought to one of the
highest place in the city, the pinnacle of the temple in the
holy city, then to an exceedingly high mountain, as if
Jesuss repentance in baptism which released him from the
rules of Objects, has catapulted him upward, toward heaven,
in a movement that could transcend the actual world itself,
which is temptation at its most. But Jesus is human, and so
must deal with human things. Likewise, but ironically, in
that Jesus is human, such a rising movement coincides with
the exaltation of the individual that the centric fully human
subject-object advocates in the fulfillment of being oneself in
a relation of objects: One should aspire to be the best object,
to the higher order.
*
Within the experience of the minimal human, there is
always an announcer or announcement, that then speaks
to what must occur, what purpose or role that minimal
human must play. This event, of the announcement and the

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action, presents thus an alternate reading of history that
appears to account for a more factual basis of movement for
history itself. John the Baptists announcement we do not
hear of; we only know that his role is to make the
announcement that the time is near. But the appearance in
reality of the minimal human always causes a reaction from
the fully human, an offense that eventually wants to bring
about the removal of the figure.

Catalyzed by John being arrested and put into prison,


and the likelihood that he too will likely be imprisoned if he
returns to Judea, Jesus sees that it is his time to leave. So
he goes elsewhere and begins to speak about the Object but
in a way that is differentiated from the rules. The man that
is Jesus is not blind nor dumb, nor ignorant or stupid of the
world; he is a basic human. He must know that how he
speaks is taken as odd, and knows that the worldly powers
that be will not like what he has to say, what he has to be,
for he who has renounced the heritage of the fully human
offends that which is of the heritage. Though he may be a
rebel, he is not rebellious in the typical, human sense; he
must see that he is come upon by others as rebellious in his
nature, that they will probably not hear him, so offensive is
his way of being to their humanity. He does not yell at
people as if only he knows something they must learn;
rather, he speaks with people as he knows what they know,
but in a way that no one else does. So the story goes, from
then on he began to preach, and say his message, one by
which he might find purchase beyond the offense that was
his being 'repent; now is the timexxx. At every moment the
fully human may renounce the object; yet in that the fully
human has lost the moment of significance by the decision
that cannot be made, in history the fully human must wait
for the proper time to regain it and here Jesus has come
again ironically to tell them now is the time.

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Then it might seem, in time, his presence had gotten


around the community. By the time he came upon SimonPeter and his brother, Andrew, he called to them and they
followed him. Here we gain an insight into what it may be
for a renouncer of the heritage of humanity in the world.
Jesus would find himself in a dilemma. It is known that
there were many prophets around at that time; these were
most likely rebel-rousers, discontents and a general
nuisance to the authorities if not the general public. Maybe
they were revolutionaries using the words of the prophets to
make their claim against the establishment. So the problem
for Jesus, who we shall assume had a legitimate, essential
experience of the basic life, of renouncing the Object, is how
to distinguish himself from this riff-raff. But this was not a
terrible problem, since he was legitimate; he had not
renounced the basic life and so his being could express
nothing else. Thus, when he tells Simon and Andrew follow
me, it could not be a command, and it could not be a
suggestion, as if, if they want to then they can. Jesus says to
them and I will make you fishers of men. It could have
been that they were tired of fishing, but this would be
incidental; since they could have followed anyone, anytime.
It must have been something else which persuaded them so
quickly and absolutely. Maybe they heard of this guy Jesus
and here he was now asking them to follow him, and the
thought of having some prestige (fishers of men) was
enticing. But this seems too small, too pedestrian; such a
story would never have come to us. Something more must
have grabbed their attention, something that caused them to
know that Jesus was not like other so-called prophets.
When a human is oriented upon the object, has its
being based in the human heritage, one who has renounced
the basic life, communication is easily understood because it
moves through a medium of objectivity where what is being
said identifies or implies a known object, its truth firmly of

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potential. If one was to say our people are corrupted by this
Roman society, we need to revolt, everyone would have a
contextual object by which to understand him. Even today,
many people advocate getting back to basics (read, a return
to conservative traditional rules), as a means to make
everything ok. This is a commonplace assertion; maybe some
people agree, but others dont. Ironically, Jesuss message
said just as much, but yet it said much more. He could not
just go out and recruit people, see if they dig his plight; such
people would not do. As implied by his birth in the story, yet
also by the simple fact of his renouncement, his life was
determined; his life was destined to go a particular, and
particularly obtuse, way. With this in mind, from one angle
of seeing Jesus, he had to be sure that whomever he found
that it was not of his choosing (for he had no choice); the
choice had to be that of which people would find themselves
(the others would likewise have to have no choice in the
matter, and God would have to choose for them all, including
Jesus). He had to know that they understood what he was
about, what he was up to. Jesus, himself, had to fish for
men who would follow him, and in his own fishing for men,
Peter and Andrew themselves fishing could understand that
Jesus was he who they should follow.

The brothers were fishermen of the community; they


used nets which could grab a lot of fish in one haul. When
they fished they were trying to get as many fish as they
could in one casting of the net. While the riff-raff was
proselytizing, such false prophets were casting their nets
from a podium, attempting to gather as many people as they
could to take up their cause, so that in thinking of good for
the whole population they were really being selfish,
proclaiming to the whole what the prophet himself thought
best; they were offering, proclaiming, a method of
negotiating a new relation between objects, that is, the
object of rule of which they were subjects. Jesus was
concerned with the whole, but in this whole, understood that

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he had no way of telling them what was best because he


knew that he could not, for them, overcome the Object
because it already was informing them what might be best;
he could not tell them that the Object was the problem they
had to overcome for their absolution. He could not cast a net;
he had to cast a line, and this line was a way of speaking.
Jesus himself was fishing for those who would understand
him, so, he was a fisher of men. He has to cast a line that
would indicate to those who already knew the problem that
here was a man who had solved the problem for himself, or
rather more significantly, that the problem had been solved
for him. He spoke to them in a way that said if you know
what I mean as a subtext, and said follow me, and I will
make you fishers of men. He, in effect, spoke to them in a
way that told them that their experience of minimal
humanity would be explained and validated.
*
This story is the story of humanity and its absolution,
the reconciliation of the Subject and the Object. It is the
story of the Subject of existence, and by this, explains every
aspect of the experience of being absolved in existence. For
fully human knowledge, the story of Jesus reconciles all
stories of the individual to one solution, indeed, one story.
Yet, ironically, when such particular route and method is
understood, the story then has occurred inevitably as a
renouncement of the True Object. When we speak of Jesus,
that he was at once the embodiment as well as the means of
this reconciliation that he was himself the minimal
human, which can be equated with the Subject, the one who
has been absolved, and that he was the representation of the
method for absolution, which is concordant with the Object
we are in effect indicating that despite what he may have
been saying and being, he was apprehended, comprehended,
come upon, by the majority of those who did come across him

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as The One, The Object, by which a person may be absolved.
However, in that he was Being, what he was saying was
nothing more than what, we can say, one says to oneself, one
having renounced and therefore being reconciled with, but
not responsible to, the Object. This distinction is clearly
made in John 17:9; Jesus says, I pray for them: I pray not
for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for
they are thine. For those so oriented upon the Object of
Jesus, namely the subsequent Christians, this passage
speaks of those who believe that absolution may be achieved
through the object that is Jesus; indeed, it is a circular
argument of their faith. I submit an alternate reading, that
Jesus is not praying or speaking about the world of Objects
(nor subject-objects), which includes those fully human
individuals of the world who know by the Object; on the
contrary, here Jesus is referring to those who have become
fishers of men, those whom Jesus has been given because
they were likewise minimally human and who, as Luke
expresses, had perfect understanding of all things from the
very first, namely, the disciples. And, to add further
significance to my distinction, Jesus is not so much being
empathetic for his disciples, so much as such believers might
have a difficult time in the world of non-believers. No; Jesus
is speaking of the facts of the matter as this is his
experience, as this is their experience.

It is by this kind of selfishness that Jesus proceeds in


his ministry, and it it by this selfishness that he was able to
do the works; and it is only in his supreme selfishness that
he may have compassion upon humanity such that they
might find a way through him. The world is established in
meaning, and where Jesus has renounced the heritage that
establishes the Real world, meaning is thus left to him in as
much as existence supplies meaning to him as knowledge.
Hence, we reiterate the beginning of this essay; Jesus's
works could be nothing less than the human expression of
existence for knowledge, As knowledge is nothing more than

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the terms of discourse (see below)xxxi That which would


appear as 'miracles' to those fully human, are but 'works',
indeed, the working of existence as the human being. We are
elaborating upon how consciousness functions; the story
thus evidences the polemic of human existence: So foreign is
reality to existence that what is the 'run-of-the-mill' working
of existence now defies human reality such that it is seen as
miraculous. In his selfishness, through his works, he was
emphatically self absorbed necessarily as the expression of
the basic life in humanity, but a self that is qualified by all
possibility of exclusion, which is to say, all meaning that
stands against self such that self arises as a real object. His
expression is being the renunciation of the Object that is the
human heritage as the law of the world, of separate identity,
and therefore, in that the fully human reality is segregated
into greater or lesser meaning of circumstance and this
meaning develops into true reality, the world of existence
cannot but be exactly the coincidence and significance of all
events, which in knowledge therefore determines ones
ability to act as purpose. Further, in so much as Jesus is
such expression, his activity, though merely coinciding with
the motion of existence, might appear to the fully human to
be guided or informed by something 'other-worldly', and in
fact it may just appear as if Jesus was controlling aspects of
reality. This means that it is not so much a subjective
experience of Jesus and the disciples, as though there is a
reality where people have various type of experiences, the
minimal human being one of them; rather, it is more the
answer, the completion, to what Soren Kierkegaard asks: Is
there a teleological suspension of the ethical? As well, that
other spiritual texts of the East, such as Buddhist, Hindu
and Vedic texts address, that posits the universe not so
much as a Husserlian phenomenalist reduction where the
rebuttal concerns real things that might accidentally occurxxxii
, but as an actual truth that cannot be dismissed through

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argumentative proofs (since the proofs merely confirm their
antitheses).

*
There are other possibilities of miracle, particularly
speculative possibilities, that are not discounted by the
mythology of, what we might call, modern rational science. A
miracle occurs in the motion of time as progress; a miracle
occurs always in the past. This is to say that a True Object
has a history, a past, a heritage that informs an identity to
its reality, and thus what is miraculous is that the past is
suddenly viewed from its contingency in the present. The
past suddenly and momentarily loses its coherence as a
substrate for a present orientating meaning; this is then
manifested as a present shift, a mutation of sorts of the very
same moment wherein is consolidated a new kind of present.
This new present turns upon this generic term miracle
through a conflation of meaning arising out of this
debasements real counter, out of the denial of existence and
the assertion of real-true. A discernment between what
could be some actual object changing miraculously, like a
couple loaves of bread into enough to feel a multitude, and a
sudden changing of the terms of meaning of any event is a
non sequitur; it is not even a contradiction but more a point
that can never have meaning itself beyond a particularly
transcendental effect of the terms themselves that would
rely upon a term-object identityxxxiii.
Further, the miracle can be a precipitate of truth as
well as an equal and opposite force; a frontier stronghold
against which true claims of reality may be made. History in
this way is miraculous in a similar sense as some have
said, in that there are so many events in history that we can
look to and say, oh it was such a miracle that we ever got
through that. The present moment is called the rational
moment, and thus conveys in interpretation exactly what

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has occurred in reality: We say at times, a miracle. Our


conception of reality defines the present moment within a
history that occurred in a constant arena; that is, the same
rules that apply today were in operation and functioning in
the past; it defines all moments. But then we must ask the
silly question that is always misinterpreted: How do you
know this? And set that discussion aside to then ask: Well if
the same rules were in effect, then why or how have we
discovered new rules? If classical mechanics works then how
do we now have quantum mechanics? Well, they say, the
quantum was at work in the past too; at the time, they just
didnt know it. Well, I say: How do you know this?
Though this last question can be taken any number of
ways, I mean specifically to refer the situation to the present
state of knowingxxxiv, that there is no way to know for sure
that anything really existed in the past in any particular
way except that one has a faith that it did. Here I will not
draw this argument out, but merely suggest that what it is
we know at this point in our experience (nevermind that
'our' is likewise based in a kind of faith) is reflective of the
state of the universe presently: Realityxxxv.
The next question that must be posed is about our
inclusive stature in the universe. Are we or are we not
integral to the universe's functioning? Are we separate from
the universe? If we are separate, then we have the typical
inter-religious debate of who is correct, that finds a polemic
as a function in science; if we are not, then everything that
is thought and done must be universally correspondentxxxvi.
For this essay I argue the latter, but only go so far in the
discussion; I merely throw suspicion aboutxxxvii. But, at least,
I can say that if everything of humanity is universally
correspondent, then the constant is the knowledge in and of
humanity itself, and if this is the case, then whatever was

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the state of knowledge about the universe at whatever time
was exactly how the universe was constituted at that time.

Of course, some would counter that there is no


absolute knowledge that constituted any period of
knowledge or historical era, that what is represented is an
unharnessed motion of many representations of knowledge;
neither one individual's idea of a true universe, nor one
group's ideology or cosmology says anything about how a
true universe may be or have been constituted for any time,
that because of this we must negotiate what is truth for any
time. Nevertheless, it is a universally Object oriented
scheme of knowledge that points to particular things by
which to argue that there is or is not an absolute truth of the
universe, as if this idea of negotiation is not a proposal of
absolute truth, and as if these particular things are not
functioning as absolute objects for the proposalxxxviii. In fact,
such a truth must have been negotiated as the process of
history: We reduce our fully human knowledge to ironic
relativity. Instead, what we have, what can only be the case
given the facts of our current state of knowledge, is that a
total universe cannot be known, and this includes the
projection of time, that the projection of time, as a particular
and particularly scientific identifier of the true universe
denies its own lack and ability in the determination of truth
just as it argues that we cannot determine an absolute truth
of the past. Science, in this way, is the esotericism, the
kabbalah of modern faith. The truth of existence must be
that the universe does not and is not expanding from any
known point in time (except that 'time' is identified as an
absolutely True Object), as if the universe began at some
point in the distant past, and has been developing along
particular constant vectors that science 'uncovers', and that
humanity has developed likewise out of this constant arena
of universal laws of actuality, such that it was ignorant and
superstitious, and history has been the development of
human knowledge of the true universe out of such ignorance

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and arbitrarity this scheme of knowledge itself is a


reflection of the universe as it is now, such that whatever
the state of the universe is, it is reflective in and informing
to our knowledge of exactly its actuality. What is missed or
maybe (in)conspicuously set aside, is the possibility that the
constant itself, say time in this instance, is itself curved, in
a manner of speaking, changing with reference to the view
that supposes its stasis. Indeed, it is possible at some point
this description will be noticeably outdated and (also)
thereby judged incorrect, but it is probably more that the
place of viewing has moved. Math and science are other
types of universal placeholders of meaning, the stasis or
True objectivity thereof, as some sort of actual state or
condition that is reflected by or of math, is likewise
dependent upon the state or condition of meaning whereby
such a stasis is viewed: There is no ground of scientific
reduction but the ground that the current condition of
meaning grants. Its like finding an absolutely true value of
the ratio of any circles diameter to its circumference; an
estimated value may allow for good values of a function but
its meaning depends always on the function itself
(redundancy). This is an aspect of the functioning of
consciousness to grant a meaningful reality; it is not that
such a condition argues that reality is thereby false or an
illusion, it merely says that this is indeed how consciousness
functions, how it must function, how at least one part of
being human relies absolutely upon reality manifesting in
just this way.
What this means is, in accordance to the proposition
of the fully and minimal human realities, the only way that
we can know of this constant universe that evidences a
fallacy of miracles 2000 years ago is to deny the quality of
our currently understood state of conventional knowledge,
which ironically then, argues the point I am making here,
that it is reasonable that the works of Jesus should not be

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reduced to our current scientific criterion for truthfulness.
And this is so much to say that the humanity of today is
involved, however global and standardized it is or is not, in a
faith, an intrinsic mythology, that grants the truth of the
universe for the sake of justifying our presence and being in
the universe. Such mythology is the condition of knowledge,
allowing for the polemics of reality so that it can be reality.
The effort involved in discovering these objects of truth by a
particular method, assert and rely upon a projected absolute
truth by which we find our current truths, and for which we
proceed in the effort of the object: This absolute truth is
based in mythology (a story) that functions through
knowledge by faith, and it is the consolidation of the tenants
of such catholic faith that constitutes the historical reasons
and efforts of at least some of new Realisms. Indeed, reality
must constantly be proposed away from truth upon such
faith, and this is necessary.

So to be as clear as possible: Thus, as to this issue with


Jesus's miracles of healing and such, we can only say that he
must have been able to do things that was consistent and
correspondent with the state of knowledge of the time such
that miraculous things did occur. We need not (we can, and
will, but we need not) reduce such miracles to what was
'actually' occurring in some sort of 'real' universe because
the 'real' universe, that is, the functionally constant universe
that has, does and will exist by the same laws, forms and
structures, only exists as a current state of the universe
such that our knowledge of the universe merely reflects the
current state of the universe's functioning now. Hence: faith,
mythology and existence, and hence, the fully and the
minimal human: The fully human will emphasize the
individual in this type of reasoning and manifest
superstition, irrationality, religion, oppression, spirituality
and ideology, good and evil reduced to relative law,
negotiation, and the truth of the object, and the minimal will
see how such rationalization, such willed investigation for

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the True Object is itself an ethically compromised venture


that proposes absolutely sound ethical methods in its
activity. So we have argued only that what is known as true
is thus true, but that this fault of knowledge is not present
in the appraisal of what may be true; hence, it may be said it
is a miracle that we have even come this far. Besides; no one
ever elaborates or exaggerates about an event; ever.

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The Passover
Just as the Lord of the Old Testament went about
about finding out who among the Egyptians were indeed
the Israelites, to thereby passover them, by Jesuss
miraculous existence Christ has come into the world and
been come upon by others whom God had given himxxxix;
namely, the disciples. Concordantly, Jesus the Son of God
sees that he has to find a way to distinguish who among the
sheep really will follow him. Jesus worked within an
assumption that they understood what was going on as he
carried himself, his works, into the world. Now Jesus is
coming to the end of his being, the end of his speaking the
renunciation of the Object; he sees the state of affairs and
that he will now move into the actual reconciliation that is
absolution. As the basic life Jesus sees what is to happen; he
is hated by the world and is the lamb to be sacrificed, and he
is and his life has been reconciled in this purpose; as the
minimal human, he has come upon his humanity, his
mortality and is beginning to reflect upon his life.
**
The chapters preceding John 17, the Passover meal of
13, then 14, 15 and 16, may be seen as Jesus attempting to
discern who among his disciples, if any, really understands
him, what has been going on all this time in his ministry
and his association with them. Jesus is sensing that they do
not, but he is trying to get them to make the move; Jesus is
beginning to realize that his experience is not duplicated in
them, and is moving into his own hope, his own desperation
that his time here has been in vain. Yet, along these lines,
we might see that Judas is the only one (since John the
Baptistxl) who has understood that the Subject must do what
79

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Absolution

it is of him to do. Judas thus validates Jesus in the same


manner that Jesus validated John; and all three die soon
after they are validated. Here, though, Judas and Jesus do
not 'suffer' each other. Jesus expresses his own human
dismay at the irony of anothers experiencing the subject to
his own, Jesuss, understanding, and he tells Judas that
thou doest, do quickly; it might be seen that the dipping of
bread was symbolic of the understanding between them a
significant moment and Judas left. Only Judas has
comprehended in a way of speaking, existence has been
fulfilled, all parts are in play so concordantly, the divine
orchestration revealed, the human part must have its time.
In the motion that is death, things begin to fall apart;
Jesus's self- centeredness has been upset by the revealing of
Judas to his knowledge, so for Jesus the punctual motion of
a determined contingency, which is, a fulfilling the prophets,
must have another Subject, because this one, Judas, goes to
die but who can it be?
Jesus thus enters into a moment that can be called
the first vacillation of doubt. So Jesus proclaims
Now the Son of man be glorified, and God is
glorified in him,
and speaks more clearly of the issue at hand, of the Subject:
If God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify
him in himself, and shall straightaway glorify
him.xli
Again, the double movement of voice. In one, his
proclamation is manifest; the other, a pleading to the objectsubject. This is to say, now expressing his own anxiety of
the matter the Son of man be glorified, as if to say,
pleasemy friends, see now; God is glorified in he who is the
Son of man. If we can associate man with the fully human,
we might see that the son of man is the minimally human,

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Kair
the like a child, the born again, the Subject itself. So
further, Jesus appeals to a logic, as if to persuade that
Subject, that disciple, to come out, to show himself, to
Jesuss knowing of himself. Who will continue where Jesus
is leaving off? Since Jesus is beginning to wonder if he is
alone in his understanding, he says, if God be glorified in the
Son of man (the Subject), then God shall also glorify him in
himself; which is to say that the individual Subject, the
minimally human, shall know of his own glory because of
Gods glorifying the Subject, and thus, the result, Jesus is
saying, is that the Subject will straightaway directly,
imminently, now be de facto, effectively, glorified by God.
Left unsaid is Jesuss appeal: Who is it? God, let me know
who it is. Continuing; Jesus implores all of them since God
has not let Jesus know who it may be, and he rejoins in a
sort of plea: Little children, yet I am a little while with you.
Ye shall seek me: and as I have said unto the Jews. The
Jews are of the Law, and so are of the world, and just like
Jesus has said to the Jews that they will seek me in the
Object that is Jesus, he says to them, the disciples, yet still
appealing to what they have experienced of themselves that
they followed him, and to the things they have witnessed in
their travels, that they, his disciples, if anyone, should know
what I am saying here: Whither I go, ye cannot come; so
now I say to you. again the silence speaks: God, let me
know who it may be. And then he is defeated when Simon
Peter, the first disciple who came with him, Lord, whither
goest thou? And Jesus sees that God will grant him none;
Jesuss reply shows that he sees this now, for sure. Now he
changes his tone and tells them whither I go, thou canst not
follow me now. Now, no longer, do you follow me; obviously
(to Jesus), you do not understand, and are incapable of
following me as the Subject, for you are not, you are an
Object of the World; but thou will follow me afterwards, in
other words, I go from here to die (this physical body), and so
also you shall die one day, but also, in foreshadow, after I go
then you will indeed follow, indeed will carry on as the

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minimal human determined in its way. Peter then denies


that he will not follow him, for he feels he surely will. He
asks why he cannot, I will surely lay down my life for thy
sake, and in Matthew, Mark and Luke all the disciples
express the same sentiment. Jesus answers him, at once
informing him of his ignorance of what must come to pass
shortly (the crucifixion, as well as their following after), as
well as the fact that he does not understand what their time
was about; he says in effect, so you will die for me? Oh,
yeah? The cock will not crow, till thou hast denied me
thrice.xlii
This beginning of the vacillations of faith can be
described as the departure. Jesus is the expression of
himself the basic life and in this, he has no knowledge
except of himself, but as we have qualified this Self above,
which is to say, the situation of the world; the Object is
absorbed into the experience of God in the significant
moment, such that the meaning of objects corresponds
significantly with the effect of God: It is God which has the
plan. Now, in this vacillation of doubt, though knowledge
has been upon, within and as Jesus in his experience, such a
presumption of knowledge as if now God is obliged,
because of His gift unto Jesus, to continue to bring Jesus
into His confidence and relieve Jesus of his anxious wish to
know that his own experience was not in vain by allowing
Jesus confirmation of his faith by the Object, which in this
case are the disciples denies the basis of his knowledge.
The contradiction is palpable; Jesuss humanity is evident in
his inability to stay the true course. Nevertheless, Jesuss
faith has never been with reference to the Object; it referred
to the Object because of the necessity of the heritage of the
world, but his faith was neither dependent upon nor
responsible to the Object. Now Jesus is appealing to God in
the same breath as he is appealing to his disciples to
validate his whole life experience, and neither do, as they

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Kair
are one in the same element in Jesuss experience: They are
not objects. So Jesus vacillates as he approaches the
completion of his absolution, which speaks ironically in a
dual voice of the removal of the physical, or, death. As the
story goes, the movement serves to verify to us that this was
not any actual man-god-object-subject, but, at least, a
reflection of a very human being. The beginning of the basic
life is absolved through renunciation of the Object, in a
manner of speaking, a move that is founded in the absolute
experience of relation to the absolute; vacillation occurs at
the end of the ministry. The doubt and anxiety was left upon
the fully human as Jesus challenges the rules of the Object
by his minimal humanity, Jesuss move large and social,
involved with humanity in general. At the end, the doubt
and anxiety is his alone as Jesus is involved with the private
and personal, dealing one on one with people, his friends, his
disciples, and in correspondence, absolution will occur not
psychically, but physically. Thus Jesus replays this move by
asking for the Object to confirm his faith; he is thereby
asking that his faith be annihilated. This can only occur by
the domination of the Object; the spirit succumbs to the
physical world. The confidence of the spirit is replaced by
the anxiety of the mind, but it is in this anxiety, the wax and
wane of which, that continues right up to the moment before
death but is resolved at his moment of death, that grants
credence to Jesuss plight as the minimally human of faithxliii
.

*
John sheds more light upon the reality of this
situation. Before they go to the garden where the guards
then come to take him, Jesus addresses his disciples. He
speaks through the dialectic, of himself to himself, for he is
dismayed at the revelation at hand and the revealing that to
which he still will not acquiesce easily. He begins speaking
as he often does; as he speaks to his audience, God is

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speaking to Jesus, his Self to himself, so God is speaking


through him. He says,
Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in
God, believe also in mexliv.
The double voice involved in this invitation is one that a
believer of the Object will not admit. Jesus, as the Subject,
the minimally human, the expression of the basic life, as he
is speaking to the disciples and thus is consoling them,
consoles himself as God is consoling him. God says: Let not
your heart be troubled, for you believe in God, therefore
believe also in me, believe that what you are telling yourself
is also true. Which is to say, Jesus is the Subject as he is the
expression of the basic life in humanity, but also he is the
minimally human in relation to the fully human: He is also
an Object. As we see this expression of his Being in the
world, we then come across the meaning of his invitation;
the synopsis of the subject-object: God is your expression as
you believe, yet also believe that your expression is of God as
God is the totality of all that occurs: Believe in me, that
what has occurred so far is truexlv. He then begins a synopsis
of his true position, the position of truth, the minimally
human position, the Subject.
Naively confirming to Jesus the depth of their ignorance,
Thomas then says,
Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how
can we know the way? Jesus replies, I am the
way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh to the
Father, but by me.xlvi
The double voice resounds. Here we see the inclination
of what Jesus has been doing and being, and shows it in
relief the distinctions of orientation. Moses, the giver of the
Law that Jesus does not come to destroy but fulfill, came
across God and asked his name, and God told Moses I am

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Kair
that I am; God tells Moses to tell the children of Israel that
I AM hath sent me to you.

*
We will do well here to take a look at Exodus 3.
And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a
flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he
looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and
the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, I
will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why
the bush is not burnt. And when the Lord saw
that he had turned aside to see, God called unto
him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses,
Moses. And he said, Here am I. And he said, Draw
not hither: put off thy shoes from thy feet, for the
place whereon thou standest is holy ground.
Probably the first thing to point out is that the term
bush is the English translation for the Hebrew word which
more closely confers bramblexlvii. A bramble is a prickly
shrub like that of a blackberry or raspberry; it is not so
much a bush. A bush tends to convey a much more
cultivated or shapely form. Indeed, a bush is more similar
to a small, low tree, whereas a bramble, like a blackberry
thicket, grows hardly like a tree and more like a large,
sprawling, invading, wandering vine. It is prickly, it has
thorns; people do not often wish to venture into a bramble.
Though definitions might be somewhat vague, it seems
prudent to make this distinction here. There are many
pertinent issues in this small phrase. Recall, we are dealing
in this essay with the issue concerning the basic life, what I
have termed the minimally human, and the fully human,
and in this I have determined the former of the Subject and
the latter the Object.

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The symbolism and objective for meaning is


instrumental in understanding the problem we have for
absolution. First I would point out that fire and bramble
appear to have a consistency for each other that fire and
bush does not convey. It is a simple matter to reflect upon
my own teaching concerning this storyxlviii: I am in a certain
awe and my belief in God is nestled primarily in the
mysteriousness of God speaking to Moses through a burning
bush that was not consumed. Right off, I am left with,
basically, God, as a mysterious powerful law-giver. The
picture I have is like a tree on fire, very neat, very cool, with
a voice emitting from it to Moses standing before it. If I am
of the heritage of my parents such that my course is the fully
human, I have rules. I have limitations which are laws
placed upon me but more so inhabiting that which I come
upon as natural law in the sense that encompasses what
could be also called real, sensible, common, normal and
regular. It is against this structure, which gains for me the
True Object, that I find myself considering Moses being
commanded by God who is speaking through a burning
bush. I have substantial for my self the rules which stem
back to the beginning which is placed before me as an object
beyond which I do not go. Indeed, we have in this version of
the burning bush Moses being told by God in just the same
manner, reflecting just this mode.
Alternately, we have a bramble. This structure is much
more difficult to discern; it wanders, its branches squirm
and twist out and into each other in no particular direction;
it seems to grow from nowhere to nowhere, take root at
random contacts with the ground, yet before me I have this
thing that I can plainly see is a bramble; it is an object but
its basis as such gets tangled in my perception of it as I
attempt to form a conception of what it is; my investigation
into it is more difficult than my investigation in what a bush

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Kair
may be. Of the bush I see its trunk, its branches, its shape,
neatly and sensibly established.

God himself has not appeared to Moses yet nor spoken


anything to him, rather, an angel of the Lord appearedin
a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. This is not a
special bush, it is merely a bush that happened to be there;
it is not The burning bush, in fact it was just some
bramble. Moses was tending his flock and an angel of the
Lord appeared in a flame that was of a fire that was burning
a bramble which was not being consumed. Moses is not
daunted, but is rather fascinated, curious. It is a great sight
and he turns aside to find out about this interesting thing
before him. He does not look straight at it. This is to say,
when we come upon an Object of Law, an object that is
unquestioned and is taken as it is come upon as a True
Object, we look upon it straight. But Moses turns aside to
investigate; he does not take it for what it appears to be, he
turns and moves in closer to see.
Here is the double voicing of the minimal human that
we find with Jesus. Granted, I am not an etymological nor
linguistic scholar hardly but we should assume that
whatever English translation is indeed at least a somewhat
accurate translation, after all these centuries; maybe Im too
easy, but here I am coming upon this text as I have been
come upon by it. Moses has gone into the bramble, he
turned aside to see; we know this because God called unto
him out of the midst of a bush; Now God speaks. But we
must ask: Was God calling from the midst of the bramble to
Moses, or was Moses in the bramble and God called him to
come out of it, or was Moses in the bramble and God called
to him from the bramble? The first thing Moses hears of God
God called to him Moses, Moses, and he said, here am
I. Again, did God call to Moses and Moses answered here I
am or did God call to Moses and say I (God) am here?
Further, he said, Draw not nigh hither, which is, do not

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come now to me, but rather, put off thy shoes from thy feet,
for the place whereon thou standeth is holy ground. In one
view, it may be that we can infer that God called Moses to
stop and to not investigate the great sight, that God, upon
seeing that Moses went to investigate, commanded him to
stop, or come out, take off your shoes because Moses should
not defile holy ground with the wearing of shoes, nor, by
implication, insult God by investigating Gods pleasure. This
would seem to be consistent with the burning bush version,
which stems upon the True Object of reality. Yet, just as
sensible, if not more sensible, it seems that God calls to
Moses once he starts to investigate the bramble in which he
now finds himself. Moses went into the bramble to
investigate and then God called to him, saying Moses,
Moses, here am I, that in the bramble Moses encountered
God, in all His eternal wandering and indefinity and God
told him not to come to Him right just yet. Instead, God
indicates Mosess minimal humanity and tells him to take
his shoes off, his shoes being a symbol, of the fully human
heritage, the Object, of what stands between Moses and God,
and that through this symbol, because of the Object, Moses
is standing upon holy ground; holy ground being, in this
sense, that ground by which, though Moses is separated
from God because of the Object, is thereby not separated: It
is auspicious ground.
Moses, meeting God, would have come to God having
left the Objective world, but he is human, of the basic life,
and so returns or is called out from the bramble that is the
angel speaking for God, such that in having the Object
removed, Moses now stands upon holy ground from which he
is to go into the world with purpose, that Moses cannot but
now do that he must do. Of this Moses is afraid; he hid his
face; for he was afraid to look upon Godxlix. Again, from the
perspective that looks upon the True Object, Moses has been
reprimanded by God for investigating the bush and is now

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being commanded and instructed about how things are and
what he must do now, as if Moses is supposed to do things
because he has been commanded by God and that this in
that he did not deny Gods command is what makes him
greatl.

Again, we acknowledge and concede the question of how


anyone could have reported these events; yet, in reading, in
investigating, we begin to comprehend. By this
comprehension, the understanding by which we know what
the story is saying, we are called out of the story, and the
versions are revealed; it is a first type of this being called out
that places God as some sort of object of the story so that as
we read we come upon a meaning of God. As we are called
out into the first meaning, we have been called out of the
bush and we read and see ourselves in reference to this fact
of God (whether used to support or refute the claim, such
that we might be religious or not, theistic or atheist,
psychological, etc...) as told through Mosess encounter, such
that we gain the True Object, God, of which we do not
question, or have a choice upon whether we should question,
and so we are in effect commanded, as Moses is commanded,
to refrain from investigation of the matter at hand and rely
upon what is given usli. Moses thus becomes like Jesus,
chosen, as we, the reader, are not chosen; the irony never
ends: We read and are placed in the relation to God where
He has been placed as an Object and we are likewise an
Object, the subject-object of God, Gods (the true objects)
subject. Hence, as a subject of a ruler, we are properly not
worthy and humble, and so in receiving Gods command, we
are embarrassed that he would have chosen us to do his
bidding and we defer our election to another. In this first, it
is sensible that Moses would turn aside as well as hide his
face.
Equally the marginalized version shows itself. To see
this version, we must back up in the tale. Now, just as we

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read the story, we are in a bramble, and this second


meaning calls us out; it calls to us from within the bramble.
Moses is not afraid until God tells Moses who he is, that is,
who God is but likewise who Moses is. When God calls out of
the bramble Moses, Moses, wherein Moses is investigating,
the double voice sounds its consolidation: Here am I. Moses
is in (might we even propose as he is investigating that
Moses is invested in seeing) the vaguely definable bramble
that is on fire but is not being consumed. A possibly small
but significant feature of this initial call, again, is the
reflection indicated in that Moses hears Moses, Moses.
This can be taken as colloquial expression of calling to
someone, as in Johnny, Johnny, where are you?, yet such
intimacy only adds to a further significance, for the next
thing indicates the consolidation of the reflection, here am
I. The reader is in a bramble, and in reading turns aside
from the Object that is proposed by the story, the bush, so he
might see this great sight, but this sight is only indicated
by there first appearing an angel of flame, a silent vision. If
no angel appears then Moses has no great sight to see, but is
merely tending his flock near a bramble, and likewise the
individual, the reader merely is told a story of God that is
really true (in the sense that its veracity might be discussed
or negotiated). But when an angel does appear, so the reader
turns aside from the story as an Object as she is reading the
story. Moses then is come upon by a call, which indicates
himself, as the minimal human, speaking to himself, yet
from an attitude or perspective that comes upon itself an an
Other: Moses, Moses; the answer to which is the moment of
realization of God expressed in the dual voicing that occurs
in the truly reflected human being, Here am I. Here am I,
Moses, and here am I, God: Here am I the reader of the story
about the reader.
This existential consolidation of being is then enforced
in the realization of who God is:

Kair
Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the
God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of
Jacob.lii

91

In the same way Luke 'knew perfectly', this moment of


Moses is the realization of his Self, his Subject, upon itself in
the human heritage, a double movement of reflection. This
situation is established in its depth when God tells Moses,
which is to say when Moses realizes, that the object of his
experience here is the same that occurred for his forefathers.
God then tells Moses of his being of the minimal humanity
in that God tells Moses what he is to do; what he will do, his
purpose, is laid before him.
The encounter in the bramble, entered into upon this
great sight of the angel, honestly, naively, ignorantly,
curiously, has resulted for Moses an odd predicament. He
has encountered God, and therefore, God has chosen him
but how can he know for sure? And Moses doubts. This is to
say, it seems impossible, ridiculous even, absurd. But it also
seems impossible to deny; he is incredulous. The significance
of hiding his face is continued in how Moses now asks God
who am I to do thisliii. He is not doubtful of the experience,
but he is doubtful of himself involved with God. In fact,
Moses is relying and dependent upon the experience; the
reflection that is God is come upon by Moses as a means to
doubt himself. God does not answer Moses as to why he has
been chosen to do this, but only comforts his doubt. God
answers in terms of the intact experience and the results
that will come,
Certainly I will be with thee: and this shall be a
token unto thee: When thou hast brought forth
the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon
this mountainliv.
By this evasion, the fact of the experience is conveyed into
the future and returned to the experience itself. In other
words, the evidence that you are looking for is already

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found, and this will be evidenced in your bringing the people


out of Egypt. Moses has been chosen; he will lead the people
out of Egypt and you will remember our encounter here; he
will have faithlv. The minimal human does only that he does.
In seeing that the experience will not be relieved, he
is becoming more resolved to the fact and he reflects upon
his task and how the people will perceive him, how
ridiculous it is that one would intend to move them from
Egypt, or even be able to; they will say oh yeah; well, what
is his name?,
And God said to Moses, I Am That I Am: and he
said, thus shalt thou say unto the children of
Israel, I Am hath sent me unto you.lvi
God tells Moses to tell the Israelites I Am has sent him,
and also to tell them that it is the God of their forefathers,
and then this is my name forever, and this is my memorial
unto all generations.
**
Jesus is beginning to understand his situation; the
vacillation is his own. He is becoming less desperate for the
Object and more tolerant of it. The fact for Jesus is that the
disciples have missed what Jesus has been talking about
and there is no overcoming this. He says to them
If ye had known me, ye would have known my
Father also; and from henceforth ye know him,
and have seen him.lvii
Jesus is telling them that they should already know the way:
But it is obvious that you do not and he says to Phillip Ive
been with you so long, and still you do not know me? He
thus attempts to reiterate the lesson of his life, the lesson
that should have confirmed to them their faith. The chapters

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of John 14 and 15 show Jesus in a less desperate mode
attempting to appeal intellectually to them. Indeed, this
move is again twofold. Of course Jesus must feel that what
he has is good for everyone, that everyone should know this
great knowledge. So he is attempting to get beyond the
ignorance of his disciples. But on the other hand, as we have
seen, Jesus is in an effort to attain the justification of the
Object, if by a type of reverse psychologylviii. In this
movement he effectively grants us an even better view into
the minimal human experience.

*
One problem that can hold the fully human in its
place of defender of the Object with reference to the story of
Jesus is the storys reference to various personas, if you will.
Much of Christian interpretation of the gospels turn upon
the situating of the Father, the Son and Holy ghost.
For example, John 14:10;
Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and
the Father in me? The words that I speak unto
you, I speak not of myself: but the Father that
dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.
It is a simple thoughtlessness to believe in the trinity;
it is a simple faith. So simple, I must say, that it does not
even reach absurdity, but more often silliness. Indeed, it
does not even qualify as absurd because, first, Christians
would hardly admit their faith is absurd, and second, they
go to great lengths to prove to others (and so justify their
belief) the sensibility of this scheme of reality; to them it
makes the most sense. It is a faith based in the full
knowledge of daily life; it takes the obvious problems of
living and existence and reconciles it to God in an absolution
that will come in heaven. As a Christian, I can hardly go
wrong no matter what I do. So simple; my attitudes of life
control my place, and I justify my place by my attitude in a

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redundant motion where God as some super-ethical


standard guides my centric self, the center that is my
thoughtful self, that is always only manifest as a
psychological one thing, as I am blinded by its enfolding
limitation. I thereby project and dismiss to invest myself in a
perfection to come through a comparison of objects; to the
fully human, Jesus Christ is founded in this simple solution:
The Object that is God, or God as the command of ethics and
morality, (that which I seek but never attain) allows me my
coveting of the Object of my world, which justifies my
inability: Original sin justified.
In as much as there is more than one object that I
desire, I am comforted in the spiritual intellectuality that
presents a divine paradox, and easily re-solved at that: God,
the Father, Jesus, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The Father
is the creator and justified benefactor of worship. God places
the world in a way that we may be tested worthy or
unworthy of blessing, or even worthy by being unworthy.
God, the seemingly growing-in-understanding judge (who is
eternal and never-changing), saw that his standards were
too high, and so sent his Son into the world so that
humanity might have an easier time living up to Gods
standards such miserable, incompetent wretches we are. I
suppose we are to assume that Jesus was or is the
handicapper for the game of eternal salvation. Then there is
the Holy Ghost, who, again, we are to surmise, is responsible
for moving a soul to appreciate God and Jesus, their worldly
institution and its dogma, to want to do goodness and
consider heaven and hell a valid option. So simple; so
ridiculous. It completely avoids humanity all together, so
invested one should be in gaining heaven, humanity is far
from existing and merely is playing; humanity consists of
game players, who are simultaneously other game pieces; no
wonder our existential situation would have it that there is
no god, but oddly enough, in the same situation where we

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find the transcendental clause. Either I am always justified
in the potential to defer myself to God, or I am justified by
what I gain and both occur for the fully human being; for
this world we should endeavor to gain Objects, and a
measure of our faith will be reflected in how much objects we
have gained, but again, or how much we are kept from
gaining. Eventually God is unnecessary because we still are
just doing what we do and/or endeavoring to gain objects
and measure our existential stature by them in whatever
manner, of excess or poverty. No god needs to exist
(absolutely) because the True Object has gained such stature
of goodness (god-ness) in itself we need only the rules of
the game. Our place as a piece in the game matters little
against the transcending term, for the term and the place
have conflated in the subject-object. God is ever present
whether we believe or not. And Christianity is just one way
of avoiding ones self: It is an assertion of my self upon the
Object of my faith, of the subject-object that is me avoided by
a holy ghost, a motivator, upon the Object.

So this is how Christianity usually situates the triune


godhead; all are three but are one. This is the fully human
take which has its counter-partial meaning excised by an
avoidance of the included individual. The Father is in Jesus
and Jesus is in the Father is taken as a description of the
divine object. No reflection is made unto God; in fact,
reflection unto God is forbidden, one is supposed to only
reflect objectively, which is to say, ironically, upon the subject
of transcendence; the self is placed by God so no one has to
really think about their place, rather, they can objectively
reflect upon themselves as to their place in Gods universe
and choose whether or not they want to believe in any
instance of trial. But little do they really have to consider
what they do because the Holy Ghost and Jesus will take
care of that responsibility: The fully human is responsible
for the Object. The terms and their meanings have no

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significance beyond a means to place one correspondent,


strategically, with other objects.
But what if I read it and include my reading of it, the
act thereof, in the reading of it? What if we include all
participants of the story? Jesus and the disciples as a whole
presentation of the situation, and, the reader and the
situation of the story included in this situation; which is to
say, what if I include myself responsibly into the thought
that I enact in coming upon the story? Then we will have
significance. Then we will have the voice of the renouncer,
the minimal human.
*
Jesus is attempting to gain for his own understanding
that they, his disciples, are having the same experience that
he is having, and Jesus is realizing and coming to terms
with the fact that they are not. He is in wonder at the
disciples' wonder and says
if you have seen me then you must also have seen
the Fatherlix,
which is so much that Jesus finds it incredible that they
would have stuck with him all this time and not have had
the Father in them also; but yet
how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?lx
Jesus cannot believe what he is coming upon, but it is
this which shows Jesus returning, in vacillation, to his
knowledge. Jesus comes back to his strength in that he is all
the more sustained by the reflection of the Object of his
disciples, that the fact of the matter is that they cannot
because the Object cannot justify the minimal human. The
minimal human is not responsible to the Object; the
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incredulous; he confronts them with what they should
already know. He is saying, in effect, do not you already
know that I and my father are the same? He is in me as I am
in Him? This is such the case that I do not speak but the
father speaks; indeed, he does the workslxi. His works are
not only miracles of healing but the work of speakinglxii, in
that the way he speaks speaks or has spoken to the disciples
such that they became disciples. Jesus's words are the works
but not along a conventional vector as though we can
reduce works to words, as a kind of interpretation that
means misinterpretation. Reality is situated in a particular
appropriation of terms, but also, Jesus as the minimal
human is expressing existence for knowledge itself, of
existence, he cannot then but help do this expressing
through his humanity he thus coincides such expression,
indeed is the coincidence, of the motion of existence by his
being the expression of knowledge and thus the miraculous
reality of the fully human. So it is he is telling them that
even if the concept is not sufficient to have you believe such
that it is thus knowledge, then believe what is your
experience by the fact that I (Jesus) called and you followed,
for it was not me (Jesus) that called you it was no True
Objective case rather it was the Father that gave you to me
and thus to Himself. John 14:11,

Believe that I am in the father, and the father in


me: or else believe me for the very works' sake.
Jesus asks in this way, speaking of himself, holding himself
up as the example of the situation that the disciples should
already understand in and of themselves, just in case they
are not yet comfortable with the presence of voice that is the
Father in them. If they understood him then they too would
have the Father speaking to them, through them, such that
when Jesus spoke, his individual humanity would be
discarded in his speaking, in his doing the work, for the
experience each disciple would be having is the Father
indeed speaking to them but from, or through, Jesus. In this
way, the experience that Jesus is beginning to see is unique

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to him, would not be, since the evidence of the disciples


following Jesus was supposed as evidence that Jesus was
only as special as his disciples. Jesus is saying the words
that I speak are not my own, but of the Father, expressing
the fact of his being, as well as asking the disciples if they
understand this, and if they do, then granting them
permission to not be embarrassed or shy in expressing the
father in them, as Jesus already does. Then Jesus steps from
the disbelief into the role of teacher again; he says (please)
believelxiii, and again calls upon their experience that he
has difficulty believing is not of them, that they have not or
are not having such an experience; he beckons to their
knowledge that he knows must be in them. He that
believeth on me if you see me, since you have followed me,
then you must be having the same understanding the
works that I do he shall do also. He is asking them no
longer to verify his faith, since he is in strength again, but is
appealing to their faithlxiv, in essence saying we are the
same. Believe it!
Now Jesus steps back into himself further to be a
guide for his disciples, since he has come to terms with his
self, his Being, his plight. Jesus has weaned himself (or
rather, has been weaned by the vacillations) from the
temptation of the Object and leaves them to their own, yet
offers them, again, an explanation of not only the situation,
but their situation, in that he knows that the father is in
them, but that it is thereby up to the Father to move them
as they would be moved. He offers comfort for their plight to
come.
If ye love me, keep my commandments. lxv
But this is not a recalling the Laws of Moses, nor any
Laws; Jesus commandments are that by which he who is in
the Father, and the Father in him, knows what to do; in fact,
he who 'loves me' cannot but do what it meant for him to do.

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It is the double voice; the one speaking a question of choice,
the other a statement of fact: If you do love me then you will
keep my commandmentslxvi; he who loves Jesus thereby
loves the Father, and by this fact is in the Father and the
Father in him, as is with Jesus. Yet since Jesus has come to
terms with the reality of fulfillment of righteousness, of
absolution, which is to say the completion of the motion of
his Being in this world, death, he has done so by seeing the
real temptation of reaching for validation in the Object, and
through this vacillating motion he comes upon the
possibility of the disciples: They are caught by the Object of
Jesus. And Jesus is leaving them. The voice that is Jesus but
not Jesus, the Father but not the Father emanates not from
any single knowable source; the Father is that source
reduced to a manner of speaking, as the point of reduction.
In so much as his disciples are in the Father, but are
possibly caught upon the Object of Jesus, as he leaves,
Jesus might see that they will have been renounced from the
Object, as if by the will of God, since Jesus can do nothing
more, be nothing more, than that he exists. Jesus will pray
that the Father (in them) thereby will bring his knowledge
unto them as renouncers, and in so much as they have had
the Object of Jesus to prevent them from the responsibility
that is their own being in the worldlxvii, minimal human,
John 14:16-19 (emphasis added.):

he shall give you another Comforter Jesus but not


Jesus; the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost the
Father will send in my nameI will not leave you
comfortless: I will come to you. The personas and pronouns
do not have responsibility to the rules of the True Object;
they refer to an experience of the self and the ways that
discourse may be situated in the minimal human experience
that he may abide with you for everEven the Spirit of
Truth; whom the world cannot receive, because of the fully
humans responsibility to the True Object, because it seeth
him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he

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dwelleth with you, and shall be in you Yet a little while,


and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I
live, ye shall live also. At that day ye shall know that I am in
my Father, and you in me, and I in you. If Jesus is in the
Father, and Jesus is in you, then the Father is in you: I am
in my Father.

Thought: Of the Subject In-Itselflxviii


Jesus is resolved again; the second vacillation has
resolved in his Being, and he steps back further from his
friends, his disciples. He reflects upon his own experience
and projects it into their experience to come, since they will
be renouncers as they are in the Father and he in them.
Jesus thus outlines the potential obstacles that come for the
minimal human in faith. See this movement for what it is: A
story has to have a beginning, but the beginning here, as we
have encountered earlier in this essay, is really merely an
arbitrary starting point that has been deemed Jesus Christ,
the object-subject, that must be an Object if we are to have a
beginning. This point may not be an historical point of a
single individual called Jesus, but more likely, a plot-line, if
you will, a scenario linking all experience that was come
upon by many individuals in themselves, and spoken about
and then recorded in a manner that indicates the decisive
significance establishing the discrepancy between the fully
and the minimal human, such that those so marginalized
may know that they have indeed come upon something
'significantly significant', so to speak. The plot line, here, of
sorts, this story of more Christ than Jesus, but Jesus Christ
in the holistic human sense, tells of the problem of existence
as it conflates with reality. Because it deals with a true
humanity that exists, the world, which is to say the heritage
of the fully human, will apprehend its meaning in a
particular manner, that is relatively, objectively, or of
individualized (subject-object) meaning, and the Subject, or
rather, the disciple, the minimal human, will apprehend its
meaning likewise in a particular, but significantly different
but not relatively; rather particularly manner. Where
such distinction is not understood, we have the dominion of
the True Object and the diminishing Subject, that relativity
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of the subject-object, and the necessary impetus for


placement of this essay.
Where the distinction is understood, we have
experience of the minimal human who has no responsibility
to the Object, for the distinction is the significant element in
understanding the Object. Thus when Jesus is speaking to
his disciples, as they are involved in the experience of the
minimal humanity, he uses consistent titles to refer to
specific but changing placements of his (Jesus, or, the
subject) singular Being-of-existence (existential Beinglxix), so
to speak, as such positions are reflected in his discourse.
John 15 begins in this way. Here is the first part of
what could be called the parameters of renunciation:
I am the true vine, and my Father is the
husbandman. Every branch in me that bareth not
fruit he taketh away: and every branch that
bareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth
more fruit I am the vine, ye are the branches:
He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same
bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can
do nothingIf ye abide in me, and my words
abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it will
be done unto you. Herein is my Father glorified,
that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my
disciples. As the Father hath loved me, so I have
loved you; continue ye in my love. If ye keep my
commandments, ye shall abide in my love, even as
I have kept my Fathers commandments, and
abide in his love.lxx
Such as it is, Jesus is granting his disciples a glimpse
of what is surely to come, and the best way to negotiate it,
which is really just a stating of the facts of the matter. The
'fruits' here must be seen as 'works', and we should keep in

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mind that the distinction between what is said, the terms,
and what is done, as activity, is only made for the fully
human who sees terms as relating to singular and specific
things in (potentially) an absolute manner, and as such that
a thing in-itself may be known as True and yet relinquish
that truth at the application of a segregate autonomous
powerlxxi. Hence, for the fully human, works must be
particularly miracles of healinglxxii, such as leprosy, and
magic, such as the water to wine, the feeding of the 5000,
and the resurrecting of Lazarus. The fully human searches
the world of True Objects for the possibility of such miracles
having occurred; he thus reduces all possibilities of existence
to his one reality that is absolutely truelxxiii. This is to say
that (miraculous) works must adhere to a particular vector
of activity, the meaning of which prescribes the force
involved and occurs in a manner that defies the specific
dynamic of meaningful term-object organization; ironically,
what this essay is describing.

The fruits to which Jesus is referring is the 'fruits of


labor', so to speak, or more, proof that one's knowledge is
absolutely true. Such proof is established through the works,
which are of the Father. Such works 'work upon the soul', so
to speak, as described in the beginning of this essay, where
because the fully human and the minimal human are both
human, and because the fully has denied its minimal
existence, whereas the minimal has accepted all that may be
humanity, when Jesus does the works, even the fully human
are impacted, find it significant, and indeed miraculous (that
Jesus could have such an effect upon their Being).
With this in mind, the 'fruit' can refer to a number of
meanings in one motion, as come upon as a significant
moment.
We have explored the significance of 'I am' that
corresponds the Subject to that which may be said to be the

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Self in a relation with itself in reflection, and this reflection


thus can be said to be God, the expression of existence as
human knowledge. When 'I am' is situated along its true
bearings, it is understood that the situation that is
presented cannot be expressed more properly; the subject is
indeed subject to a Lord, and this lord is not a True Object
because it does not exist in accordance with the fully human
Law of True Objects that proscribes for reality what may be
truly real. The subject (of discourse) is left only with itself
since it cannot describe the actuality of its situation of
reflection due to the limiting (conventional) discourse that
abides by the Law of True Objects. The process of revealing
the subject in conventional knowledge thus is the actual
movement of historylxxiv. To the Subject, all things are
known and there is nothing that is not known since the
truth of the matter of existence is manifest. In this way, the
Subject is the true vine; the vine is the unfolding movement
of existence expressed in the subject. Yet, all of this
knowledge is not expressible; if it were, as someone said, the
person would open its mouth to speak and a sound louder
than the loudest possible noise would be emitted, filling
every last corner of creation, and he would speak forever,
never stopping, yet never beginning. Hence the only
knowledge that may be expressed is that knowledge which is
conveyable dependent upon the condition of conventional,
fully human, discourse for any timelxxv; and this is thus 'true'
knowledge, knowledge of what is absolutely true of human
existence and reality, since there is no thing that is
excluded, there is no effective segregation to be able to say
the individual as opposed to everyone any anything else,
aka the subject and object. The question then is, how would
one know if such knowledge is conveyable? Typically,
though, for those who see self reflection as subjective (of the
subject-object), the question is how does one know if the
knowledge is true; hence the real conventional need for
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reflection by which to know what is true; she can only know
what other individuals might think and then come to an
opinion that she hopes will pan out so that she might be
recognized as a true object herself, that which is called
individual identity. The usual conventional method, then,
would take this and draw its logical method upon it to
conclude that where this point is made it is thus indicating
its fallacy or at least its compromise, to then conclude a
world without individual identity is nonsensical and
absurd, meaning, it cannot be real, hence again verifying our
point of two irreducible routes for world.

I am the true vine, and my father is the husbandman.


The relation of the self to 'God' is the relation that informs
the Subject as to what knowledge is conveyable for any
moment, but there is no wondering, no question about it.
Every branch in me that bareth not fruit he taketh away:
and every branch that bareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it
may bring forth more fruit... Knowledge of all things is
tempered by thought. Such thought is the consolidation of
knowledge of all things into consciousness for any moment;
this is the true vine. In the same way, all such thought (that
which is true) that may be conveyed is the branches; in
effect you are the branches as I am thought may be
conveyed in this instance through the limit of Law, and that
which is conveyed is the good fruit. Those thoughts that are
not conveyed because it is not the proper time are 'taken
away'. Thereby the husbandman 'purgeth' the good fruit, he
is the catalyst as well as the impetus for the conveyance of
truth, so that the branch may bring forth more good fruit,
that what knowledge may be conveyed is conveyed such that
other knowledge might be ready in its proper time, and that
knowledge which was known but was not of the proper time
is taken away. I am the vine, the Subject is existence as
human knowledge, and ye are the branches, in as much as
the Subject reflects, the object is that knowledge that is
'transcribed' from the subject at the proper time so that ye,

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that is 'that which is not me': The Object (since the human
reflection of the minimal human moves at once toward and
away from its self), is the branches in that the disciples are
the examples for Jesus of his 'good fruit' and this reiterates
the situation at this moment in the story.

The Disciple
In so much as Jesus may be instructing the disciples,
we are to assume, on one hand, that Jesus is still doubting
hoping but doubting that his disciples really understand
him, doubting whether they are on board, so to speak, but
as well that Jesus is telling them what to expect because
Jesus has come to terms with his experience, his Being not
required to have validation from the Object, and he has
thereby understood that indeed they are on board but in
exactly the manner and time that God would have them;
indeed, in John 16:7, Jesus expresses just this: if I do not
go away, the Comforter will not come unto you, and is
therefore speaking in resonance with the experience that
they are all having and thus is really just iterating what is
occurring in all of their experience, though the disciples do
not yet realize the full extent of their situation.
The instruction is simple. The defender of the Object
will see this passage as indication of the mytho-religious, the
traditional real-truth. The facts of the matter are likewise
simple, but in that they have a different correspondence
with the Object, in that they express the determination of
the basic life, the explanation according to the rules of the
Object are a little more involved. We might see that in that I
(the disciple) exist, born of a virgin into this world (and as
possibly this world is the vessel in which I have conception,
in which I have been conceived), being as I am determined in
this way, I could not arise from nowhere; the copula is is
equivocal with coming into being as being is this irreducible
integrated condition. The culmination of effect that is the
present moment where and as I am being, along with the
conflation of occurrences that arrive at only my self, these
taken as a whole, against all of which I come upon myself,
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undivided into objective knowledge, is itself that by which


my being is informed. This is not the mother since I am
here conceived already: It is the Father; if merely by a
colloquial meaning, the Father is that which causes the
experience of the minimal human. Thus we have the
sensibility of the parameters: I am the vine; in so much as
Jesus hangs meaning upon the dual voice of Being (I am),
that which exists and is Being grows necessarily the only
way it can; how this can grow, the phenomenon of life
growing as well as the vector or direction or manner in
which an existent grows, is absolutely determined by that
aspect of reality that is not immediately I; indeed, how
Being grows is exactly, but by an echo, am, heard in the
next clause. It is all that is counterposed in existence, so
much that my Father is the husbandman that grants the
determination of reality. That which I am cannot be the
undistinguished wholeness of existence, it can only be that
which is distinguished of the wholeness of reality in that I
may be the vine, and the Father the husbandman; I am the
life that bares the fruit, and that which is, not me,
distinguishes me by the very fact of there Being reality in
existence. That which is is that by which I can only bare
fruit because I am the expression of the basic life in
humanity. The Father is thus not Humanity, but I am in
the Father and the Father is in me; every branch that does
not bare fruit is taken away by the Father, and so that
branch does not bare fruit, de facto: He who is not of the
basic life, but rather of the fully human heritage, bares no
fruit, but only seeks the fruit, of the Object.
I am the vine. Jesus in his place as the Object for the
disciples is that which allows for the occasion of the
experience, wherein the disciples are I am the vine, and the
Father is that by which I move and speak: The Father does
the works. In that Jesus, at this point, may be the vine, the
Object of the disciples faith, they are the branches which

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stem from the vine; but this I not a tree, indeed it is more a
bramble, and the Father is the husbandman who makes it
such that there is a vine with branches. So the disciples, as
minimal human in their own right, too can say they bring
forth fruit because they abideth in me, and I in him...; the
minimal human cannot be nor is not separate from the
activity of the basic life; the minimal human expresses the
basic life at all times; ...the same bringeth forth much fruit.
The disciples will hear the Father in them and then will
remove themselves, or will be removed, from the possibility
that they did not understand, because when they come upon
the significant moment, which is the decision to renounce
the Object, they will see how their life has been determined
in its entirety. Jesus will be leaving. They will ask what ye
will and it shall be done unto you because what they ask
is innately of the basic life determined such that what ye
asks will be done unto you because it is already being done
such that ye had to have asked. Jesus says, the Father has
loved me, so I love you and you continue in my love because
the Father is in them as he is in Jesus. That Jesus is the
Object, the Object is leaving them, and they will have the
Father because they have had the Object that they will have
been renounced by when Jesus leaves.

These things I have spoken unto you, that joy


may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.lxxvi
The disciples are justified by the Object of Jesus as
Jesus expresses only what he can express, that this is what
occurs for the minimal human, the renouncer of the Object,
and that Jesus too has encountered the vacillation of faith in
the seeking of the validation of the Object, as they might feel
sorrow when Jesus (their justifying Object) leaves them. The
joy remains because of the experience, and remains full in so
much as it is not found through the verification of the
Object, but in the true experience, the Spirit of truthlxxvii,
in as much as the reflection of self upon such an experience
is granted by the Comforter, that which verifies that their
experience is valid and true.

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The minimal human is determined; John 15:16 says,


Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you. And
because of this, in so much as ye love one another the
disciples will not falter in the face of the world that {15:19}
hateth you. This will occur for the disciples because ye
have been with me from the very beginning; and so this is
the fact of the matter: The fully human is offended by the
disciples presence of Being, and so will point their
discomfort upon them, as they are soon to upon Jesus. The
16th chapter of John begins with the summary of how the
world of objects will hate them: {16:3} yea, the time cometh,
that whosoever killith you will think that he doeth God
service. This is the representation of the orientation of the
fully human upon what God and reality is allowed to be
{16:3} because they have not known the Father, nor me.lxxviii
Jesus is telling them this so they will know that their
experience was not in vain and {16:1} that ye should not be
offended themselves as such a turning of events upon them,
for otherwise they might doubt and worry about what bad
decision they may have made in following Jesus, but it
indeed is as it should be, for they did not choose, but were
chosen, as Jesus was likewise. Then the chapter goes on to
explain the situation at hand as it is their situation now that
Jesus is leaving them, and as this will go with them in the
future. It finishes, again explaining, {16:33} These things I
have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace In
the world [while] ye shall have tribulation. And he
reassures them that in the same way that he has overcome
the world (of True Objects), so shall they: Because they
already have by virtue of the nature of their Being.
*
The second trial of his existence has come complete.
Jesus moved through the doubt which attempts to gain

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justification from the Object, into the realization of the
nature of experience, and the summation in comfort of the
actuality of the situation at hand, speaking to his disciples
as friends. Having traversed the real vacillation, he is
centered and resolute in what is to come. He has been
speaking to his disciples, but in that he is minimally human
he can do nothing but speak and act by virtue of the basic
life, and so was also speaking to himself, of himself, in the
movement of the effect of God; the discrepancy reveals his
humanity, the humanity that is going to end soon. Now he
has come back to this presence, and he speaks within the
confidence of his Being, in communion with existence, in
supplication, to himself, to his disciples, to no one in
particular, to everyone everywhere:

These words spake Jesus, and lift up his eyes to


heaven and said, Father, the hour has come;
glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify
theelxxix
In verse 6, Jesus grants further credence to the heart of
this essay:
I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou
hast gavest me out of the world: thine they were, already,
before Jesus called them, they had, like Luke, perfect
understanding from the very start and thou gavest them
me, so they would not be offended, so they could come into
and remain in joy and peace, so they could [know] that all
thingsthou has given me is of thee; Of Jesus, of God, and
as they are of the basic life, of themselves. Jesus, as if
summing up the essay of his ministry, finishes it, on one
hand proclaiming the facts of the matter, and on the other,
consoling himself by the inevitability of existencelxxx.
**

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We should take a moment and see that the next part
of the story beckons us back to the virgin birth, for we must
ask, again: How can we know this? If only the four were
there, how does this story come to us; and, how could we
know what Jesus did or thought when he was alone? The
answer to these questions give further support to the idea
that this is not a story about one necessary person only
(Jesus), but more about an experience that individuals were
coming upon, common between them, and that these
separate experiences of separate people occurred along the
same storyline (Christ); the individuals had the same types
of experiences individually, and that individually they were
secret, mysterious, even from others, but that indeed there
was more than one who had the experience.
*
Jesuss apprehension is confirmed in Gethsemane.
Though he has reached through the first vacillations, the
latter will lead Jesus to the reality of his life. Knowing of the
the pattern a reason for the vacillations, Jesus now must
confront them on a different level. Instead of seeking an
identical validation, he is looking still for signs of the
continuation of the ministry. Thus continuing in the effort to
discover who will follow him, Jesus retires to the garden, for
he began to be very sorrowful and very heavylxxxi, with
those that might seem to be the best candidates, still, the
first three whom God had given Jesus, Peter, or whom Jesus
names Cephas, which is the rock or stone, and the two
sons of Zebedee, James and John. He asks the three to keep
watch while he goes to pray because his soul is exceedingly
sorrowful, even unto death. He is expressing his worry
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about who will follow him in understanding as this is


combined in his anxiety over his imminent death; otherwise,
one would think that he would be glad to be returning to his
father in heaven. He thus seeks guidance from God. He
prays, Abba, Jesus is appealing to God in the most
intimate manner, as a child to its father, Father, all things
are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me:
nevertheless not that I will, but what thou wilt. Luke
emphasizes the intensity and intimacy involved in this
appeal despite an angel of the Lord appearing to him to
strengthen himlxxxii: Yet still being in agony he prayed
more earnestly. We should see the personal dilemma being
expressed here of Jesus. He is leaving this physical world;
his ministry is over. Christ Jesus, the basic life expressed in
humanity is vacillating and so is concerned along two levels;
the questions the doubt! that plague him enfold upon one
another. Has he been deluded in his faith? Has his life been
a sham? We have seen the problem that lay between the
minimal and fully human; the expression of the basic life in
the heritage of humanity is thwarted by the latters
understanding that is based upon the Object. Upon facing
certain death, Jesus reflects upon the overwhelming
evidence of misunderstanding in the world, and this had
been brought to a head now with his disciples. In his
ministry, the issue of his disciples was put on hold while he
went out into the world as a result of the inherent
consistency of meaning in the basic life of Jesus; now he is
directly confronted with his impotent message, the message
that has fallen upon deaf ears, that his assumption of
understanding by his disciples, who now, as the fifteenth
chapter of John shows that Jesuss disciples are more than
mere followers, are friends, may have been misplaced.
Perhaps, Jesus worries, I have been wrong; perhaps I have
been tricked; perhaps I have been delusional. Jesus is
caught in the paradox of being human. Even as he prays to
God, he is doubting God in himself, and asking God, since

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God is all powerful, if he will remove the whole thing like it
had been a bad dream; yet even as he may doubt, the fact of
his doubting denies that his doubt could be valid, since if
there were nothing to doubt then he could not doubt, yet he
doubts, and this doubt brings despair. Jesuss despair is not
so much that he is going to die, but that his life has been in
vain, for if it had not been so, if it had not been exactly the
life that it has been, then he would not have this dilemma.
His doubt is vanity, identification with the Object. He asks
God to remove this cup from me, this cup that is his
experience in the basic life from which he drinks and offers
to the world the absolute Object. He sulks in self
introspection and doubt, and this eternal cycle of himself
that leads him out of his situation only to bring him back to
it through every avenue he truly carries the burden that is
the weight of the world. In this doubting, Jesuss vanity
enfolds upon itself; he has lead men out of their livelihood
based upon an insinuation of self perception upon the other,
and based upon this these men have forsaken their lives and
followed him, believing that he had something significant for
them. Now he is going to die, and they do not even perceive
it, did not even know of it; even as he has told them all along
and now tells them again as it is here, they are astonished.
Indeed, Jesus must wonder, am I a selfish father leaving his
ignorant children to fend for themselves? He is left in his
sullen mire of doubt and faith, pleading to God to at once
take away this redundant assertion while implicitly asking
God to reveal to him which of his disciples has understood,
for then Jesus would be renewed and be confident that his
life had not been in vain, that indeed his faith and
understanding was not a delusion, that he has carried a true
message. Do they understand? But he gets up and returns to
Peter, James and John to find them asleep, seemingly
oblivious to the whole situation. Jesus is flabbergasted and
reacts rebuking their ignorance, offended in his
contemplation that is seem to be made moot, couldest not
thou watch one hour? And then he comes into himself as

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Christ and gives them direction, watch ye and pray, lest ye


enter into temptation, as temptation is oriented upon the
increasingly dogmatic message (the rule of the Object) that
Jesus sees they have gained from him. Then he appeals to
them in hope that they are not those dogmatic souls, that
indeed they might understand, and indeed see themselves
the minimal human; Jesus expresses his humanity but in
the double voicing that includes addressing the disciples,
the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.
The problem Jesus faces of his existence is the
problem between the world of the basic life, the Subject, and
the world human heritage, the Object, exemplified most
poignantly to himself, illustrated by the story, by his
situation of doubt against the disciples, the objects of Jesuss
experience, who apparently do not understand what Jesus
has been saying, which is distinctly and eternally of the
Subject. His friends; how intimately he knows them like he
knows no other human beings; he doubts them because they
are inevitably objects to Jesuss experience, he renounces
them despite himself because he has renounced the Object.
The paradox is almost too much to bare, as experience sways
into knowledge, instead of knowledge (the knowledge that
would be the confirmation by his disciples that they
understood) moving experience. He goes and prays again the
underlying prevalence for God to show him who will follow
him, but he returns to find them asleep again. Now he comes
to the resolution that is the inevitability of his faithful life
against the apparent ignorance of even those whom he had
thought understood. Sleep on now, and take your rest: it is
enough, the hour has come and his quite ironic statement
of his situation, behold, the son of man is betrayed into the
hands of sinners. His disciples do not understand and they
are ignorant: They are also sinners. And so humanity, as
historical creatures, likewise sin. Jesus as human is
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of Subjects; as he confronts his mortality, he is come upon by
the Object of his death, and attempts to hold it in place,
away from himself, so he may know it: He fulfills the plight
of being human in that he responds as fully human, desirous
of the Object to justify his experience in knowledge. Once
this begins to occur, we move into a different phase of the
story. The single ministry of Jesus begins to show its
plurality in resonant fractures. Jesus is coming to terms
with the reality of being the minimal human of faith.

* * *
So Jesuss ministry comes to a close; now, by dying, he
is to come complete for absolution. The solution cannot be
half gained; life is only half, incomplete and segregated in its
meaning. It is based in the parameter defined by death, as
death for the fully human life marks the absolute limit of
knowledge, and thus the opening for God, the transcendent.
Were Jesus in his life to say and do as much, but then not be
crucified, not be the target for the fully human resentment,
his life would mean nothing and there would be no Christ.
The struggle of the foregoing episode is balanced in his
resurrection, and a release from the tension begins in the
garden of Gethsemane, which Luke calls the Mount of
Olives, which John says lay on the other side of the brook
Cedron; but not before the tension culminates in terrible
suffering. We have symmetry in the story of Jesus Christ;
the Passion counters in weight the length and breadth of the
ministry. Yet, as if by literary method, in the transition
between this symmetry, a break occurs in the garden. After
crossing a brook, which can be seen as symbolic of the
transition, upon the Mount of Olives, which is a symbol for
peacelxxxiii, an interlude, or intermission, a pause marks the
separation between the struggle of the life of the minimal
human that endeavors in a deep compassion, and the
struggle of his death, that proceeds in a deep passion;
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intellectual or thoughtful plight of concern for the world, his


death involves the physical plight of the ramifications
concerning the world and its offense, its passion, its hatred
for the minimal human (indeed, we have seen this in Jesuss
vacillations, of his realizing his approach upon mortality,
above)lxxxiv. This moment of peace before the tribulation
takes place in the story as if to show the comedy involved in
the purposeful life. Jesus has nothing more to say about his
experience, but rather lets everyone else say it while he
merely rounds out the truth of the matter in blatant
contradiction of what his prosecutors expect.
Judas has led those who wish to arrest Jesus to where
Jesus will be, and Jesus expects them, so first we should
notice the silliness of one who is to be put to death waiting
for his executorslxxxv. He meets them and asks who they are
looking for, as if Judas could not tell them which one is
Jesus. They tell him Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus tells them
I am he. Yet instead of them taking him right then, they
are so astounded by the ease of their find and his ready
stance that they fall back, actually fall to the ground. They
cannot believe that this is the guy. Again Jesus asks them
who they want, and they again tell him. One cannot miss the
comedy if one imagines Jesus standing there with his
disciples overlooking the band of men who have stumbled
and fallen to the ground, who were sent to arrest them. The
situation is almost slapstick; the robbers have been caught,
but the police running so fast after them have fallen as if
coming up against a brick wall, which is really the hardly
winded nor startled robbers standing waiting for the police
to come. And now the robbers stand there with a curious
expression on their faces looking at their pursuers on the
ground in front of them. Everyone is kind of stunned, and
Jesus reprimands the idiocy of Judass crew, and says, I
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want me, then let my friends go and take me already. Simon
Peter is the first to come out of the stupor that is the
processing of the realization of the ridiculous picture before
him, and pulls his sword out and instead of killing one of
them, joins Jesus in ridicule of the men by cutting off the ear
of one of them. Then as a segue back into the immanence of
the situation, Jesus responds to Simon Peter, answering the
question posed by his attack; the cup which my Father hath
given me, shall I not drink it?lxxxvi The minimal human
determined, Jesus is saying: How else could I proceed?

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In contrast to the acceptance of the minimal human of
Jesus we have the denial of Simeon Peter. Now, Peter is a
disciple. We are not to place him in the camp of the True
Object; yet we read that he places himself there as the high
priests took Jesus. He followed behind them to watch what
would happen and then joined the crowd when a woman
recognized him as a follower of Jesus. In fact, three
individuals recognize him. And three times he denies that he
even knows Jesus, as Jesus told him he would. Conventional
knowledge of the the fully human sees this event as an
example of the insecurity of humanity, and a statement
about faith; one is supposed to stand firm in their faith and
testify the truth. Yet a few things interest us for the version
proposed in this essay of the minimal human and absolution.
We can approach through this interest by layers of
understanding; we can enter by a critical level that presents
a generalized form, and thereby situated, then proceed into
the more specific existential indications.
*
In John 18, verse 15, Peter and another disciple
followed Jesus. This other disciple is known to the high
priest and goes in with Jesus in to the palace while Peter
stays outside. Now, given this setup we can assume that
Caiaphas, the high priest, was not interested in persecuting
anyone but Jesus. All that is said of the situation is that this
disciple was known to Caiaphas; we do not have a
qualification for what known means. All we can say is that
he was known enough to be allowed into the temple even
while he was known to be a follower of Jesus; obviously this
other disciple had nothing to fear. If we follow this picture,
we might see that the problem was seen as Jesus, and not so
much as his followers, and this other disciple was allowed to
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go with Jesus maybe for support. Likewise, we do not know


why Peter stayed outside; perhaps the priests thought one
friend was enough, and knew one to boot. But we do get a
feeling that Peter was afraid. Hence, we have the picture of
the situation at hand: The disciple who goes into the temple
is not afraid, but the one who stays outside is afraid. The
disciple who went inside the temple turned out ok, for all we
are told about him, even though and this is key going
into the temple seems like it should be the more dangerous
place to go. It is just as easy to assume that the disciple's
being known to the high priest would put him at risk of
being also persecuted as it is to take the former view, that he
was allowed in because he was known, which would then
paint a picture of some type of understanding between them
in his being known. Given Peter's fear of going in, we might
assume that he figured that staying outside was the safer
bet. Outside of the temple is where the people are, where the
trial is not taking place. But the story tells us outright by
what occurs that the opposite was true; the place where the
crowd is turns out to be the more dangerous place; the place
where Peter is tried. For all we know, nothing happens to
the disciple who went in.
In true ironic fashion, it is also meaningful to say that
the disciple who went with Jesus placed himself in the arena
of the Object (the court of Law) because he was firm in his
renouncement of it. But also, perhaps the temple is safe
because it administers law. It is then consistent that
Caiaphas is not worried so much about what Jesus is saying
but rather the potential for social chaos because he is saying
things; Caiaphas maintains the Law as the Law is what has
been handed down from God and is the pillar of social
stability; Jesus is seen as upsetting this stability. The trial
of Jesus is a motion of Law, even if this trial has an agenda.
We see, in line with the foregoing discussion in this essay,
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claiming he is the Messiah most likely, this is what has
been inferred by the people hearing him, and most probably
many other public preachers have been saying all sorts of
questionable things including things about a Messiah but
how he is saying things. The implicit renunciation of the
Object, which Jesus cannot but help to express, is taken by
those of the Law, which we will see with Peter also includes
the crowd outside, as a call to renounce the Law.

*
We should explore this 'saying of things'. The story of
Jesus sheds light upon a critical moment of this essay
through exhibiting 1) how the Subject is limited in its
expression by the conventional Law (fully human
conventional reality), that is, the law which designates
(structures signs meaningfully) how truth may be situated
for reality; 2) how this limitation reveals what is capable of
being expressed, which is to say, how the limitation
evidences a true historical progress by indicating the limits
placed upon the expression of truth; 3) a moment where
Jesus is coming up against the Law in his use of it for what
he intends to express of the truth; 4) how the fully human,
he who is confined by the Law and thus comprehends
nothing further than what the Law appears to denote, which
is, for a word, infinity, is offended by the subject, interprets
this moment.
A key expression of this moment, and indeed, a
significant indicator of the meaning of this essay here,
occurs in John 7 and 10; it is most poignant in John chapter
10, verse 20:
And many of them said, he hath a devil, and is
mad; why ye hear him?
This expression of Jesus 'having a devil' begins to occur
in these latter chapters. In Chapter John 7:20,

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The people answered and said, Thou hast a devil: who


goeth about to kill thee?
This is in response to Jesus accusing the Jews at the
temple of scheming to kill him, but is in a different tone:
They are either being defensive or ignorant. They are in
effect saying either that Jesus must be slightly paranoid
because he thinks people want to kill him but they, though
earlier in John some are considering such activity, have yet
to have spoken of it overtly or have made any distinct
assertions or plans, or they indeed are startled because they
did not think that Jesus knew that people wished him dead;
he must have a devil in him because he is being so bold,
indeed, he is offensive. What he is saying in each of these
moments has the effect of renouncing the Law of the Object.
Here, Jesus makes most clear his position, but the people
will not hear it, indeed, they will not hear of it.
In John 7:15-16, ...the Jews marveled... at Jesus
teaching in the temple, at his apparent knowledge, his
apparent authority, saying, How knoweth [the scripture,
the Law], having never learned? And Jesus answered, my
doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me.lxxxvii
In this essay, we propose that the minimal human
cannot but do that which is his existence, and thus he is the
expression of existence in human knowledge: Jesus's
ministry is naught that but what his existence determines,
but further, that the knowledge of the minimal human
designates a particular view such that everything makes
sense. The Law of the Object, that of the individual, will not
see beyond the scheme that designates what may be realtrue (truly real), at that, of individual objects. Thus it is that
the Jews only hear Jesus through this scheme of truth,
which can be called (as a type) rational logiclxxxviii. This is
why the people do not hear Jesus, and is why we say Jesus
is really speaking to those who already understand, that in

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this mode, he is really indicating for those minimal humans
that 'now is the time'. So Jesus says as much:

If any man do his will, he shall know of the


doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak
of myself. He that speaketh of himself seeketh his
own glory: but he that seeketh his glory that sent
him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is
in him.lxxxix (italics mine)
People can make of anything what they want, but it is
not hard to see that plainly these verses make difficult
sense. It appears that Jesus is saying something to the effect
that there are two types of people, those who do their own
will and those who do the will of he who sent them (God).
But a closer inspection shows that he might be saying
something else; in fact, he is speaking only of himself and
those who already understand the 'doctrine'. He is speaking
along the margin of Lawful meaning. He is saying that the
minimal human cannot but speak of himself, but that being
the case, as he is minimally human, he never speaks of
himself. Of course we should see that Jesus is really stating
the fact of the matter of human existence, that indeed there
is no human being that acts any way or manner than is
entirely himself as well as entirely determined existentially
but this holds the issue, this is where the story of Jesus
gains its stature, and why the author of John speaks in his
writing more significantly than the other gospels: He can
only indicate that the problem is solved before it has become
problematic, but nevertheless, somehow, the problem
remains and is presented before us at every moment; the
story tells of this phenomenon and the story speaks this
phenomenon. The people, in contrast, in this chapter hear no
indication of much except that Jesus is not making very
much sense. To them, he sounds as if he has made a mistake
in his rhetoric but then he gives no indication that he knows
he has made a mistake and indeed he moves to back up
what sounds like a mis-speaking. Then he jumps into a

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seemingly unrelated topic, apparently for the sole purpose of


insulting the Jews who are listening:
Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of
you keepeth the law? Why go ye about to kill me?xc
But this is less an accusation than it is an indication.
Only the fully human set within the Law of the True Object
will see this as referring to the Jewish Law proper (Exodus,
Leviticus, etc...), as if Jesus is accusing the Jews of not
following their own law this is only one meaning amongst
layers of meaning; this obvious meaning is so blatant that it
hardly needs reiterating for the story, as much as it does.
One can only wonder how such a small meaning could have
kept so many: But indeed it is only through faith that such
ignorance (and denial) can stay viable.
Jesus has come to fulfill the law of Moses, and since
Jesus has come to fulfill the law, we have to ask what this
means. How can one fulfill the ten commandments, or for
that matter, the laws of Numbers and Leviticus, or any
compliment of rules? One might be tempted to say 'well, its
in that Jesus was without sin that he fulfills the law', but
then would not have Jesus himself thrown the first stone at
the adulteress in chapter 8? Indeed, Jesus confirms this
analysis in this chapter, verse 18, where he says, I am one
that bear witness of myself, and the Father that sent me
beareth witness of me. {italics KJV}. Perhaps some might
say that Jesus fulfills the law by defying death, evidenced
with Lazarus as well as Jesus (here, but now soon will be)
returning in the revelation, as some sort of fulfilling of
history kind of thing. I can only say: But what for those who
see what is apparent needing faith?
The law of which Jesus speaks is that law which is
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and/or supposed to lead one to righteousness and so to God.
But no such awakening or enlightenment has occurred in
either manner except that Jesus is here; the Jews merely see
the Law as designating truth and have no further reflection
upon the law than that of individual behavior in social
negotiation. Hence Jesus comes exactly at this right time. In
Jesus, as in Moses, the law has been fulfilled. There is
nothing about the Law that Jesus negates, but in this, in his
expression of the total law, is also ironically the expression
that is bound to no law (remember, Moses could only do that
he does also, could only express existence) but exactly the
law in its entirety which is the explication of existence in
knowledge; those who see not the law's truth, but instead
see the word of law as designating a truth for which they are
less, or not worthy except that they must live under it and
try these faithful of the Law of the true Object cannot and
will not hear what Jesus is saying, and so cannot but see his
expression in terms of The reality (the only possible reality)
of the Law of the True Object, and thereby negate Jesus
(inevitably) and see Jesus as 'having a devil', as one who is
possessed, as one who appears to be saying something, but
upon further investigation, is saying only nonsense. It is
they who are dead in reflection to life eternal (Jesus; the
minimal human; existence) and so want to make him like
them, which is to kill Jesus through requiring of him to be
justified against the True Object. But Jesus will not be, and
thus makes no accusation but merely expresses the facts of
the matter at hand. Likewise, in chapter 8, the Jews attempt
to trap Jesus in fallacious logic, but it is just this type of
attachment to the Law of the Object for which Jesus has no
responsibility. Then in chapter 10, it is clear that he is not
confronting them the same way, but rather is making sense
to them in a way that they do not wish to make sense, and it
is this type of blatant denial that designates true sinners.

In this verse of chapter 10, it is not difficult to find the


very human intersection of religion and science; possession

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and insanity are often intricately linked in the fully human


law-full reality. This is the discernment that the author of
John wishes to draw out; as the book proceeds, the story
winds into situation that brings Jesus up against the Law
and thereby shows the discrepancy between the fully and
the minimal human by juxtaposition of the the apparent
increasing inability (though how they try) of those of the
Law to understand him, with, all the while, the patent and
implicit confirmation (implicit in that this book was written
as such) for those who understand him that they indeed
have found the way. If his previous ministries have not been
entirely clear to those who listened, they at least elicited an
interesting curiosity, one that was somehow causing all sorts
of stir. But it is not a fluke of the author of John that this
speech of Chapter 10 comes right after he causes a blind
man to see, as well as right before his most profound miracle
of raising Lazarus from the dead; these miracles occur, as a
sort of culminating of action, right before the part in the
story we have called for this essay 'the departure': It is as
though what can be said in the open, to the public, to those
of the Law, the Jews, has been said, as well as
demonstrated.
In the effort to be more precise and clear, we shall
explicate chapters 8, 9 and 10 where Jesus says,
...he that entereth not by the door into the
sheephold, but climbest up some other way, the
same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth
in by the door is the shepherd of sheep. To him the
porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice; he
calleth out his own sheep by name, and leadeth
them out. And when he putteth forth his own
sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow
him: for they know his voice. And a stranger will

Kair
they not follow, but will flee from him: for they
know not the voice of strangers.

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This parable spake Jesus unto them: but they


understood not what things they were which he
spake unto them.xci
Again, this speech is nearly making no sense, or rather,
it is on the verge of contradicting itself, particularly in that
he seems to be speaking about all sheep, sheep of the
shepherd, which might be commonly recognized as God. Yet
this shepherd enters by the porter (portal; gate) and calls his
own sheep out but has not he already called his sheep: The
Jews, the chosen people? Then somehow God is calling his
own sheep by name. What name? The Jews? Does Jesus
mean individual people? How would I know if God has called
my name? But are not we Jews the chosen people? And
inevitably some people would come to the conclusion that
Jesus, again, is speaking of himself, that he is the shepherd
in question, and they would thereby begin to be offended.
For God has given them the Law because they are the
chosen people and they are thus lead by the shepherdxcii.
Complimentary to the explanation above concerning
chapter 7, Jesus is attempting to make plain the truth, and,
in plain speaking, the condition of the Law of the Object, the
rules that relate terms in a proper scheme of truth, of the
fully human, is not 'ready' to be able, the condition of
discourse is not well suited, or is just barely able to convey
the meaning that Jesus is expressing. Chapter 10 is a simple
statement that clarifies what he was attempting to convey in
chapter 7, and shows existence 'in process', so to speak, of
coming to terms with the fully human convention, as
knowledge, truth, is able to be expressed in the moment; we
see Jesus in the movement of appropriating the terms of
convention to express the truth of the matter of human
existence. So it is by chapter 10 he is able to be more clear in
his dialectic for those who are subjects of the Law (subjectobjects): That Jesus is not speaking to everyone, but only to

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those who already know the truthxciii. Indeed, the


proclamation at the beginning of the story is 'repent: now is
the time. Jesus was not so much telling everyone that some
sort of great reckoning was about to occur, but more that
those who are of the minimal human experience may now
know that it is valid.
Here now Jesus says as much: Only those who are his
'sheep' will understand him, and the reason that the Jews do
not understand him is because they are not his sheepxciv. Yet
by the fact that he is preaching as one who has authority, he
obviously must be at least attempting to convey some sort of
message to everyone, and some of these are obviously
thinking they know what he is saying but indeed this
message will only be comprehended by those who are
capable of knowing. The Pharisees with whom Jesus is
speaking in chapter 9 want to understand what Jesus is
saying and indeed seem to think that they indeed do
understand him, that is to say, believe on the Son of Godxcv
, and ask Jesus sardonically, Are we blind also?xcvi, or no
longer blind in as much as they cannot refuse the testimony
of the healed blind man's parents, as well as the man's
himself. They are becoming offended, more so jaded, in this
process, and Jesus plainly confirms their offense and further
does not wish to console or convince them but merely bares
witness to them of the situation: There is no coming to faith
through the True Object, through the Law. Jesus plainly
rebukes such faith, such a route of Objective position; Verse
9:41, ...but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin
remaineth. For judgment I am come into the world, that
those who are blind might see the situation, and those who
see the situation, or think they do, might be made to see that
they indeed are blind a very truthful and ironic response
indeed. Only the minimal human, the expression of
existence in human knowledge, may rightly express a valid

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polemic, one that is not reduced to relative behavioral
applicability, one that is not based in negotiation.

So Jesus continues in John 10:7-18, again reiterating


and expanding on what he just said. ...I am the door of the
sheep... I am (of Moses) the door, and he repeats this: I am
the door, and again reiterates in the attempt to discover the
proper terms that will ring true through the scheme of truth
of reality (the Law): I am the good shepherd. He that is not
the good shepherd are those who came before him, those who
have the 'true-real' past, those of the Law, and these,
alluding to the priests but in fact everyone who is of the
Law, leaveth the sheep when they see the wolf coming;
they are hirelings, those who have been bought, or rather,
those who have sold themselves, those who have been taught
what is 'true', those of the fully human tradition, those of the
True Object. These not only flee, but at once are caught by
the wolf (that is, fear, danger, death and the like) and
scatter; theirs is contingency and self concern, which is the
individual's concern of justification against the True Object,
which is life accorded and deemed to circumstance, whereas
the good shepherd lay down my life for the sheep. 'I am'
the good shepherd because as such, the minimal human,
Christ, knows his sheep as the sheep know him: The
disciples, and whoever else 'hear the voice of the shepherd
call their name'. Indeed, there are 'others' who are not of the
'chosen people', but who nevertheless are sheep I have,
which are not of this fold (not Jewish and not of the present
group of disciples) yet these 'chosen people' may be the sheep
of the good shepherd, them also I must bring, and they
shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold and one
shepherd.
Like much of what Jesus says, due to the ability for
conventional terms to absorb and convey truth, the terms do
not remain consistent identifiers for identifying truth as the
fully human scheme as would dictate. Jesus begins by

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alluding to 'the' sheep and the shepherd who enters into the
sheepfold by the door and this is taken to mean the chosen
people of God. Then he says that what is supposed by the
Jews to mean God, the good shepherd, calls to his sheep by
name who hear him because they know his voice. Now Jesus
is speaking of a division of sheep within the sheepfold, as if
there is the chosen, but then there is the really chosen. The
Pharisees do not understand Jesus so he attempts to make it
more clear by shifting discursive register to be more plainly
conventional but also to mock their ignorance. He says that
he, Jesus, is the door but also the good shepherd. He also
speaks of 'the Father', and this then would have the Jews
totally confused, since they would have been following what
Jesus is saying is the shepherd to mean God the Father.
This more, purportedly, clear or more precise iteration
brings the listeners to move from general misunderstanding
to actual divisive positions, as well as bringing Jesus to have
to spell out the situation in a more confronting manner.
Some say he has a devil, or is possessed, others say that this
cannot be since he was able to make the blind see. In the
context of what is being told here in this story of Jesus, we
have a picture of the ignorant fully human; in discussion,
some have reasons to see one who speaks this way as insane,
or having a devil, and others who tend to justify what should
be a consistent or even profound meaning by his actions,
even though they really do not comprehend what was said in
actuality. Yet according to Jesus, both of these types are
blind and sinful; these are the thieves and hirelings. The
good shepherd does not live by virtue of the Law, but fulfills
it. 'I am' brings all of his sheep into one fold and for this
reason, for this purpose, does the Father love Jesus, loves 'I
am', because I lay down my life, the life that the Law of the
Object determines is true, the proper method by which one
comes to and understands what life is, the contingent and
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sheep, but for those sheep that hear their name and know
the good shepherd's voice, those who hear themselves called
to the door. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down
myself. There is no one who may dissuade the disciples, the
shepherd's sheep, from their knowing of the truth, for they
have been called.

*
Moving on, the story seems to change setting but is
still concerning the parable of the sheep. Here Jesus is
brought into describing the situation more particularly and
poignantly; the story ends with a quick exit of Jesus because
now the Jews are so offended by what he is saying that they
almost stone him. The stage is set; indeed the next story is
that of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead as if the
emphasize the absolute discrepancy involved so far, that
Jesus must actually raise a dead person. But dead in what
sense? This precedes the departure. Much of this, the Jew's
mounting energy of frustration and offense over Jesus,
comes about because Jesus (at least in John) does his best to
never answer questions with direct answers; he never
justifies the True Object, but he nevertheless is often
brought to answers that directly confront the questioner
without implicating himself as a true Object.
The Jews have again sought out Jesus, we are to
suppose, because his last parable left them in such a stir
that they need a 'plain' answer. The Jews say, How long
dost thou make us to doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us
plainly.xcvii And Jesus says:
I told you, and ye believe not: the works I do in my
Father's name, they bear witness of me. But ye believe
not, because you are not of my sheep, as I have said unto
you. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they
follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they
shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out

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of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater


than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my
Father's hand. I and my Father are one.xcviii
Then the Jews took us stones again to stone him. But
Jesus hits them with their own Law, which of course they do
not enjoy because they only function by the term of Law and
not its spirit. He asks them for which of the Laws do they
want to kill him. They say not for any of his 'works', but for
blasphemyxcix, because they now see for sure, as Jesus has
been drawn out by the Law to expose himself, to fulfill the
Law, that he indeed is saying, indeed makest thyself Godc.
Now Jesus smacks them again with their own law: Is it not
written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?ci If he called them
gods, unto whom the word of God came... say ye of him...
Thou basphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?
{emphasis added}. And Jesus says for them to judge him by
his workscii; so they do but yet still, again, sought to take
him, and Jesus escaped out of their hand. It is interesting
that even though Jesus is telling them the truth, and is
entirely justified in this, he still has presence enough to see
that though his existence is sufficient, he still must get out
of there promptly. While his message is not for the Jews, the
sheep in general, it is somehow correct and righteous that he
speaks to those whom he knows do not understand; indeed,
because of this condition one would think that Jesus would
have nothing to say to them, but that he must: It is almost
as if Jesus is mocking them. The symmetry involved in this
story balances itself; he leaves them and goes to where John
first baptized and many believed on him thereciii.
*
Chapter 11 is the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from
the dead. Jesus has left town and receives a messenger that
tells him that Lazarus, he whom thou lovest is sick. Jesus
says of Lazarus that This sickness is not unto death, but for

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the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified.civ
This must so be the case that it seems Jesus is not too
worriedcv. One might say (those of the fully human) that it is
because Jesus knows that he can raise people from the dead,
so he is waiting for him to die so people might see his
miracle so ye may believecvi; Jesus waits two days after he
heard of his sickness before leaving to go to him. We are to
surmise that the trip takes at least two days because by the
time Jesus arrives Lazarus was in the grave four days. Jesus
waits two days and then gets ready to go back to Judea, but
his disciples tell him not to because that is where the Jews
want to kill him. But Jesus says, Are there not 12 hours in
the day?... Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may
wake him out of sleep. It is enough here to say that Jesus
performs the miracle of life and death upon another human
being in the same way as the Father will perform the
miracle of Jesus's death and resurrection, but from the
perspective of the minimal human, who is the expression of
existence in human knowledge, those who are of the Law are
asleep, sick, and blind, and it is the purpose and reason of
the minimal human to expose the insolvent nature of the
True Object, just as Jesus exposes the true nature of human
existence through his Being.

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The Departure
In John chapter 12, verse 23, Jesus announces,
The hour is come, that the Son of man should be
glorified.
With this begins the departure, and so here we rejoin
our discussion.
*
The public that is becoming unrested. And it is
probably not so much that people believe or dont believe
that Jesus is the Messiah, but more the confusion about
facts that is typical of the public. Jesus is aggravating the
problem because he is not speaking methodologically nor
objectively; Jesus just so happens to be fueling this
confusion because he touches upon ideas that bring the Law
into question (it is all he can do as a minimal human being).
We might see that in this period the Law was ubiquitous to
social living, much as now in the United States and other
countries Law permeates its citizens, often in a somewhat
vague, ambiguous fashion. All of its citizens know the Law,
but not really; they have a general idea of the Law but it is
the officers of the courts which really know the law. It is to
them that the maintenance of social order is given. So it
must have been with the Jews, but as opposed to modern
U.S. Law, which is created specifically in the name of social
order and has little if any concern with the quality or
integrity of ones spiritually or essentially human Being, the
Jewish Law is impregnated with an urgency that has to do
with an obligation of ones Being as this is concerned and
should be concerned with ones People, the Chosen People of
God. The Law is not merely concerned with ones behavior,
but is implicit in how one is constituted as a living social
creature. The Law determines what one is. Tradition,
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prophecy, heritage, relatives, tribes, history all play for


the individual the individual in reflection of his world.
Jesus, as the expression of the basic life as human, pulls
from all of these aspects of Being (a Jew, as this is the case)
when he speaks, and in this respect, is not like other
prophets (false prophets) who affirm the tradition while
calling upon a secular obligation (which is still of the Law).
Jesus negates this Jewish tapestry of ideals, expressing the
whole of the Law while speaking particularly (as opposed to
speaking of the whole of the law while its expression is
through particulars: Hence the question of what it means to
'fulfill the law'). But his talk is not of Objects, it is not of
obligations; he is addressing that which expresses life in
those who hear him:
And they were astonished at his doctrine: for he
taught them as one that has authority, and not as
the scribes.cvii
This feeling, this intuition which Jesus touches in
people, arouses so much prevalence, so much anxietycviii, to
the ears of the people who hear his ministry that Jesus has
to address it:
Think not that I have come to destroy the law, or
the prophets: I have not come to destroy but to
fulfill.cix
As with crowds, Jewish or not, everyone has an idea of
the social norm and this norm is being addressed now in a
different, and thus disturbing, manner. While this norm is
operative as a social parameter, there are those who more or
less agree alongside with those who more or less disagree,
but de facto law is in place regardless of individual
placement within it. Such it must be said of the crowds of
Jesuss time. Jesus was a phenomenon; all types were
interested, yea and nay sayers alike. Jews and non-Jews;
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saying or doing. But that which the opinions where settling
around was the movement occurring within those who heard
Jesus because Jesus was expressing the basic life, which is a
part of every human being, and most are fully human settled
in the law of Objects. Jesus now comes as a renouncer of the
law of the Object, so everyone is affected, and the social
order based in the law is upset. Thus we can see that it is
not merely a Jewish issue, but that Jesus is Jewish; we
begin with the world of the Jews. Those who are not Jewish
are likewise effected, and this is making it difficult for the
Jews, for then the Romans, who often ask little more than
that each religion keep their constituents in line, might see a
need to step more prominently into Jewish jurisdiction.

*
Peter appears not very confident in his position, and
yet he acts in confidence; what he believes and what he
knows are somehow at oddscx. As Jesus recognized earlier,
the complexity of Peter involves a presumption upon this
minimal human experience, a doubt vested of pure selfrighteousness, a counterpart to the immediate and straight
forward ministry of Jesus and the decision of Judas. This
complexity involves the interplay of noticeable aspects of
humanity, so we will take a closer look at what each of the
Gospels say about the denial of Peter, as well then the
betrayal of Judas.
First, though, in order to set the stage whereby the
same minimal human experience expresses itself through
different meanings and phases, we should take a moment
and attempt an explanation of the different versions of the
various tales apparent in Mathew, Mark, Luke and John; we
will take as our first example the beginning of the hearings
of Jesus. We notice by this examination the feature of the
gospels consistent with the markers of vacillation described
above; namely, that which justifies by the Object and that

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which is justified in itself. In the beginning of this essay we


have outlined these general moments and how they are
removed from each other by the possible mediators; to wit,
the authors of the gospels merely recording what has been
given them, they having not been alive when Jesus may
have been in his ministry, and the distance compelled by the
historical and philosophical interpretations of the Christ
phenomena, as well as religion in general, as all this has
been come upon by the reader now as it was by the writer. It
should then follow that the various versions reflect the
influences of these and other mediators as these are involved
in the vacillation of the tellings.
In light of this idea, consider what may be most true
of the minimal human, and likewise then, the figure of
Christ: That which justifies with reference to the True
Object might be said to be the example which least reflects
such an occasioncxi. If we began with Luke, it is because he
might be seen, in the logic evident by the order of his
presentation, that he is somewhat comfortable in this
position. He states as a matter of fact that he understands
perfectly what has come to him and so feels compelled to
write it down. But still Luke, as well Mathew, must give a
lineage, as though his position may be in question. Mark is
comfortable in his authority that has been given to him, his
justification found in the authority of the prophets. As
mentioned in the beginning of this essay, these authors were
indeed moved, but, we might see here now that the 'being
moved' was not sufficient to grant them absolution in the
sense of our thesis; which is to say, from the already fixed
view placed upon the reading and the translation
(dissemination) that closes possibility to definite real
(institutional) articles, all four authors reflect the
incompletion applied to them as they are also supposed upon
the justifying Object. John, on the other hand, seems the
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to the prophets, he relies on no Object but only refers to the
object of Christ; John's word is the authority. He speaks of
what is true: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God.cxii John needs no
prior Object to gain or propose his truth, except the truth
which is the determination of minimal human, which is thus
and cannot be otherwise The Truth. This resonates with the
proposition of this essay, that Christ may not have been a
particular single individual, but that there was a minority of
people who had an experience who were together in a
sufficient densitycxiii to come upon one another, and that this
occasion lent itself to some of these individuals eventually
writing of their experience against the significant occasion
itself such that they could speak of it as an Object, Jesus
Christ, so that they might be heard.

Thus we have John. Like the object Jesus and the


disciples, John can be seen to be speaking of his experience,
but through the limiting vehicle of the mode and capacity of
communication in his time, writing in literary fashion as if
pseudonymously, of himselfcxiv. Jesus may have been a
particular individual who was so moved as to be noticed
publicly, perhaps as a type of primitive or archetypal
Marxist who understood the call to action, where the
demand for social justice likewise requires people of
marginalized experience to move out of hiding in fear.
Nevertheless, this then appears to rely upon the fact that a
particular segment of the populace was also privy to such
understanding. Christ Jesus, regardless of whether there
was an actual single particular person, may have become a
type of trope or communicative device that signaled the
recognition and acceptance of the significant experience as
well as identified a particular discourse that was being
developed about itcxv. It is ironic and no wonder that at least
someone would have noticed, whether implicitly or
explicitly, the function of discourse to allow reality and
thereby begin a statement of such tropic understanding with

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In the beginning was the Wordcxvi, because for such people


the problem each would have come upon everywhere (with
some introspection) as they attempted to explain the
experience was how to explain it, which is to say, what
words to use. So it is that 'in the beginning', when the
significant event was come upon, the issue was exposed as
'the Word'. The question: How do we tell of our significant
experience using only the terms we have before us, and yet
stay true to the significance itself?cxvii
*
To better illustrate how the four Gospels may indicate a
sort of continuum of coming to terms with the experience, we
look at the conveyance of an event common in all four. All
four gospels have Jesus first come before the Jewish high
priest. I quote each passage:

Mathew 26:63-64. ...tell us whether thou


be the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus saith
unto him, 'thou has said: nevertheless I say
unto you, Hereafter shall you see the son of
man sitting on the right hand of power, and
coming in the clouds of heaven.'

Mark 14:61-62. ...Art thou the Christ, the


Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, 'I am:
and ye shall see the son of man sitting on
the right hand of power and coming in the
clouds of heaven.'

Luke 22:67-70. Art thou the Christ? Tell


us. And he said unto them, 'If I tell you, you
will not believe: and if I also ask you, you
will not answer me, nor let me go.
Hereafter shall the Son of man sit on the
right hand of the power of God.'

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John 18:19-23. The high priest then asked Jesus


of his disciples, and of his doctrine. And Jesus
answered him, 'I spake openly to the world; I
ever taught in the synagogue, and in the temple,
whither the Jews always retort; and in secret
have I said nothing. Why askest thou me? Ask
them which heard me, what I have said unto
them: behold they know what I said.'

Right off, Mark is the only one who portrays Jesus in


the trial answering the priests directly, and conversely,
John's answer is the most derailing to the question. Mark's
answer is based in the justifying Object; he is, in effect,
saying this is so; it is True. Mark's doctrine evidences an
'either/or' mentality (an object is either this or that), that
Jesus either is the Christ, or he is not, and if he is not then
there is no Christ. But because Mark has been moved
himself, there must be this True Object, this particular man
who is actually the Christ because Mark is not. Mark thus
evidences a latter or more distant appropriation of the issue:
The discourse of Christ for Mark has already established a
footing such that its referents, its Objects, can be True.
Mark has been moved by the sensibility of the prophets into
a faith in another Object, The Object, which amounts to a
True Object. Mark is convicted; Mark has had an experience
that stems from his minimal humanity, but nevertheless is
not that of the minimal human, but rather leans upon his
fully human position in the world; he uses the clause I am
in the very conventional manner, as he references himself in
the Law of subject-objects. Concordantly, Mathew and Luke
are less resolved but indeed moved; Matthew, in effect, says
so you have said but that doesnt really matter, for it is not
the issue here and regardless of what you think you will see
something incredible, while Luke just tells them plain out
that it doesnt matter what he, Jesus, says for it is beyond
your comprehension, but the facts of the matter are, et
cetera. The experience of Matthew and Luke could be said to

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be on the margin; their answer diverts the question to its


rightful direction, back upon the questioner as to their
orientation. John's answer most completely speaks with
confidence and determination. He plainly sees that the
priests are of the Law and that there is no getting them to
renounce the Object; his answer not only places the
responsibility of the question back upon them but does so all
the more by referring the answer to yet another ambiguous
item, the people who have heard him. There the priest will
surely get no sure answer for everyone will give answers in
the quality that matches the Gospels for a straight answer
as to Jesus Christ.
With such distinction in mind, we now address the
issue of Simon Peter and Judas.

Matthew 26:58,69-75. But Peter followed him


afar off unto the high priests palace and went
in, and sat with the servants, to see the
endNow Peter sat without the palace: and a
damsel came to him, saying, Thou also wast
with Jesus of Galilee. But he denied before
them all, saying, I know not what thou sayest.
And when he was gone out into the porch,
another maid saw him, and said unto them
that were there, This fellow was also with
Jesus of Nazareth. And again he denied with
an oath, I do not know the man. And after a
while came unto him they that stood by, and
said to Peter, Surely thou also art thou one of
them; for thy speech bewrayeth thee. Then
began to curse and swear, saying, I know not
the man. And immediately the cock crew. And
Peter remembered the word of Jesus, which
said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt

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deny me thrice. And he went out and wept


bitterly.

Mark 14: 54, 66-72. And Peter followed him


afar off, even into the palace of the high priest:
and he sat with the servants, and warmed
himself by the fireAnd as Peter was beneath
in the palace, there cometh one of the maids of
the high priest. And when she saw Peter
warming himself, she looked upon him, and
said, And thou also wast with Jesus of
Nazrareth. But he denied, saying, I know not,
neither understand I what thou sayest. And he
went out into the porch; and the cock crew. And
a man saw him again, and began to say to them
that stood by, This is one of them. And he
denied it again. And a little after, they that
stood by said again to Peter, Surly thou art one
of them: for thou art a Galilean, and thy speech
agreeth thereto. But he began to curse and to
swear, saying, I know not this man of whom ye
speak. And the second time the cock crew. And
Peter called to mind the word that Jesus said
unto him, Before the cock crow twice, thou shalt
deny me thrice. And when he thought thereon,
he wept.

Luke 22: 54-62. Then they took him, and led


him, and brought him into the high priests
house. And Peter followed afar off. And when
they had kindled a fire in the midst of the hall,
and were set down together, Peter sat down
among them. But a certain maid beheld him as
he sat by the fire, and earnestly looked upon
him, and said, This man was also with him.
And he denied him, saying Woman, I know him
not. And after a little while another saw him,

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and said, Thou art also of them. And Peter said,
Man, I am not. And about the space of one hour
after another confidently affirmed, saying, Of a
truth this fellow also was with him: for he is a
Galilean. And Peter said, Man, I know not what
thou sayest. And immediately, while he yet
spake, the cock crew. And the Lord turned, and
looked upon Peter. And Peter remembered the
word of the Lord, how he had said unto him,
Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.
And Peter went out and wept bitterly.

John 18:15-18, 25-26. And Simon Peter


followed Jesus, and so did another disciple:
that disciple was known unto the high priest,
and went in with Jesus into the palace of the
high priest. But Peter stood at the door
without. Then went out that other disciple,
which was known unto the high priest, and
spake unto her that kept the door, and brought
in Peter. Then saith the damsel that kept the
door unto Peter, Art not thou also one of this
mans disciples. He saith, I am not. And the
servants and officers stood there, who had made
a fire of coals; for it was cold: And they warmed
themselves: and Peter stood with them, and
warmed himselfAnd Simon Peter stood and
warmed himself. They said therefore unto him,
Art not thou also one of his disciples? He denied
it, and said, I am not. One of the servants of the
high priest, being his kinsman whose ear Peter
had cut off, saith, Did not I see thee in the
garden with him? Peter then denied again: and
immediately the cock crew.

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It is a stroke of simple teaching to view these excerpts
as referencing one event, but through different eyes. The
event goes something like this: Jesus is taken from
Gethsemane to the palace of the high priest. Peter follows
behind so as to not get drawn up and maybe likewise
persecuted, sneaks into the palace to watch the preliminary
trial, and gets confronted a few times by people in the house
who say they think he is a disciple of Jesus. When Peter
then denies his association with Jesus, he recalls in some
manner how he just betrayed his faith, and is very upset.
This event unfolds in the story to emphasize how Jesus
knew exactly what would happen, and how Peter wavers in
his faith.

Alternately, we can view this event as a single


occasion whereupon a few people had similar experiences.
Here, the subject-object that is Jesus is more an occasion to
express an experience that a few people are having, but
likewise he could be an exemplar or perhaps the most vocal
of such group that he is taken. All three of these situations
can occur simultaneously without relegating or assigning a
actual or more true situation that then rules out the
others. So further, if we can have this view, then we might
see that Peter, in the same manner as Jesus, has a
significant role in this unfolding of the story.
The group of disciples of Jesus Christ just had their
Passover evening meal where Jesus tells them some pretty
intense stuff. A few of them then go to the garden of
Gethsemane to chill and Judas, who left earlier, went and
got the guards who then come and arrest Jesus. They take
him to the palace of the high priest, we can imagine, because
that is where the priests are, at a home also having the
Passover meal; and in comes the guards with bound Jesus.

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Why is it that only Peter follows the posse. What did


the other disciples do? Matthew and Mark have the other
disciples flee,
Matthew 26:56 "Then all the disciples forsook
him, and fled.
Mark14:50 And they all forsook him, and fled.
While Luke and John say nothing of what the other disciples
do. With this question we get to the more difficult reading, a
reading that indicts the reader to its type. Again; so long as
we are reading the Gospels as an historical story about a
God-man and his followers who upset people in power, then
we have only the interest that follows any similar telling of
social disturbance; maybe interesting, maybe just another
noble human trial. But here is significance itself. Religious
peoplecxviii do not step out of their faith to look at what is
occurring right in front of them; they never question what
they have been told. They just retell it. Significance is left to
some heavenly supernatural divine establishmentcxix; all
contradiction and vagueness solved by thought-less
creativity upon a theme. For another example; if only Peter
was there (near or in the palace) among a bunch of people
who couldnt care less than their condemnation and
perchance for cruelty or application of Law, then how did we
get this story? Behind this question, we can hear the echoes
of the religious choir singing I dont know, but God knows.
So let us suppose not upon various views of one event
where Jesus is being yelled at and Peter forsakes Jesus in
his time of trial and need; for a moment again, let us set
aside the need to remove ourselves from the story. Instead,
lets put ourselves there, ironically, as an overseer of the
event itself, yet with empathy, where the most outspoken of
an intimate group that has been come upon by a similar
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arrested and is being taken away most probably to be killed.
The rest of the group is astonished and surprised and some
are ready to fight, but Jesus says no. This is a group that is
of a common knowledge, a common manner of apprehending
meaning that Jesus has just elaborated upon as to what it
means, what happens of it as well as the conditions of it.
Jesus has his moment of vacillation that is evidenced in an
inability to have the experience verified and validated by the
others whom he is with. In effect and in a manner of
speaking, he leaves himself to find himself in an other, fails
to do so, and then returns to himself to thereby have found
himself through the other. This is a pretty intense
experience because while the story has it that Jesus is
speaking to an audience (objects, disciples), the meaning of
the event suggests that what is being described is indeed
what is happening to the attendees, namely, the disciples, or
for a more general, inclusive term, the group of minimal
humans. One guy cant hang; Judas leaves to get the people
who will come and get rid of Jesus once and for all (the Law);
he goes to effect the physical removal of what he
understands as the source of the uncomfortable intensity of
the vacillation. Another guy is obviously shaken: Peter does
not just hang back in the garden nor flees, but has to go to
see what is going to happen to Jesus. The others either flee
(according to Matthew and Mark), or stay in the garden and
chill or (in effect) just disappear from view even after Jesus is
taken (Luke and John dont mention what they do), but
Peter goes with Jesus Christ, which we might say he thus
stays in the proximity and effectuation of the vacillation. And

The vacillation takes on an even more imminent


design. We have a difference in experience between Jesus
leaving himself to look for justification in the object, what we
have called the vacillation, and where the object comes to
him to demand justification for itself, which is the physical
act of the Law upon the body. Either way we have the
motions of departure: Jesus is taken from the disciples. In

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the former, Jesus leaves the disciples in searching for


justification of himself in the disciples, and thereby affects
or otherwise coincides with the instigation of the vacillations
of the disciples themselves, in the latter, their Object of faith
somehow losing its substantial quality in those times. It is
the odd situation that Jesus is involved with himself by
noticing his involvement and affect upon the disciples; the
irony works to prepare those involved for the change that is
to occur and is occurring. Where Jesus departs and the
Comforter remains, there we have the disciples who seem
not to have a vehement reaction, like in Luke and John, and
where the Comforter has not come, there we have three
types of drastic reactions, as in Matthew and Mark where
they flee, but also exceptionalized by type with Judas and
Peter; one indeed ran right off even before the Law came
(Judas went to get the Law, and indeed brought the Law to
the disciples), and one that follows from afar (Simeon
Peter).
Keep in mind that we have not left the bramble of I
am, but indeed God calls us from out of the midst of the
bramble. Here we have a group of minimal human beings
who are in the midst of the determination of their being, of
coming to understand what that means and its conditions of
meaning. At some point in every determination, in order to
distinguish itself from contingency, the contingency must
assert itself, must erupt into the determined state. If we are
determining what is the case, as we proceed upon this
venture, we align ourselves as to what is determined
through occasional reference to what is contingent. Where
vacillation is understood as not indicating anything
imminent, there no reaction is called for because no end
recalls an anxiety. But in the kind of vacillation where we
begin to see that the end is near, it is in the nature of what
exists to enter into fight or flight mode, but also it is just as
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stumble, like the small tentative cuts of a suicidals arm
with a blade at hand. In meaning, faith is questioned and
that which requires faith may be viewed in those moments,
during those desperate times. But then, at least in some
instances, the ineffective comfort that had been catalyzing
the hesitations reaches a tipping point, if you will, and the
comfort is finally upset by the unknown end. The end asserts
itself; in this instance, faith asserts itself over Truth; the
Law begins to reveal itself to its nature.

Within this setting, Jesuss talk at the Passover does


not stop at that scene, but rather continues through to
fruition in the story. No longer are we set in theory; Jesus
and his disciples are no longer in his ministry, no longer
merely saying things, no longer riding upon the motion that
is the act of talk and the talk that is the act. Now the talk is
becoming segregated from the act; they have talked the talk
and now are walking the walk. As we indicate below, the
occasion is now in the hands of the Law, where talk is talk
and act the act, the object the True Object. Contingency,
though, is still in the sway of what has been determined. As
we addressed earlier, if Jesus does not leave the disciples
then the Comforter will not come, and in this statement we
have the presentation of an event that encompasses all the
disciples and Jesus. It is not so much that Jesus is the
singular and the disciples are having a particular event
centered around what is occurring to the god-man Jesus
this is the conclusion that Jesus comes to through his
vacillations, the reason why he must leave, the contingent
meaning expressed within the determined state. He thus not
only vacillates in his experience, but then foreshadows the
next scene of Peters vacillation. The story itself appears to
repeat the same motion of the creation story of Genesis,
where it appears there are two creation eventscxx. Just as
Jesus is recognized as Christ first by John the Baptist, who
in effect can be said to be the catalyst that removes Jesus
from the responsibility to the object (see above), after which

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Jesus goes out into the wilderness where he is tempted, so


Jesus recognizes the disciples and then must leave, so they,
again, in effect, may be lead to their own wilderness, their
own temptations.
Similarly, what we will reduce to say consciousness
of the minimal human being, is no longer caught up in the
consistency of things, in the overlapping and determination
of activity and meaning. The disciples are in the process,
catalyzed by Jesus, of coming to terms with their minimal
human determinacy. Jesus is leaving them. They thus
witness not only the guards coming and seizing Jesus, but as
likewise coming upon the vacillation of the minimal human
of faith. Hence, for the story, meaning itself bifurcates along
two lines that are equally foundational, equally valid, but
that do not reconcile in meaning to either of each other; one
accounts for the other, and the other denies the one,
eternally dancing around each other. This is to say, now, the
universe moves in its proper form, manipulating and
establishing True Objects, where indeed a man is taken to
begin his trial unto death, and likewise, the object Jesus
that is in the way of them coming upon their own minimal
humanity is being taken away, so that they believe-know
that they are in the Father and the Father in you. Here is
the beginning of the significant event that resides in
eternity.
The disciples in the garden are all coming upon the
same meaning, the same experience. This experience is the
dissolving of faith, but they will not give up their faith so
easily. On one hand, the disciple who does not wish his faith
to dissolve, who is feeling most prominently the question
that the vacillations imply of his faith, Judas, being so
determined likewise minimally human, leaves, actually gets
himself away (or tries to get himself away) from the
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allow his faith to continue to be validated by The Object
Jesus. He thus removes himself rather than the Object
removing itself from him, but then must return to actually
destroy that True Object of faith because he sees it is the
source of the vacillations. He removes himself to escape the
vacillations that Jesus is arousing by his presence, by the
presence of Christ in the disciples experience; in order to
keep the object of his faith, he must then destroy this
catalyzer of the vacillations, Jesus. Then, because the
vacillation is not caused by the Object but is indeed
instigated by Christ, by the determination of the minimal
human being, after his betrayal, he realizes his error and
must thus destroy himself. An ironic event indeed.

On the other hand, Jesus is being taken away from


the rest of the disciples and they will not let it happen
without a fight; one so moved, cuts of the ear of one of the
high priests servant: This one who reacts so vehemently,
coincidentally has the name of a common object, as we
noticed, Peter the rock, a subject-object. Peter, as well as
Judas, is and can be viewed as a discursive and literary
trope used to discuss the common experience of the minimal
human being from behind a blind, so to speak, shielded from
the repercussions of fully humans offensecxxi; we see what
happens to a one who does not use such a discursive ploy: He
is killedcxxii. So, as they take Jesus, Peter follows from afar:
The disciples who behold the vacillations as indicating
something essential, who are all coming upon this moment
of meaning of contingent determination, and the anxiety of
coming upon a choice in the midst of determinacy, follow
from afar as Jesus is leaving them, that is in this case,
being taken from them. The man, perhaps the most
outspoken one of the group, is being taken as Jesus likewise
is being taken to the beginning of his trial, which will
inevitably end in his deathcxxiii. The disciples are in the trial
of their minimal humanity, the vacillation that began at the
Passover meal, that is continuing in its determined path.

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Their faith is being tried against the True Object, the trial
that will yield the Truth, ironically, through the processes of
Law that are upheld through faith, a Truth that then
transforms from faith in the True Object, to wisdom.

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The Wisdom of Peter


When we become capable of viewing the story of Jesus
as a story involving a small group of people who have come
upon a particular manner of coming unto World, a group
who view the world differently than the common person,
where the line of communication, of meaning, occurs along a
different order of things, then we might see this as a story
that tells of a determined and routine process involved in
such a view, with definite possibilities and particular vectors
or motions of meaning that indicate aspects of the situation
of having such a view. Here we begin to see the authors
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but likewise Jesus, and we
notice then the motions of Christ.
At the Passover, the traditional Jewish observance of
the night when God came and killed the first born of the
Egyptians, but passed over the Hebrew households, God has
the Hebrews follow strict directions of what to do that night;
namely, slaughter a lamb, use the blood to mark the doors of
Jews so God will Passover those homes, roast the carcass,
innards, head and all, and burn any leftovers. They are also
to eat this meal ready to leave, with their clothes and
sandals on, staff in hand. At this Passover meal with Jesus
and his disciples, the disciples drink the blood and eat his
body of the lamb that will be slaughtered. It is difficult to
miss the correlating symbolic meanings between the
Passover and the Last Supper, or for that matter the story of
Christ.
Consider, though, the vacillations of faith. To one so
faithful, any vacillation can be viewed as a catastrophe; to
experience a wavering of faith is definitely to encounter a
type of anxiety, and if this be the case, then the discussions
of Soren Kierkegaard report a certain significant resonancecxxiv
. The meaningful symptom of anxiety goes right to the end,
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of an impending doom which is the death of faith. Within


such a moment, something must be done, something to end
the wavering, to re-establish the solace and comfort of faith.
So we should see that the story has gone this far upon a
faith that has been unquestioned; a determination that is
Jesuss ministry no doubt occupies this space and the world
of God emitted by the minimal human being. The story is
consolidated up until this point; Jesus is the exemplar
minimal human, but as we see now, with Jesuss entreating
of them, the disciples are also minimal human. The story
itself thus speaks of a common experience in its
commonality, of an experience of a few people who discover
in their determined motions, in their ministries that there
are others that they just know are having the same
experience because they can tell by not only what they are
saying, but how they are saying it. They attribute this
different manner of coming upon World as of God. They
have a common experience and a common way about them,
so in the telling of their stories they in effect really merely
tell one story, perhaps exemplified, as we have suggested, in
a particular individual whom they know who is the most
outspoken: Jesuss ministry. This is to say, they all spoke in
a particular manner that aroused a certain kind of interest
and performed miracles.
Further, it cannot merely be that there is a small
group, but that there is also a correspondent society that is
not only being effected, but is part of the determined effect.
By the Passover meal, in an all too literary fashion, we get
the feeling things are getting out of hand everywhere. So,
again, correspondently, the disciples begin to vacillate in
their faith, but not necessarily because there is some sort of
civil unrest that is pointing toward them, or Jesus in
particular; it is more that such things are happening
correspondently. It is no mere coincidence that things are
coming to a head during the Passover. For the minimal

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human, one could see a kind of coincidence, but a
culmination of meaning. Yet if there is to be a distinction
made between the ministry and the departure, if you will,
then the minimal human would have to have a certain
capacity for a kind of reflection again differentiated from the
true reflection spoken about earlier in this essaycxxv. The
true reflection of a self-consciousness coming upon an other
self-consciousness, what we can say of the minimal human is
God in-itself (through faith but not through faith), must be
visited upon by a further differencecxxvi.

It is this occurrence in the determined motion of


existence that gains for us a reasoning for what we
understand now as coming after, the Christian phenomenon
we know as Gnosticism. Though not unique nor coined first
by these sects, with them there is a sure reference and secret
knowledge that concerns a feminine aspect of knowledge,
called wisdom, that is personified to a name, Sophia. If
knowledge can be merely a kind of surety, the wisdom is
that set of knowing that has disrupted such sure knowledge,
yet ironically which settles itself unto itself. Though a door
has been opened to a never-ending rambling on the
peculiarities of Gnosticism, it is enough to say here that the
transition between knowledge and wisdom is the move from
faith to truth, and the beginning of this transition can be
called vacillation. So it is not too far from reason to suggest
from this kind of orientation that a woman might be
involved in the plight of the minimal human. And this is
what we see in the Gospels.
A major issue with the Gospels has always been Mary
Magdalene. There are so many ideas, religious and secular,
superstitious and critical, behind who she was, what her
relationship to Jesus really was, and what her role is and
means to the whole Christian scheme of things if not the
world; it is beyond the scope of this essay here to concern
ourselves in addressing them allcxxvii. For now, it is enough

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to say the simplest answer is that she is the feminine


component in the minimal human determination; she is the
wisdom that accompanies faith through its ministries,
applications, vacillations, failure and absolution. Wisdom
appears when faith is on its way out.
The Bible, the Old and New Testaments, is a
recording of the minimal human beings involvement with
World, and this World also includes the fully human
being(s). While the story of the Bible itself is centered
around the minimal human, it also tells of the fully human
response to the occurrences that arise due to the minimal
humans presence. Due to the relationship the minimal
human has with existence, the playing out of each
manifestation disrupts or can otherwise be understood as
causing the fully human to encounter a situation as a series
of events that appear confused and or mostly unexplainable.
The component of what is difficult to explain is often placed
in meaning as an action of God. However; once the minimal
human is admitted in its difference and can be explained to
its reasons and reasoning, which is to say, for its own route
of meaning, then we find that there is no more reason to
defer any religious text or experience to an aspect that lay
outside of what we might consider the natural order of
things, which for another term could be called human
existence, or if we want to get really technical, the objective
universecxxviii, but we need also be careful of placing such
natural order back into the God of political and scientific
appeasement and contingency.
*
When we look at the passagescxxix about the denial of
Peter, we might notice it follows the same scheme of
proximity to the event. Again; here we have the recordings
of authors coming to terms with their own minimal human

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experiences through the discursive tropes that probably had
already developed; these authors are thus not only telling
about their own experiences, but using the story of perhaps
the first group who came together under a common manner,
who worked or functioned together to develop the tropic
scheme, a scheme of terms that had meanings specific to the
particular and marginalized experience of what we are
calling the minimal human being. We have then proximity
used with reference to how different individuals came to
terms with the significant event, that we might say is thus
the Christ event.

In each Gospel, Peter follows at a distance and then


makes his way to the palace where Jesus is brought, and
there he is first confronted by a woman. It is interesting to
notice the different settings. In Matthew, Peter sat without
the palace; in Mark, Peter was beneath in the palace;
Luke has Peter in the midst of the hall; then John has a
slightly different situation in the hall of the high priest.
Matthew has Peter not even enter the palace, Marks is
under the palace, Lukes as well as Johns is in the hall
itself. How Peter is confronted is likewise of interest. In
Matthew, a damsel comes to him and says, in effect, you
were with Jesus with the others, to which he says I dont
know what you mean. Then we imagine hes trying to
conceal his identity and so goes out into the porch where
another woman sees him and says aloud unto them that
were there, this fellow was also with Jesus; whereby Peter
with an oath said I dont know the man. Then, it seems
people that are around are starting to wonder about Peter
and they said to him Im sure you are one of his followers
because your accent is from Galilee. With this Peter gets
pissed off and yells at them that he doesnt know Jesus.
Then the cock crows and Peter remembered what Jesus said
about denying him, and he wept bitterly.

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Marks Peter sat with the servants and warmed


himself by the fire. We are to gather that he was
underneath because that where the servants place was, and
one of the high priests maids looked upon him, and
saidthou also wast with Jesus, and no, I dont know what
you are talking about. Then he goes to the porch, like in
Matthew, then the cock crowed. A man then noticed him and
announced This is one of them, and Peter denied him. And
then a few of the people noticed his accent, and then Peter
remembered what Jesus said, and he wept.
In Luke, Peter followed far off, but then they, who
are the people who took Jesus and led him to the palace,
made a fire in the midst of the hall, and when they had all
sat down, Peter went over and sat with them. Then a
certain maidearnestly looked upon him, and said, This
man was also with him. Lukes story proceeds like Matthew
and Mark with the exception that after he denied him the
third time the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter, and
Peter remembered, and went out and wept bitterly.
The discrepancies of Matthew and Mark seem largely
around words. Yet, whereas Mark has Peter more sit with
the servants, Luke seems to convey that Peter somehow
thought he could get away with blending in with the posse.
As well, the first woman does not merely come to Peter, as
in Matthew, nor only looks upon him, as in Mark, but more
so earnestly looks upon him. Further, as Peter denies the
third time, Luke has the Lord look to Peter whereby Peter
remembers and weeps. Consistent with the idea presented
earlier, we can get a sense that Matthew and Mark viewed
this event as from a distance, as distinction fades the further
back one is from an object. If a narrative can reveal anything
about an authors view, or about the picture he or she wishes
to convey, it might seem that the setting of Peter without
and beneath the palace where Jesus is being tried, might be

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significant. Lukes narrative seems a little more intimate,
for it appears to have details that Matthew and Mark do not
see, or did not experience. With Luke, Peter is in the midst
of the hall, and when he denied Jesus, the Lord actually
looks over to him and brings about his memory, where as in
Matthew and Mark, Peter merely recalls.

The emphasis, that decreases through the order of the


books, in the first three seems more upon noticing how Peter
is denying his association with that certain man who is
being tried, Jesus. Peter appears to be accused; first the
woman looks at him and says plainly you were with him
but not really to Peter, more to the other people in the room,
about Peter, which puts him immediately on the defensive.
Then, depending upon what book we are reading, either
another woman or a new man accuse him again; this time
we can imagine this person coming over to Peter as he is
trying to get away from them, then yelling back to the other
people there, yeah, this one was definitely with Jesus. Then
finally yet another person comes over an actually talks to
Peter but in an accusatory tone, surely you are one of them,
I can tell by your accent.
With John, though, we seem to have a different
situation altogether; he reports details that seem excessive
and unnecessary, but also that seem to convey a different
feeling to the whole event. The tone is different. The most
obvious is that Peter goes with another disciple who is
known by the high priest. When they come to the door, we
can picture the two of them approaching and the one disciple
going in while Peter hangs back and doesnt go in. There is a
woman at the door who is letting people in, and the disciple
who went in realizes that Peter is not behind him, goes back
to the door and talks to the woman to let Peter in. We might
even imagine its kind of like a party, but a Passover party
that the posse crashed bringing Jesus. This other disciple
knows the high priest; we dont know how or why but he

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knows him enough and apparently the staff knows him


enough to not only let him right in but also lets him bring in
a friend. We cannot be sure, but it seems like the damsel
who kept the door didnt know that this other disciple was
indeed a disciple, but maybe she did. In either case, though,
she asks Peter if he isnt one of this mans disciples. I am not
a scholar of Biblical languages, and we must grant that
there might possibly be issues of translations and liberties
that the translators took in bringing the Gospels to English.
Nevertheless, we have what is given us. Can we be sure
what is meant by this mans disciple? Of course, we are to
assume that she is referring to Jesus.
It is significant that John does not refer to Peter and
his friend going anywhere but into the palace of the high
priest. When we take the books of the Gospels separately
and listen to what they are saying, the tone of John here
feels like these two guys followed the posse that Judas lead
to apprehend Jesus as they took him to the palace of the
high priest. Upon arriving there, the one disciple just goes
right in because he is known there by, it seems, everyone.
This kind of familiarity is supported by the fact that they do
not stay without nor were beneath the palace, but indeed
were in the midst of the palace, but also that one of the
servants was there who was the kinsman of the man whos
ear Peter had cut off. We might even go so far as to suggest
that there was a certain community Jews who were familiar
with each other such that the disciples were not a set of
some strangers but were indeed known among a certain
social stratum; perhaps this other disciple was known to
Caiaphas because he was known to his servants, and maybe
the servants knew each other well enough that an ear injury
was viewed as a kind of brotherly incident, as brothers
often fight and injure each other over various things (we
might consider that though Peter supposedly cut the guys
ear off, Jesus put it back oncxxx). Nonetheless, this is all in a

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certain light, say, a kind of nether-world of the story, a
transitional world that resides in between the fully and the
minimal human worlds. Peter may not have been so well
known in these circles, in this stratum of servants and
laypeople. So when the other disciple comes back for Peter,
he tells her that kept the door to let Peter in, and she asks
Peter if he is this mans disciple.

We are in the vacillations of the minimal human, the


readers vacillations of the story of I am; we have just been
spun around. We can hear the loud protestations echo: How
on earth can this be talking about the disciple of this other
disciple? Only Jesus has disciples. Of course she is asking if
Peter is a disciple of Jesus. Obviously, this telling is
offensive in may ways and reasons to the fully human faith
in the True Object; but we are not concerned with the True
Object. We are involved, at this moment, and we are dealing
with the repercussions and manifestations of meaning
involved with the vacillations of the minimal human being of
faith. Indeed; it is at this very moment that Judas realizes
his mistake; in the sequence of Matthewcxxxi, Peter is
denying Jesus just as Judas goes to the chief priests, who we
might suppose are in the very same palace, to give them
back the money he was paid to turn in Jesus. They wont
take the silver back so Judas throws them down and goes
hangs himself. The priests then use that silver to buy Judas
a grave plot.
If we have been following the alternative meaning
presented of the story, it then should be no surprise that the
woman is asking Peter if he is this mans, the man who just
spoke to her to let Peter in, disciple. In one sense, we can say
she is not a disciple, not of the minimal human experience,
and so would have no idea what it entails; she may have saw
him in the group of odd people, but are we to think that
Jesus lead the group around like some pied-piper? Even if
she knows that Jesus has been brought for a trial, there is

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no supposition to be made upon her knowledge of what it


really means or what is occurring. This other disciple she
knows and the high priest knows him; is it so far fetched
that the high priest knows that this other disciple is indeed
a disciple? What is special of Jesus we discussed earlier;
what Jesus is saying is causing a social disturbance and
perhaps Jesus is merely the most outspoken of the group, all
of which are minimal human beings having a particular
experience that at this time concerns the trial of Christ,
Jesus as well as the disciples, the physical body as well as
the meaningful self, as these are complicit in existence as
World. The vacillation pronounces itself in Jesus, the
(subject-) object, its distinctions, and reverberates in Christ,
which is absolution. This is the story of the minimal human
being coming to terms with its experience; there is no
sufficient segregation of meaningful items that may coalesce
in this instance to some actual, subjective or real event. It
is a story of the situation at hand. The woman asks Peter if
he is one of this mans disciple, and Peter says, no, Im not.
We can feel the casual mood of this event through the
next verse because the servants were warming themselves
and Peter simply went over to warm himself with them. This
casualness is an indication of what is occurring; just as
Jesus moved out and then back in his vacillations of doubt,
so Peter has come back to himself. At the door he doubts his
experience and is anxious and so stops at the door not to go
in. This other disciple is not wavering, so here, in the
confidence of this other disciple we see Jesus Christ, who
merely goes into the palace with no fight, but also as we will
see very soon, with no worries. The disciple we are
concerned with in this instance, though, is Peter; it thus is
not odd that this other disciple disappears, neither had no
specificity nor destination. Peter is in his vacillations of
doubt; Peter the literary device that is conveying a
particular aspect in the minimal humans experience; the

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story of Peter that by each of the authors telling of his story
thereby tell of their experience, their own vacillations of
faith, who also thereby indicate a certain proximity to the
event itself by their versions of telling about itcxxxii. The
author John apparently conveys what is occurring for the
rest most thoroughly. Peter follows from afar with another
disciple, the movement of doubt dividing Peter upon himself,
his faith in the True Object that is Jesus and the knowledge
of the Truth that is wisdom. Peter comes to the door and this
other disciple goes in while Peter himself, his doubt, his faith
in the True Object in question, stays outside. This other
disciple comes back and talks to a woman that is keeping the
door, who then lets him in and asks if he is a disciple of this
man, and Peter answers truthfully, and says No, I Am not.
Peter is not a disciple of this man, but is indeed Christ
himself; Peter is coming to terms with the situation at hand
of the minimal human. He passes through this door kept by
a woman and goes over to warm himself with the other
servants and officers.

As we move through this transition, we will notice


how this story is situated within the movement of the
hearing itself. In Matthew and Mark, it is set just like an
actual trial, albeit one-sided, where witnesses for the
prosecution come with all the drama of a trial one would
expect.cxxxiii. Witnesses come and tell things, Jesus say
nothing and the priests get pissed off. With some difference,
then, Luke simply has Peters denial, then the scene
discussed above, where Jesus merely answers the priests
question with their answers.
John, again, appears most consistent with our
meaning. Peter comes unto himself, comes back into faith,
which by now is more so knowledge, but he is still in the
vacillations. While the first three Gospels have Peter follow,
then the trial by witnesses wherein we notice the authorial
proximity evidenced by the authors tellings (above), and

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then the rest of Peters story of denial, John paints a


different scene. In the flow of the story, Peter is warming
himself by the fire, then the high priest asks Jesus of his
disciples and his doctrine. Now, in a scene of a trial by
prosecutorial witnesses, where everyone else is accusing
Jesus and he is saying nothing, we have the indication of the
minimal condition of humanity in the relief of Jesuss silence
in so much as the fully human reality is the accusation and
correspondent justification of position; Jesuss silence
announces that this real route is impotent in its attempts to
coerce and deceive one who is of the truth, that in the last all
it can do is destroy to justify its ubiquity. So it is in John the
general condition is specified to its use: We have Jesus
answering with the suggestion that the priests go out and
talk to everyone that heard him and his teachingscxxxiv. The
defense is directed for the accusers instead of the defendant,
toward the priests and not Jesus; the justification is pushed
back upon itself to show the contradiction inherent of the
method itself. The offense is noticed in relief of the trial to be
upon the priests, for then one of the officers stroke Jesus
with the palm of his hand, saying Answerest thou the priest
so? To which Jesus asks what he said that was so wrong, so
evil. We have to wonder if this offense that sees this evil
being emitted from Jesus that we hear in verse 24, now
Annas had sent him bound unto Caiaphas, is something
Jesus gained for the priests or something already intact,
because in the very next scene they led Jesus from
Caiaphas unto the hall of judgment.
Nonetheless, before they led Jesus there, Simon
Peter still stood and warmed himself, which can be to say,
he stood comforted; remember how he entered the palace?
Then They said therefore unto him, Art not thou also one of
his disciples? Perhaps this time, they are kind of amazed at
his presence. But Peter says, I am not. Now, and only now,
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Peter come over and accuse him, asking him if he didnt see
him in the garden with him. Peter, having come resolved in
himself, in his knowledge, wherein he is comforted (by the
Comfortercxxxv), seeing the previous self, the subject of faith,
the person who reacted to the taking of the Object from him
by attacking the ones who came to take itcxxxvi, as no longer
true, no longer who Peter is this new person of knowledge,
of wisdom, again answers his accuser honestly and denies he
was that person in the garden. Then the cock crows. In John,
Peter does not weep, for the cock crowing can at once be seen
as a dawning of a new day, as well as the signal, the
indication that indeed all is proceeding as planned,
determined as such.

So it is interesting and significant for this essay the


motions of Simon Peter, because as a minimal human (a
disciple), Peter's activity can be none but that he acts. He
responded and lashed out but Jesus stopped him. To revisit
this situation, Peter has indeed doubted his actions as well
as his capacity to act; he was anxious and afraidcxxxvii. But
through this fear, he kept going, kept moving forward
following the removal of his object of faith, Jesus. Here his
fears manifest regardless of his attitude and regardless of
whether he went in the palace or not, but in fact it is because
of his fear and because of his actions (his actions that he
could not have made differently) that his fears confront him;
he is accused. Peter cannot escape that which he is nor what
exactly will happen nor what he will do. Also Peter has
chosen to place himself in the camp of the True Object by
following the object of faith to the palace where Jesus is
(likewise) being accused, and because of this choice, he
brings about the inevitable condition of reality that causes
him to fulfill Jesus's prediction despite his choicecxxxviii, as
well as come true to his namesake: Jesus calls this of Peter,
the 'rock', that he was of minimal qualification for the
Object, as a thing may be so simply associated. Inevitably,
because of and despite his fear, thereby validating the

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motion of the fully human by virtue of his determined


minimal being, which is based in the denial of the nature of
the True Object, he thus establishes the church,
...for flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee...upon
this rock I will build my church...And I will give unto
thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever
thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and
whatsoever thou salt loose on earth shall be loosed in
heaven.cxxxix
Jesus also refers to Peter as 'Bar-jona', which literally
translates into 'son of John', but more properly in the
context of this chapter of Matthew, Jesus is reprimanding
the Pharisees because they seeketh after a sign(read: they
sought proof through a physical transfiguration or miracle)cxl
but Jesus says there will be no other sign but that of Jonah;
so it is that the sign was that Peter needed no sign (for flesh
and blood hath not revealed it to thee), yet he still,
ironically, denied. Indeed this sign (Peter/the rock) indicates
the physically unsubstantiated thing that nonetheless and
because of which is, thus, significant, and by this, this
'unsubstantiated thing' shall thereby Peter be given 'the
keys to the kingdom', the kingdom that is the reality of Law
(albeit religious law, perhaps as opposed to what will one
day become a secular world), the substantiation of what is
physically true and real, i.e. what we will come to call the
term-object identity, whereby whatever is done on earth is
likewise done in heaven, such that heaven shall justify what
is undertaken toward the Object; the mode of operation of
real method, real institutionalism, is upon the assumption
that discourse is indicating the in-itself truth of actual and
essentially psychic-material-empirical-physical occurring
objects, if at least merely in potential. By virtue of this
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contradiction, that mark of what is false, thus history is set
in motion through the denial of the contradiction, which is
hidden in plain sight and thus not believable in its nature.

A controversial yet interesting and quite provocative


theory contributes to this idea: The story of Jonah and the
whale could actually be an allegorical representation of an
experience gained by the consumption of some sort of
hallucinogenic substance, perhaps, as been suggested here
and there, Fly Agaric mushrooms. If this be the case, then
Jesus may have been referring, again in the double voice, to
such an experience, that the only sign that would be given
would be that irrevocable sign that is found through such an
experience: That indeed, the irony of Peter, a son of Jonah,
his name meaning 'rock', a most simple and basic example of
an Object, being the prime and overt example of one who
needed no physical 'sign', as that of the Pharisees this
ought to be savored, if not furthermore be indicted as the
evidence (see the story of Moses, above, where God proves
himself to Moses by telling him of his future) for his being
the foundation of the church which will ironically then be
the example of what is most un-Christian in the true sense
of this essay: That despite having faith, such a faith is that
which grants its conceivable negation, wisdom through
doubt, and the distance traversed by such a contradictory
experience, then stunted, is that which grants the common
(fully human) route of meaning; this then allows for a
beginning of religious posture: That Christ would be a
saving Object of faith; that belief in Christ's objectivity will
grant one absolution; that heaven would be an actual place
to be gained through proper ethics and belief; that God
would be of an actual trinity of entities, et cetera. Even so,
without the introduction of highly suspect theories, the
situation presented here is sufficient for the point at hand.
Jesus has found the disciple who will follow after him.
* *

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The irony of Peter comes short after the comedy of


Jesus's apprehension in the garden, and, with the admixture
of the comic interlude, moving transparently like a ghost
into the inevitable tragedy, arrives as Jesus is brought
before his judges, those of the Law who will sort out and
clear up, once and for all, the contradictions present in the
whole affair of speaking. Jesus may now leave in actuality
for the comforter has arrived for Peter.
* *
At verse 19, chapter 18 of John, the Jewish elders, as
well the group of accusers, we are told in Luke, ask Jesus
directly if he is the Christ. It is significant that Jesus never
calls himself Jesus Christ; he thus answers them, in a most
elusive yet true way, which comes off to the guardians of the
Object as he is mocking them:
He says, if I tell you, you will not believe.cxli
This is to say, on one hand, that Jesus has never told anyone
that he is the Christ; in fact, he only called to his disciples,
and because they followed him, he knew that they
understood what he was about, and that they also were of
the basic life. He spoke to them only in as much as he was
speaking to himself, and thus for the rest of humanity;
everyone is grounded in a minimally human existence, and
so Jesus resonates with them also. So, for Jesus to answer
yes, I am the Christ would effectively establish him in the
objective, confirming himself as the Object everyone wanted
him to be; the world would have its Object and so Jesus, as a
renouncer of the Object, would lose his significance but
gain insignificance: The True Object; this is significant, that
the True Object is never attained in the eternal discrepancy.
The guardians of the Object would have their doubt and
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allow them their justification and so their actions proceeding
from here, which are inevitable, lay in the justification that
is the sin of the world. So it is, on the other hand, that Jesus,
again, is merely stating the facts of the matter; i.e. if I were
to tell you, which is, if indeed you were to hear me, if my
saying were indeed telling you in truth the truth, then you
would not be believing, but would indeed be knowing. And in
so much as this is not the case (this case is determined: The
future inherent in the present) I am thus not telling you.

If he would justify their True Object, they would not be


sinful in action, but would indeed be justified by the True
Object he would have given them by his being thus, the
claimed, Christ, which is blasphemous against the Law, the
rules of the True Object. If this were the case, then Jesus
would be by virtue of the absurd, that is, the contradiction
inherent to what would then be the inconsistency of
existential roles (i.e. that those of the Law would be able to
hear the Truth) one who would come to destroy the Law
like any other false prophet, but he has indeed come to fulfill
it. Further, he continues in this vein, beckoning the
palatability of his irony, which they will miss for their True
Object. Jesus knows that they do not understand what he is
about, nor have they understood him, and indeed they
cannot; And if I also ask you, you will not answer me. Just
in the same way that Jesus has not answered them, they
will not answer him; but there is a subtle difference: They
will not answer because they cannot answer truthfully, but
only through a rebuttal that is losing credence, that is, by
Jesus continually placing the impetus of prosecution back
upon the rhetoric of Law for its applicationcxlii. The integrity
of the minimal human is seen here intact, especially in John
where Jesus speaks with no fear and is actually being a
smart-ass in the face of people who he knows are going to
kill himcxliii. Jesus says 'don't ask me; ask anyone who has
heard me,' and then when the officer smacks him for his
insolence, Jesus points to the ridiculousness of the whole

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affair by saying that if indeed he deserves what punishment


is already in play then bring proof. At that the priests had
had enough.
* *
The whole episode with Pilate marks the ending of the
interlude, and brings the comedy through the irony and back
into the utter seriousness and determination of the minimal
human. We have made it through the vacillations of faith.
Again, the narrative of John offers detail that is excluded in
the other gospels, ironic detail that indicates John's minimal
humanity. The comedy is poignant, near ridiculous, and
mocks the whole theater of the trial. Pilate asks the priests
of what Jesus is accused. The inadequacy of their position
against Jesus is clear by their response; They answered and
said unto [Pilate], If he were not a malefactor, we would not
have delivered him unto theecxliv; which is to say, 'if he were
not a very bad guy we would not have brought him to you'.
Pilate, being wise of the world and seeing through the
priests intentions, tell them to take him back and deal with
him themselves. They indicate that they do not want Jesus
around by reminding Pilate that It is not lawful for us to
put any man to deathcxlv, the implication being that they
want him to be crucified but that one, they could not put a
man to death during the Passover, and two, crucifixion is a
Roman penalty, a penalty that would have greater
significance to not only the Jews but all who were interested
in him that nevertheless he is a really very bad guy and
needs to be put to death; he has been unsettling the people
and claims to be a king. So Pilate indulges the priests and
meets with Jesus alone, because the priests could not go into
the judgment hall, for a 'higher' authority judges on the
Passover.

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Mathew, Mark and Luke each have Jesus answer but
once to his accusations. Jesus's answer to the question of if
he is the Christ is 'so you say', and then nothing morecxlvi.
Luke, as if to emphasize the irony and profound
ridiculousness of the trial, as well as the inhumanity of
Jesus, even has Pilate return Jesus to the Jewish governor,
Herod, where people continue to throw accusations about
Jesus and Jesus makes no rebuttal, no response. Then in
Luke 23, verses 11-12, because Herod thought Jesus a fool,
he returned him to Pilate; Pilate then may have felt
validated, because Luke says that Herod and Pilate became
friends whereas before there was enmity between them.
This alliance has been forged due to both having a common
sense that Jesus is ridiculous and does not deserve death
under either Law. We might see that whereas Pilate saw
Herod as a Jew before a Roman citizen, now Pilate can see
that indeed the Law is what reigns, that Herod is not falling
upon any religious Law necessarily opposed to the Law of
the State (of Rome, of the True Object), but that they are
'friendly' in the Law of Reality that sees Jesus as just
another religious fanatic, as opposed to Caiaphas, as John
has it, who saw that it was expedient for one man to die for
the peoplecxlvii.

Still; in Luke, upon Jesus being returned, Pilate


attempts to have sympathy upon Jesus and nearly takes his
side, offering the Jews a compromise where he will 'chastise'
Jesus but then release him, for Pilate probably figures that
the public ridicule should be sufficient to change the tide of
this whole thing. John, on the other hand, has Pilate and
Jesus one on one, in a short discussion which brings in relief
the actual discrepancy between the minimal and fully
human, and shows the dynamic of the significant moment.
Then Pilate entered into the Judgement hall, and
called Jesus, and Said unto him, Art thou the
King of the Jews?

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Jesus answered him, Sayest thou this thing of


thyself, or did others tell it thee of me?cxlviii
If there is a more quintessential movement of the
minimal human, it is doubt. Jesus has no stake in the
outcome; the outcome is determined; Jesus says over and
over through the Gospels that the scriptures must be
fulfilled. Pilate, in his capacity, for the story, is not of the
Law; Pilate is the Law, that is to say: Pilate is the True
Object, and at that, of the story, the true point of telling the
story. If there is no Pilate, then everything else has no
significance. The Jews, or at least the priests and Pharisees
(Herod showed he was likewise complicit in the Law), are of
the Law, they have faith in the Object. Here we have the
representations of a possible reality in respect to the human
being. The Object is a designator of a state or situation of
existing, an indicator of orientation, and does not connote a
necessary singularity across a what might otherwise be
actual existence; on the contrary, the State enforces such a
singularity. Within human arenas, while we may say that
those of a group may have faith in such a singular object, for
example, the Jews and God, we should see that it is their
orientation upon the object (that calls forth the True Object)
that allows for a positing of such Truth, Law, and Absolute
God. As explained earlier, the term 'True Object' indicates a
particular condition of consciousness for existing; as one may
be oriented toward 'a' True Object, they are thus prone to
and resolute in positing such ability or capacity to know the
truth of a thing because there is a thing, an object, that
exists out there in the world that may and can be known
absolutely, now or one day, by the individual or groupcxlix.
Whether the object is physical or psychical makes no
difference; one is oriented upon the (actual/true) possibility
of there being an object of which we can know in its truth,
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little stake in the business of the True Object because Rome
is the Law of the Real World, the True Object already
manifest; it is the State of reality.

With this in mind, we have the real possibilities of the


story. Pilate is, in effect, the Object because he decides;
where there is a True Object, due to the intuited property of
all objects, a decision resides in a contingent positioncl. The
Jews have faith in the True Object (not necessarily Pilate)
because they have and refer to the Law to find truth. Jesus
is, in effect, not the object, so no faith is needed; he is
determined. Jesus (but more so Christ) is at once the
indistinguishable object as well as the faith that is not faith
that knows the True Object. Hence, John has it the
significant rational conversation between the two significant
polemical entities.
Pilate is asking Jesus the matter-of-fact issue at
hand. Jesus has offended the Jews by supposedly claiming
that he was their king, so he asks him if this is true; the
either/or question: Do you believe you are the king of the
Jews? Obviously to Pilate, Jesus is not the king of the Jews.
Luke has the accusations resound with treasonous
implications, such as that Jesus tells people not to pay
homage to Rome, but this, as said, could be to emphasize the
seemingly minimal humanity, the 'lawlessness', of Jesus,
that some faith is being offended. Pilate merely wishes to
gauge who this man is; it is no Roman crime to say one is
the king of the Jews. Jesus come upon by the Jews offends
them because Jesus challenges their faith (in the Law,
which designates and bestows power by the reality of the
True Object). Jesus come upon by Rome (Pilate) offends
nothing, but merely presents an alternative interpretation of
the Law, the True law being that law to which everyone of a
law must refer. The Jews are not the last word because they
have faith in the Law and so must recourse in their activity

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to that which binds them in situ: The Law itself, which is


the designator of what is really true: The in-itself, taken as
matter of fact, expression of the Object: The World, and the
World is Rome. The Object is that which binds those of faith,
that to which Jesus is not bound, as symbolized, realized
and actualized by his (inevitable, soon to come) crucifixion.
Pilate is matched by Jesus, because he grants Pilate
no recourse to the objective he seeks, which is located in the
either/or clause. Jesus did not return a question back upon
the Jewish priests but instead told them he would not
answer because they would not answer him his question
either. Jesus asks Pilate if he thought this himself, and so if
he wonders if it is true or if others told him and is thus
asking a different question. Pilate, of course, did not think it
himself, but rather wonders of a man who would be accused
of claiming to be the king of the Jews such that he would be
brought, as now, finally, to Pilate, who says as much:
Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Thine own nation
and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me:
what hast thou done?
Pilate is obviously not a Jew and so would not have
thought anything of anyone claiming to be the king of the
Jews. Plainly is Pilate asking Jesus, not so much as a lawbreaker or someone who has offended him or Rome, but
rather, as an equal citizen of the world: A Being. This
implication cannot be missed given the following statement
by Jesus, since the kingdom is that world of the Law of
Rome; Israel is but a nation of the world. Pilate is saying
that it is not Rome that accuses you, but it is his own nation,
the Jews, that makes you to be something more than you
are, for Jesus is exactly what he is, nothing more or less.
This discussion between Jesus and Pilate is one of
equivocality he asks him what he has done because he
expects that Jesus will not avoid him which is in contrast

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to his trial before the priests. Thus Jesus, likewise, answers
Pilate plainly, telling him that perhaps he has done
something but it is something not ethically compromised but
actually non-ethicalcli:

Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world:


if my kingdom were of this world, then would my
servants fight, that I should not be delivered to
the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.
Pilate is not offended by Jesus and has told him as
much; likewise, Jesus is not offended by Pilate and tells him
so. If Jesus were of this world, of the Law or having faith in
the Law, then his rhetoric and his ministry would have
incited physical resistance, destruction of the Law. Instead,
no resistance has been offered because Jesus is not of this
kingdom. He is of another kingdom, another world. Just as
Pilate is the Law, Jesus is another Law; as Pilate represents
the world (Rome), Jesus represents another world.
Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king
then?
And in the summation of the determination of both the
fully and minimal human:
Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To
this end was I born, and for this cause came I into
the world, that I should bear witness unto the
truth...
Jesus was born so that the Object, the True Object, the Law
itself, this representative of the world of the True Object,
Pilate, would bare witness himself the truth of the minimal
human, which is the actual renunciation of the True Object:
That I should bare witness unto the truth: Pilate sayest;
Pilate is the Law; The Law is the (real) Truth. And at the
same time, exuding every last bit of irony from this crux of
meaning, Jesus drops the pivotal statement of the minimal
human:

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Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.


And concordantly Pilate, the Law itself, echoes the same
ironic proclamation from the standpoint of the Object:
Pilate saith unto him, What is truth?
Together they find no blame, no accusation against each
other, posit no otherness but only the mere fact of existing
that finds equity in absolute discrepancy. It is only sensible
that the voice or representative of the Law should make the
final announcement of the existential situation at hand:
And when he had said this, he went out again
unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him
no fault at all.clii

Kair

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PART THREE

Whom do you seek?

The Second Moment of Decisive Significance


What is critical in existence is always in reference, not to
what returns, but what divides. There is a certain critique of
philosophy that says it is based itself in decision, at that a
prior decisioncliii, but what this decision is, as a philosophical
proposal, a proposal based in an autonomous function of a
universal totality, is highly vague. Nevertheless, when the
impetus of discussion is placed upon what is divisive, which
is the event of the decision itself, the moment wherein
decision occurs, as opposed to what is implied of decision,
which is a return upon the investment of consideration, the
discernment of what exactly such a decision is and what
accounts for that which is the content of in front of or before,
is not difficult to define. This ability occurs within the
context of meaning itself, and is not found in its ease when
what dividescliv is seen as a consequence that conveys a
movement from, or for a usual meaning, a truth gained from
an exposure of a falsity. It is what this essay shows; we have
already nearly laid it out in its entirety, the description and
not the critique, and hence we beckon for the return to the
beginning.
Where the One humanity has a historical story of
religious dimensions shrouded in mystery and unknowns,
there we have the activity of such players being subject to a
modern scientific attempt to point blame and establish
cause. The way it is done is to show real dynamics, where
the same human being, the human being of the common
sort, acts within an arena of natural, ecological, political and
social influences to bring about certain decisions. It says
that some sort of natural universal condition allowed for the
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arena wherein choices were made and through a storm of


contingent possibility, history came about just so. If there is
a better description of God inscribed into a conflation of
multiple events, diffused, if you will, in a Godly discourse,
where the terms of the subject cannot avoid the heavenly
return, I could not create it myself. Such a discourse seems
to demand a certain type of offensive experience, a certain
type of known behavior, in as much as there indeed is a
commoner who is behaving in such a manner, a human
being no different than me, there, somehow appealing to my
sense of mystery because I am able to understand this
experience of her and him, and yet, still somehow, as I
proceed into this mystery before me the activity before my
knowledge seems incredible, seems simultaneously foreign
an experience that relives me from the responsibility I have
to that knowledge thereby comprehends the demand as
command, at that, from a necessity removed from that
commonality, and yet, due to its removal, likewise allowing
for the common type.
This is the meaning of the Jewish resentment of which
Nietzsche speaks, the divisive recouped for the common.
This is why we may begin to understand conventional
philosophy as a religious argument, a theological apology.
Philosophers want to be so open minded and liberal,
separated from religious posturing, but it is indeed the
reduction involved with the attempt to reconcile what is
seen through a lens as obviously different that moves in
religious circles; two examples are Hegels higher
consciousness through sublation, which is a reconciliatory
move, and Nietzsches ubermensch, which appears more
like a kind of repremand. The continuance of this hope
against its perpetual incompletion is the meaning of the
post-postmodern notion that requires a relinquishing of
truth for the sake of the multitudeclv; the ubermensch now
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understand why the crowd demanded Barabbas, a thief and
a murderer, be released instead of Jesus, for they could not
(were incapable) receive the truth. Jesus supplies the
material by which the crowd makes or had made its
decision.

Where different modes, different kinds of existence are


allowed to be what they are apart from any want for return,
existence that is rooted upon a different kind of reduction, a
different kind of methodology, there we have the indication
of decision as, indeed, based in a division. On one hand,
there is a choice, in the very common and conventional
sense, and then on the other, as well, the prior decision that
is spoken about indicated through a very plain sense of the
term. Here we have the prior decision of infinite causal
reduction that brackets cause within the True Object, and as
well, the prior decision as a decision that cannot be made
because it was made prior to the occasion of meaning; which
is to say, of decisive significance as it applies to the
subsequent apprehension of sort and kind. The disruption
that is the significant event then occurs due to the
existential allowance that asks for no permission, and that
defaults to no real causal authority. This is a different
manner of coming upon reality that does not answer, in the
last instance, to the authoritative convention, but instead is
the answer, such that reality, as a scheme or scaffolding of
meaning, answers to this different mannerclvi.
In the context of our rendition of the Gospels, the
meeting by polemical realities, represented by Jesus and
Pilate, upon neutral ground ends the transition. Each player
takes his position against the other in their respective ways,
as only they should and can. This departure marks the
second moment of decisive significance, where significance
itself becomes bifurcated into two modes. On one hand, the
acceptance of Being for being, and vice versa, where Pilate
indeed must play his role as King of Objects, symbolized by

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Pilates washing of his hands of blame for the killing of the


King of Subjects for the sake and will of the multitude.
This is a second moment because Jesus is already
reconciled in the decision that could not be made, the
moment of decisive significance of the first instance. What is
significant about this moment, this second moment, is that
there is an awareness of contradiction, what we might call
an absurdity. This awareness does not occur in Jesus, again,
because he is already reconciled by virtue of what is
conventionally (real and fully human) absurd; if one can say
that Jesus has faith then it must be said that he has faith by
virtue of the absurdclvii. No; Jesus may be aware of the
absurdity, but again, it is significant in a different way.
Such an awareness that an event has become absurd is a
move of significance. The first moment sees no absurdity,
while the second moment brings forth the significance of the
first in that its notice concerns the decision. It is the second
moment of decisive significance that is not so reconciled, one
that needs to decide for its own, within its world, by its own
route for truth, that brings about a need for a real spiritual
solution, but as well the irony of the condition of the first
moment.
*
The Law has been breached, and it is for this reason that
Jesus has come unto Pilate, who is the Law: To bear witness
unto the truth, and the truth here, the absurdity of which
Pilate becomes aware, is that he, as the Law, the King of
Objects, can only affect Objects. Pilate comes to understand
that he has no jurisdiction, no power in himself, over the
King of Subjects.
*

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Returning to the crowd, having found no fault in Jesus
that would warrant death, Pilate finds the crowd
unreasonable, unrelenting and undeterred. They cry give us
Barabbas and crucify Jesusclviii. This would seem to be
getting tiresome to Pilate, for in Matthew and Mark he
implores them again to reconsider by asking the crowd
Why? What evil has he done?clixThen Pilate willing to
content the peopleclx gives in.

Yet in John we have a more revealing telling of events.


The crowd overrides Pilates appraisal of the prisoner, Jesus.
We then see immediately that Pilate took Jesus and
scourged himclxi . We might see that Pilate then had the
soldiers put a crown of thorns and a purple robe on him
hoping that the crowd will be satiated by making a mockery
of Jesus, but it is enough that the soldiers do it on their own
volition since the soldiers are likewise of the Law. Pilate
returns again before the crowd, this time with Jesus as a
mock king, that ye may know that I find no fault in himclxii,
and further to emphasize, albeit the objectivity of Jesus, he
says Behold the man. Still the crowd will not relent and
Pilate then shows his frustration and says, in effect, why
dont you go and kill him yourself, for I dont find any fault
in him. It is here, in response to the Jews reply that we find
the significance of the second sort, which is that of spiritual
awareness, the moment of coming upon what Rudolf Otto
might call the mysterium tremendumclxiii, the tremendous
mystery that in confronting reality is absurdity itself. The
Jews answer Pilate by telling him that they have a law that
says Jesus should die because he made himself the Son of
Godclxiv It is here that the moment begins:
When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he was
the more afraid.clxv
This moment is so significant that he goes back into the
judgment hall (who is being judged here?) and asks Jesus
Whence art thou? Of course it is not difficult to see that
Pilate is asking Jesus from where he comes, but it is quite

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odd that this last statement of the Jewish crowd would


suddenly propel Pilate to see the light, so to speak, as
conventional wisdom might have it, that he is somehow now
moved to consider finally that Jesus might indeed be the Son
of God, or of some heavenly or divine occurrence.
Nevertheless, indeed: This is the second moment of decisive
significance. Of the reader so distanced to the Books telling
suddenly compelled to an intimacy is due to but not due to;
more upon the instance of the missing of the first
significance, there is already a distance that is closing. This
event is viewed as a first event that is significantly
significant, for it is most likely the first time that such a one
has been let to a closing of the distance between subject and
object, between the agent of free will, which is the
universally segregated agent, and its object. This agent thus
sees the closing of the gap as an instance of encountering the
transcendence by which real objects gain their substance
and meaning, and because of the agents orientation of True
Objects, such an encounter likewise follows suit to grant the
Object of transcendence, namely, God, but at least an
encounter of some spiritual kindclxvi.
The meaning of the second moment is a meaning of
power, of agency itself, such that we see Pilate with a
certain anxiety. The question that is paved over by spiritual
significance is that upon why Pilate was the more afraid.
Conventional wisdom merely confirms the religious maxim
that already pervades the telling of the True Object: The
crowd is already making him fearful of large unrest or
rebellion; the idea that the Jews had of Jesuss blasphemy is
more offensive to them than Pilate could have guessed or is
estimating; the coincidence of the Jewish outrage and the
apparent disconcern of Jesus causes Pilate to be so moved to
see that Jesus may indeed be from a divine source. This
essay, though, shows the human condition without recourse
to a transcendental True Object (God). Here, the opinion of

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the Jews do not move him; rather, he was already afraid, as
were the Jews, since they are Lawful, of the fully human
estimation of truth. Already Pilate is fully human. He is
reduced to this state from his objective stature of being the
Law, the World, through his encounter with the authentic
Being, the True Subject, the actual subject of the story in
which he is involved, for Pilate himself was with Jesus in
the judgment hall, together meeting on equal grounds. Now
though, we find the distinction of existential difference in
the players. Pilate comes unto his own being because of his
interaction with an authentic Being, as the story suggests,
the King of Subjects, as Pilate is also a subject, but at that
oriented upon True Objects, Lawful real objects. Through
this significant moment, Pilate is so moved by the
transcendent clause, inherent of such an orientation, to be
that being that he is, which is the Law, the King of Objects.

Jesus has nothing further to say because Pilate is


knowing all there is to know about the situation, having
come upon the significant moment. And Pilate reacting to
this anxiety, the anxiety that marks the coming upon the
eternal void within every True Object, the actual subject of
the object, the substance of every term, the abyss of
freedom that lay beyond wordsclxvii, transcending the
mockery itself because the whole trial is a mockery; the
stubbornness of the Jews confirms this. It is as if the whole
event is meaning this Event: The moment of decisive
significance, that moment wherein a decision must be made
that cannot be made, of hesitation, of repetition, because it
is a moment not of making decision, but instead of coming to
terms with a decision that has already occurred, the prior
decision.
The moment must be revealed in the only manner it can;
Pilate can only behave the way he does. Pilate must revolt
from the abyss of freedom, from the determination of his
Being. He must become his agency, the agent of

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transcendence, and so to assert this power upon the Object


of judgment, Jesus Christ. In John 19:10, the equity of Being
has been given to the polemic of truth:
Speakest thou not unto me? How dare you, I
am the agent of transcendence. knowest thou not
that I have power to crucify thee, and have power
to release thee? {emphasis added}
But Jesus, who is not an agent of transcendence, who is
merely a minimal human, sees through Pilates experience,
and
Jesus answered, Thou couldest have no power at
all against me except it were given thee from
above: therefore he that delivered me unto thee
hath the greater sin.
He that delivered me unto thee is the transcendent, the
True Object of transcendence, the effective transcendent
clause involved with every Lawful Object. In answering to
itself, it is seen as unethical by its own standards. So,
thenceforth Pilate sought to release him: but
the Jews cried out, saying, If thou let this man go,
thou art not Cesars friend
Pilate is in the midst of the significant experience and the
Jews sing to him like a tragic Greek chorus, letting the
reader into Pilates intimate thoughts, while reminding him,
the character in the play, invested of the significance, that
indeed Pilate is Cesars friend.
When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he
brought forth Jesus, and sat down Pilate sat
down in the judgment seat in a place that is
called the Pavement, but in the Hebrew,
Gabbatha. Then Pilate says to the Jews, Behold
your king.

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*

Because this whole event is an accounting of the


significant event of Pilate, we should unpack the
possibilities involved in John 19:15-22.
The conventional telling of these verses paints a picture
of Pilate bringing Jesus out and Pilate going to sit on the
seat where he will make his final proclamation of judgment.
Pilate, by now defeated, attempts one last time to appeal to
sense, and says to the crowd heres your king. Do you really
want to kill your king? And the Jews then say, basically,
yes, because he is not our king. Then Jesus was crucified.
The other telling concerns Pilate, the fully human who
judges the world and places the subject within the
contingency of real choice. Pilate sits on the raised
pavement, the higher place in the hall, the place of
judgment, with Jesus before him below, and says behold
your king. The story of Pilate, having traversed the second
instance of significance, now resounds with irony, in the
double voice, but split, as this orientation can only hold one
true thing at a time, in the scene in the hall of judgment:
The reader himself is asked to make a judgment that cannot
be made because it has already been made, even while in the
story, that objectification of being, the decision has likewise
already been made by the Jews: Behold your king, the man
himself, Pilate, whom you just announced is (at least) the
presiding king (the representative of Cesar), the King of
Objects. The Jews have admitted that they have no king but
that of the True Object, the transcendental clause that is
seen to reside at the absolute basis of real identity; their
king is Cesar, a quite ironic proclamation for the Jews.
Indeed, Luke 23:34, has Jesus up on the cross saying
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

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And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. And the
writing was, JESUS OF NARARETH THE KING OF
THE JEWS.clxviii
Because it was near the city, it was posted in the three
languages common to the city. The priests did not like that
sign, and told Pilate to change it to say I am the king of the
Jews, but Pilate, probably because he has had enough of all
the nonsense, says, in effect, screw you; What I have
written, I have written.
What is the difference between the two signs?
Convention would have it that the priests wanted it to be
more clear that this man up on the cross, Jesus, claimed
that he was the king of the Jews, as opposed to Pilates sign
that might be vague in this distinction. But we should not
forget the significance of I am. What we have is further
indication of the irony that has infiltrated the story in a
particular way through the arrival of Pilate. Pilates sign
reflects his new but not new situation, the after encounter
with significance, where if he did not know it before, he was
now an agent of transcendence, and this is verified
rhetorically, symbolically, by the Jews announcing Cesar as
their king.
Note the significance of becoming an agent of
transcendence through the second moment: Nothing
changes. The significance of the second moment is that
something is seen to have changed in the person, but
nothing really changes; the person proceeds as if upon a new
basis, but there is no evidence beyond the affect experience
(and the terms used to refer to it) that the person would not
have acted in the very same manner despite the eventclxix.
The experience is always left out, always transcendent to the
situation. It is only through faith that behavior is
understood to have changed, only through faith that the
Event has any meaning, at that, because Objects are viewed

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Kair
differently as to their Truth. The transcendental clause has
had an effect due to the meaning of the True Object that was
already invested of identity. Pilate, being so moved, thus
behaves as he should have behaved in the first place, as he
can only behave: As a judge. But instead it is Pilate who has
been judged. He thus projects this judgment upon the
Objects of his view, the Objects over which he rules as an
agent of transcendence. He begrudgingly crucifies Jesus,
against his better judgment and because of this, because his
judgment is not supposed to come from some subjective
place, but from an objective place, from the subjects (-objects)
that he presides over, he does exactly what he should and
would do. He (in effect, as we have said) is the World, the
Law. Having encountered the significant moment, he now
must enact decision, but this action has already been
decided. The mockery of a trial is the trial of Pilate. He
washes his hands of blameclxx because he has encountered
his subjectivity as Truth yet still must act as he is
determined. He has encountered the True Subject, but it is
not what it seems; it is an odd sort of knowing, an ironic
situation. He therefore must enact a division, and washes
his hands because he must force the blame from himself,
because he has encountered the transcendent, and now must
perform his existential duty because it has been determined
of him from the start.

He writes the sign. The sign says JESUS OF


NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS because it is a
Jewish event as some philosophers have analyzedbut
more because he is indicating the truth of the Jewish
situation as it involves transcendence. Remember, the
arrival of Jesus marks the inclusion of the world in the
Jewish estimation of things, or vice-versa. Ironically, it is
the Jews who know not what they do who end up spelling
out the originating basis of their whole tradition, the
moment of decisive significance first come upon by Abraham
and then Moses. But it is too late. Just as the golden calf

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was erected by people, the sign of the ages will not read the
Truth, i.e. I Am King of the Jews, but indeed the fully
human distanced expression of Objective Truth.

Kair

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Afterword
In Gayatri Spivaks English translation of Jacques
Derridas Of Grammatology, she uses pretty much of a
quarter of the book for the Translators Preface, the
beginning of which concerns Derridas concern for Hegels
idea of the preface. To Derrida, there is no preface. The most
interesting aspect of his whole book, though, is not the
various essays themselves, because the various essays are
proposed to not exclude the Preface. How then are we to
come to terms with the essays? To be simple, and avoiding
the necessity of performance that seems cannot be avoided
in the telling of the impossibility of a preface, if even the
possibility of an Afterword, we are reminded of Martin
Heideggers essay on The Work of Art; the turn that occurs
from the presumption of topic to the matter that is actually
addressed emphasizes the performative aspect of the
subject: The subject that is performing, that is, as opposed to
some sort of human Agent-Being, is a subject of discourse
that is performing. Indeed, what twist is enacted in that
simple sentence? At no point does any definition avoid the
subject that occurs of discourse; might we substitute text
and we recede at least 35 years in time, but still then do we
remain at the subject, the issue at handclxxi. For at no time
am I excluding what is rightly the subject of the foregone
essay. The conflating of meaning in unexpected ways is the
performative aspect of the subject; the object is always
presented against a static arena. We have to wonder, then,
about discourses that speak directly without the sort of
ironic twist that certain authors evidence by their
authorship, because the irony of any discourse is not located
in this performative aspect but rather more so in fact in the
appropriative concern. While this development is indeed
interesting, it seems at least these two authors set aside the

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Kierkegaardian near derogatory interesting and instead
make their bed within it.

With a peculiar introspection, we might want to try to


escape this either/or situation, but the question is no longer
about some manner of reconciliation, for the reconciliation
itself is the performative aspect: We see that this route, of
the attempt to reconcile, is the lie, the basis of qualifying
illusion, of the assertion towards finding a this over that,
and if I may, of violence itself. What is appropriated is
already appropriated in the only way it can be; hence, the
problem this essay has treated. The irony is that in the
process of the attempt to be honest, to approach and
disseminate the idea with integrity, the integrity is already
lost through two ways, often at the same time, and this
concerns the appropriation of meaning. One, a placing of the
criterion of the idea upon a distanced object; which is to say
here, that thing or stuff that we accept as well as argue over
and propose upon in the same breath called (albeit
tentatively) knowledge, that is conveyed through the
traditional lineage, the common, sensible and real lineage of
authors, texts and schools. Integrity here is supported
through the objective case by a further removal of institution
and its method. Two; perform, in the sense that is, lie. But
this extrapolation is not an overt type of dishonesty, more an
enfolding of truth, rather, more a type of denial. The means
by which the idea is found would disqualify serious
consideration by the respected academy, so creativity, in this
case, is used to avoid contradicting the established route by
which the author has been allowed her place; which is to say,
her identity. The whole thing occurs in a situated meaning.
The author must come up with a way to express the
situation their situation, the situation that is the
institutional establishment of identity, this being, of course,
reality itself, where the motion of discourse must link itself
to an outside object innately and identically despite what
meaning is conveyed to the contrary
of the idea.

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Unfortunately, though, because the true direct expression


amounts to a loss of credibility, the route then always leads
around the idea.
Hence we find a need for an openingclxxii. Fiction,
spirituality and religion fall in place here due to the
discursive quality that those arenas permit and even
promote. In these domains, people can speak of the history
of elves, aliens, trans- and post- humanities, as well as
hyperspace and warp drives in the same prose that they
describe authentic human activity and emotional
interaction, while others may speak of alternate planes of
existence, aural energies, psychology, ghosts, and
karma, while still others can talk about God(s), daemons
and devils, heaven and hell, and ones soul. These arenas
hold a place for such things, such really true things, that
may or may not actually have an effect upon peoples lives
and worldly matters, in such and such a way, direct,
indirect, influential and fantastical.
Unfortunately, our authors here, however, do not have
this luxury, but while still involved in a segregation of
human moments (child, adult, philosopher, beer drinker,
gourmet chef, computer hacker, wife, friend, intellectual,
shooter-of-the-shit, et cetera) nevertheless routinely fall prey
to such fictional tropes; the best example being that reality
contains all that is possibly true as well as false, and that
the compartments of human role-playing imply a single
arena to and within which such compartmentalizations take
place. This is the problem inherent of the postmodern
moment that would propose to be speaking of some sort of
sole discursive element by which reality must adhere and
conspire to be true. Hence; might we supply a negative
possibilityclxxiii, then the very act of postmodern application
defies that their theories are anything but fictionsclxxiv; which
is to say, obviously, metaphysical speculations, but fantasies

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of the (fearful?) imaginations. And as it proceeded as a
liberal ideal, nothing less than an activity of colonialismclxxv.

We do not have the ability to do anything but entertain


such notions, to behave in reality speaking through a
negotiation of those arenas, those compartments; our
authors are in attempts to speak and know precisely about
specificities, to locate and identify truths. We cannot be
haphazard in what we say, nor how we know, for these are
one in the same, or at least, are offered in and as the
attempt. Yet, notwithstanding this philosophical proposal,
we can begin to see where those common fiction writers,
those commoners of simple thought, are actually more
honest. Thus, if we can follow a certain historical
understanding and find the end, then we begin to see
through what is occurring in the conventional time, and
therefore, we must say that there is no reconciliation, that
any attempt to do so now shows its flaws ironically,
eternally. Due to this, we see that Derrida was correctclxxvi,
but is incorrect; we see that he was set, determined, in the
very situation that would require of him to offer the linear
situation of irony, which is, that in the attempt to be honest
he has 1.) relied upon a false route, and 2.) could not expose
his own route. He thus was incapable of advocating two
routes. This makes sense in the light of his (pre) occupation
with Spirit (it seems), but also his own reason for his
authorial undertaking. It is not just that he could have
understood what we are saying here, but more that he did
not come to this conclusion, and yet, was rigorous in his
undertakings. In fact, oddly enough, it most likely (I am not
a scholar, have not come across this in what I have read, but
would not put it beyond him) would not be difficult now to
find this contingency in his writings, since that is the nature
of real sense, of making meaning in reality. This thus
indicates the route we must take.
*

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The talking around the situation, facing or oriented


upon that object, that true thing that cannot be expressed, is
the misappropriation of irony, as Georg Hegel might have
agreed, ironically. On one hand, the object that is the
institution; on the other hand, that object which is the
criterion of which the institution proposes to be addressing,
that Derrida, and Spivak as well, is proposing to also
address. Yet, we cannot fault ignorance, because the way to
expose it is routinely routed back into the reconciliatory
route of ends. Reality cannot be set aside by discourse
(what?). So it is, we are not merely reinstating what has
already been said, but exposing why it has been said, why it
was a necessary situation, why the situation was presented
the way it was, as well as instigating then how that
situation should be no longer the case.
What is significant and really interesting, then, I would
say, the significant question, it seems, should be why would
it be not only necessary for Spivak to spend a quarter of the
published English translation to introduce the Of
Grammatology text itself, but further, why would it be
necessary for Derrida to have an issue with the preface that
he would have to explain it? Kierkegaard was being honest
metaphorical and poetic but blatantly honest (I find it
amusing that in those discourses wherein Kierkegaard is
most defeated, commentators have found him most honest),
but it is this honesty that brought him to a certain anguish,
for often enough his honesty was and is not being
understood for its plainness; he was fighting against his own
situation of being in a reductive reality that was understood
to reflect a grand One truth, as he should be the agent of
this truth (but alas, I do not have the faith of Abrahamclxxvii).
This is why he finds that the crowd is untruthclxxviii, and
speaks to the one and not the many; on one hand, only the
one in a million would understand him, but also on the

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other hand, the many evidently could not understand him.
The presumption was that everyone is involved in a common
real arena. His aguish was that he could not relieve himself
of this want for justification by the many, could not will
himself to be relieved of his faith. So it is that the solution to
this problem of enlightenment would seem to be found in
there actually being two routes not being subject to the
further reduction of another one route; that the
enlightenment was a self righteous pompousness, necessary,
but self righteous historical and cultural colonialism. The
removal of this transcendent agency thus reveals actually
two routes, for we might see now that it is indeed
transcendence itself that overcomes the gap between them.
See, though, that we are not reiterating or recapitulating a
postmodernism; this is not an invitation for multiple
realities; all those things occur in reality. We are not
advocating any sort of reality but reality itself, and hence,
again, two routes for meaning. Reality is but one of those
routes. We need somehow come to terms with our
colonialism (colonihilism), that the defiance as well as fear of
a great reckoning are the features of the colonial modern.

*
There is a type of irony that invites deception. A more
recent kind of philosopher is keen and cunning; they argue
Marxist capital while using it as a means to support their
argument. In effect, they saw Kierkegaards despair and
armed against it for the purpose of creating scarcity for the
material they then pedal; identity capital is the new
immaterialist material. They corner the market by enacting
the redundancy that they cannot escape because they are
arguing the market scarcity by their theoretically redundant
position. They become a they due to what they withhold by
the proper method which has led them to the situation
where they must produce material. Whatever they might
argue to the contrary or resist, they inevitably end up in the

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contradiction that we usually call hypocrisy, but hold back


from it in this specific case. By doing so, they again are
permitted to project their limit out upon the institution so to
see the institution such that their view expresses then the
vacancy of the nil subject as ideological necessityclxxix. This
is to say, they use the limit to argue that the discourse (text)
that contains all that may likewise be true in its fullest
mythological capacity as the unimpeachable and ubiquitous
universal and total truth. Through argument that relies
upon the dynamic mutability of discourse, they nevertheless
posit by their theories its ontological stasis.
*
There is a different way. This is the way that must be
understood before we can get anywhere. The understanding
that is gained through the text, as opposed to yet complicit
with the understanding by and for which the text is written,
seems sufficient to make grand comments upon the truth of
any matter. By this we can make better sense of Slavoj
Zizeks references to Chinese emperors:
a ruler had at his disposal an excessive number
of laws which...partially contradicted each other.
Within such a complex framework of laws, where
submission to one law readily brings one into
conflict with another, a mere accusation will find
almost anyone of any station in violation of
somethingThis enables the rulers agents to
practice shu, the tactic or art of choosing which
law to enforce in a specific situation: power is
enacted not only through the prosecution of the
law, but also in the selection of which law to
enforce, and by the absence or cessation of
enforcement due to some other contravening law.
Such a selective enforcement of laws ultimately

Kair
occurred at the pleasure of the ruler: in this way
the mystery of the emperors pleasure was
communicated to the masses.clxxx
{emphasis
added}

203

Zizek says that this is totally Lacanian, but see that


Zizek is also speaking out of a context that evidences two
routes, though his reconciliation is found within and of his
discourses: Zizek is in the middle of it all, evoking Lacan in
the same manner as I evoke Zizek (and Kierkegaard, and
Hegel, and Derrida for that matter). He understands all too
well a type of non-philosophical meaning but also the extent
of possibility that is correspondently philosophical. In the
quote above, and indeed through all his rhetoric, he is
describing the situation in which he finds himself. We
cannot say, though, that he is hiding a proposal of divine
audience; it is only within a particular side of a polemic that
we might take Zizek as advocating a type of personal
subjectivity, and this is exactly what the Postmoderns are
armed against. On the contrary; Zizek has no need to arm
himself any longer since he is already finding himself in the
situation of having to arm against despair; whereas the
Postmoderns had yet to be finding themselves in the mire,
they were involved in finding the mire, the mire that Hegel
never recognized let alone noticed, Nietzsche tried to stomp
over, and that Kierkegaard sunk into. The void (nil subject)
that arises as Zizek, does so not in defiance to ideological
standards, but rather in correspondence to the ideological
objects around him; despite what conventional Lacanian
psychological breakdowns, he finds himself in the Law of
objects, and due to this discovery, this uncovering of his
situation thus amounts to and allows for his agency. He thus
is able to practice shu. He does not find himself as subject
to the ideological discourse that is the rules by which reality
may be true, he finds himself in the situation as being
totally determined by such objects, and in so being, sees the
extent and purview of the application of this law, of laws
which partially contradict each other. It is incorrect to view

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Zizek (or maybe more, at least, within discourses) within


parameters or along lines of a common humanity, for even
the measure of truth which should be able to convey such
humanity is likewise in question through the series of
contradictions by which it gains its meaningful stature as a
(one-sided) lateral of a certain polemics. We find that Zizek
represents a certain pivotal moment in the performative
activity of enlightened agency, because it is with him that
we find the saturation of directive polemics, a nexus where
the subject itself finds its meaningful submersion in the
objects of its consideration. We find him in the performance
of appropriation. But this is not praxis or some
psychologically measurable state; rather, it is entirely about
the determination of terms for the issue at hand. After Zizek
(and we use after in its most existential and philosophical
context) we find the same method but now exposed such that
denial is the only way to continue using it. With the
evidence of a certain manner of speaking which is the ability
to choose which law to enforce in a specific situation:
(which coordination of terms to use) power is enacted not
only through the prosecution of the law, ( as argumentative
rebuttal to proposals ) but also in the selection of which law
to enforce, and by the absence or cessation of enforcement
due to some other contravening law. From the subject now
entirely determined by the objects of its concern, such
operators are able to navigate gracefully and almost
effortlessly around the stalwart real and definite lawabiding objects of arguments that are effectively proposals
for ideologically true objects. Zizek is being tactful
considering his political station, but make no mistake, in
this way the mystery of the emperors pleasure was
communicated to the masses, in this way the void is
disseminated through the one, to the multiple.
We see now Zizek, in this case, is not speaking of some
sort of essentialist objective political case, but entirely from

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Kair
the situation that is my appropriation of discourse. But by
present conventional standards, it is improper to say my
and still hope to convey the meaning, however immediate
and fantastical I had to really be just then. It is not the
subjective I appropriating personal meaning as opposed to
everyone else and their own subjective appropriations; in the
estimation of two routes, we are talking about I am in true
self-reflection as us in opposition to them. Zizeks perpetual
conflating and segregating discursive enactments is exactly
the example of the agent of enlightenment, while also of the
antithesis of such an agent, that which we call an operator,
one who has such fluid access to the dialectical material that
he cannot but produce relevant statements at every juncture
of objective quality. Yet he is not sovereign; it is more that he
is exhibiting the features of an operator of truth, more that
he enacts the void as multiple in its most truly ironic sense.
Every law-abiding, real situation is exhibited in relief by the
set of contradictions, contradictions that Zizek never denies
except when, but while in the act, he has the occasion before
him through which to speak. He is the example of
Kierkegaards Abraham, the standard by which Kierkegaard
is able to speak of his, and as well the general conditions of,
faith, even while this situation brings forth the commentary
by Kierkegaard of the situation that is the exact
contradiction of which he does not entertain, indeed, cannot
entertain. There is no matter to consider of how Zizek
himself might be different, or how his case might exhibit a
compartmentalization of behaviors, for if it were the case
that Zizek were to exhibit himself any differently than the
situation itself by which he has been and is being presented,
then, as we argue, Zizek or myself, that is the subject itself, is
enacting a deception, or indeed, contradiction would equate
to the end of the world; and this never happens. Every
moment of sense corresponds with the making of meaning.

It is this paradox that through the postmodern signal


inevitably brings (or should bring) the enlightenment to a

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close that is, except that we are speaking only of discourse,


of the condition that discourse evidences as a particular
meaning, or as well, a particular existential mode. If we are
considering truth, we cannot leave ourselves the out of
relying upon every possibility that can arise to the
imagination, for when we do, when we ride the wheel of
identity politics, we find ourselves firmly in reality, without
any escape of the imagination but blatant denial, even
without any viable philosophical route but a philosophy
which contradicts philosophy itself. In short, we find our
selves in the very situation that we have just described in
this essay. Actually two routes.
*
Hegel appears to fully admit his own faux pas in this
matter (despite Kierkegaards rebuttal), his excepting of the
preface, and directly states that his book The
Phenomenology of Spirit is the philosophy, is the truth of
the matter, and that whatever comment he may have made
upon it should be set aside. It would appear that Deleuze
and Guattari were more Hegelian than Derrida, at least in
as much as they have somewhat low opinions upon
conversation and discussion. But I admit my scholarship is
lacking in many places, and I should automatically give
Derrida the benefit of doubt that he somewhere attempted to
address this phenomenon involved with discourse. Yet
strangely, it would appear sensible that Derrida (but all
three of these guys) was too close to the Event, too close to
the moment of significance, and was consumed by it such
that he could only argue upon the last instance of
reconciliation, which is, the last turn of deception, and yet
the first. He admits somewhere that he is so concerned with
discourse because of what may be beyond discourse; I would
say that is a good approach, to fully explore and remove all
the facets of responsibility that language holds or is capable

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of holding. But perhaps where we begin to doubt Derrida,
should we forgive Heidegger? His apparent support of
Nazism, the recent papers that have caused a stir around
whether to continue to accept himclxxxi, the ethical
ramifications, is not the proper site for philosophical
considerations. Rather, the result of Nazism, its complete (or
near complete; Neo-Nazism is a kind of blasphemous postmodern rendition of it) destruction is the mark that tells us
that if Dasein were to continue it would have to under
disguise. Modern becomes post-modern. What more perfect
ruse than that of irony, Daseins native waters. Do not be
fooled: Dasein continues in the disguise that would conflate
a preface into the total work as to annihilate it; hence the
really interesting thing about, at least, Of Grammatology.
But that is a topic for another essay.

The next essay will be concerned entirely with the


Second Moment of Decisive Significance.

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Notes

i My source for this inference is the essay Cogito and the History of Madness
(Cogito et lhistorie de la folie. Lecture delivered March 4, 1963 ) comes from a
compilation of Derridas essays gathered over the course of his life, called Writing and
Difference. Translated, with an introduction and additional notes by Alan Bass. The
University of Chicago Press. 1978.
ii This is to say that what we might call the New Realism is based upon a pass because
they are allowing another pass that is given, or rather, unnoticed (not given notice) in their
ruminative processions. The question before us is this given pass that is routinely set aside;
this first pass validates further passes of the same type. But keep in mind that we do not here
associate these passes with the moments of significance discussed in the foregoing essays. It
is the closing of a particular route that allows for the continuance of the same route via a
pass. In this case, the closing has been associated with the dead end of the phenomenological
reduction of Edmund Husserl, I believe noted by Graham Harman, and Copernicus, noted by
Quentin Meillassoux, ( Ray Brassier and Levi Bryant also have a claim) though both suggest
a problem with the limit involved with a Kantian universe. The pass enacted here is twofold;
an (typically) overdetermined phenomenal reduction fails to account for every occurrence
without the aid of spiritual aspects to account for outside phenomena, and second, which
is currently the more rigorously philosophical, that the limit of language, or discourse, is seen
to be able to evidence what can be beyond discourse. With both there is a plain setting aside
of what is uncomfortable or seemingly useless (for the development and maintenance of
hierarchical identities) to consider any longer. They thus pass over what they cannot
reconcile, as well get a pass from the community that sees objects only along or within a
certain teleo-ontological horizon, such that a change in discourse is somehow equated with a
change in reality (another pass). But the real pass is the one noticed explicitly by Badiou;
namely, and I paraphrase, that the operator of truth must relinquish that truth for the value it
has in reality. Strangely enough, the move most distinctive and possibly most consistent with
this essay might be the closing that occurs with the extension of the end that requires a pass
to its furthest and most offensive situations, what could be seen as a taking of nihilism past its
reactionary end to its absolute end.
My over generalization of New Realists, I admit, is based in a type of academic
laziness, but from what I have read, to me, it does not appear very far fetched to place a
whole culture of philosophical rhetoric of the early 21st century under a Realist title. I may
appear nave and unscholarly, but it is likewise not too obtuse to place much of our world
concern associated with terror, under the rubric of terrorism. It would seem that somehow
the revealing of humanity unto itself during the 20th century was terrible enough to elicit if
not demand more concrete discourses, called solutions, that can be applied to specific and
impeding dooms, armageddons that move for a skip over the terrorizing end to thereby offer
passing solutions. Indeed; Heideggers Dasein persists, but it would seem we needed to get
beyond existence to whats real and keep it real; apparent acceleration and apparent more
information somehow correlates with a capacity for better solutions, leaving Dasein to be
ignored for the glamour of a better world. But the focus of the lens through which realism
looks becomes more refined but effectively smaller, more myopic. We can thus find all sorts

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interesting objects now; Zizek-Lacan-Hegelian real psychological discourses, as well as


reductions of the human phenomenon to desire-production-machine, and even more abstract,
computer operations, GNP and like estimations of monetary value, credit and Wall Street
markets, and bit coin. It is the type of limit revealed by such serious theoretical
considerations that brings one to consider how we might now be in the formative stages of a
real gestalt catholic world religion. But this too is probably but another hype.
iii

See note ii above.

iv Being and Event by Alain Badiou. 2005 Continuum. I mention the (extinct) blog
In The Salt Mine because I am concerned with the modern capital-communist
overpowering motion of authors and identity who all too often merely list the Big Names,
when, again, often enough, it is the smaller names that usually have more tangibility and
access upon the subject, which is the subject of communication. As if we are all down, or
should be down with the natural flow of information; whatever that might mean.
v Specifically, I am speaking of Graham Harmans book on H.P. Lovecraft, and the
trans and post-humanist discussions that consider the strange and odd situations that can arise
after modernity, this of course, a kind of response to the human situation that Zizek noticed:
We might say that humanism responds by reifying the human limit of itself by taking as
given the un-reflected, or otherwise stifled move toward reflection that being human may
entail, to enlist the appearance of freedom. Freedom, where extended to every potential of
inclusion, tends to argue a particular kind of economic interaction, a product itself the modern
ideological situation of Capitalism; this situation is almost impossible to imagine our way out
of.
This impossibility, though, is tempered by what I am calling conventional faith. The
issue has entirely to with limits, yes, but the view by which such limits become known do so
not through intellectualizations and conceptual apparatus. They become known through
something else, and the terming of this something else again evidences the essential-generic
motion discussed in this essay. We want to avoid the want to substantiate through arguing a
conventionally manifested object, so we instead speak of effects. This is to say that once the
object is understood, and this understanding begins to be presented, then the Subject (in the
context of this essay) has a genuine responsibility for it. Hence, simply speaking, we have
Harman talking about the Object; then by real extension, the objects for which he has claimed
responsibility by the presentation of the (singular understood) Object, as an initial impetus,
withdraw from view.
Similarly, though I am not yet well read here, we can stand to make a few statements
about these other real discourses. If what is human is retained as a conventional reality for a
subject, such that there is a corresponding object, then the situation of what remains, beyond
this noticed conventional situation, can be viewed as a transitional substance, a kind of
material that moves between what is real and what, we should suppose is not yet real. This
substance thus enters the field of conventional reality through the discourse that speaks of
what is determining the modern real subject, which is, to be technical, not merely an object,
but indeed technology. We have here a trans-human discussion. Further then, we might
imagine reality to be conflated with what it is to be human, albeit as a kind of humanist
incarnation. With the introduction of a technological object of its own making, the human
being finds an exit from the redundancy that analyzes things into nothingness. It thereby
constructs an object through the apparent agency that entirely overcomes so as to depart from
the humanist situation, from human agency itself, so this being the situation at hand anyways,
hence we have a post-human discussion.
While this is a very brief, general, and most probably ill-informed description of

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various ways of addressing the issue at hand, notice that these types tend toward a kind of
real reconciliation. Harmans reconciliation is in the explication of how it is that objects may
be withdrawn and what that means for reality. Trans-humanist discourse appears as a sort of
inaccessible yet present possibility of the future, since what is of the future is already
displaced by the atemporality of what allows for the transition from human creator of
technology to human technology defying what it is or was to be human, yet while retaining
the possibility of a real humanity. What is post-human occurs through the same type of
displacement by which post-modern departed from what is modern in the conventional sense,
and I might add, is most probably subject to the same issues as its forerunner given a
calibration for a new set of defining terms (we will see). Nevertheless, all of these proposals
have to do as they are intimately involved with reality.
The present essay, while complimentary and implicit, moves in the opposite direction
of these discourses. If what constitutes Object, Trans, and Post (real) of these discussions
can be viewed as a central theme from which each discussion moves along its own
meaningful path elliptically to enrich or otherwise fulfill a real problematic, then this essay
forms a polemic with them. However, because all of our discourses appear to displace the
central phenomenal subject to thereby be concerned with the object, and (supposedly) not an
argumentative object (which is a relapse back into the phenomenal subject), the ellipse this
essay presents concerns the figure made by the others interests with real estimations, and
thus forms no ellipse, no return, or perhaps a return of a highly eccentric orbit, the centrist
subject being the orbital path itself. This essay thus can be said to concern a polemic through
a procedure that divides the divided house to be able to speak of the minimal and fully
human being, since what is real can be said to be already divided unto itself. The minimal
human being is that which is the withdrawn object, the transition as well as the post of
the real situation; correspondent with inclusive real interests, or the interest that is based
within the inclusivity of reality and its concept, this essay concerns what is not real.
vi For this essay, the minimal human is taken as a developed position. In as much as
Jesus is the Son of Man and the Son of God, absolution must come from the removal of this
distinction, but this aside from mere conceptual evaluations. Indeed, this is the problem of the
ages: The categorical mistake. Indeed, in John 14:16, Jesus says I am the Way.
vii This is some of the issue that Kierkegaard takes up in his book Philosophical
Crumbs, specifically, the section about The Situation of the Contemporary Disciple. As
we will see shortly, it is the issue concerning this whole essay as an underlying link, so to
speak, where the more overt and stated topics can be seen as kinds of patsies, of sorts, for
the true issue, which concerns the Contemporary, that may begin with Jesus, move through
Luke, through Kierkegaard, even to the event of the current essay, and indeed to that uncrowded reader for whom it is written. To this end Kierkegaard becomes most exemplary; for
we must ask why it would be necessary for him to assume pseudonymous authorship. Why
did Kierkegaard approach his topics through the various guises?
At first glance is will be obvious that he was attempting to tell us something, but we
need not get into another full length volume to talk about all those meanings; I am sure it has
been well written about and all the interesting creative meanings investigated. Nonetheless,
the fact that indeed he did use fictitious names, even though everyone reading him
supposedly knew it was indeed Soren, says something eveb more objvious: He was
uncomfortable about presenting the topics and discussions in the manner he felt necessary.
Yet when we contrast this wit the fortitude of his statements, of his authorial style, say, we
have to then say something more. The question that slips by everyones conception while

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they apply Kierkegaards words to a general and common humanity, the generality that then
might be seen as that very element that brought about his duplicity and apparent (ironic)
insecurity, is more directly and properly stated in the context of Luke (see below): How is it
possible that someone who did not live at the time of Jesus knew perfectly what Jesus was not
only saying and meant, but what he was talking about, which is to say, even before he
encountered the Jesus-story-text? And this would be to speak for Kierkegaard most boldly:
How could I know?
viii

Luke 1:1-3

ix We should take notice that with the proposal of this essay, the usual notion of faith is
overturned. The notion of faith is turned on its head. We find this necessity in the signal that
is modern philosophical Object orientation, but aside and complementary to its Object
Ontology; in as much as it might be an ontology there do we have the mark of a theoretical
proposal indicating a real manifestation, as though something new has occurred, as if reality
itself has somehow changed. Correlationalism, an idea coined by Quentin Meillassoux,
shows that such an orientation must assert itself, thereby leaving the truth of the matter as a
residual piece that nevertheless has withdrawn such that the rhetoric says it needs not be
addressed anymore (nevermind for now the irony of Harmans Object Oriented Ontology;
perhaps it is merely being addressed differently); since, here we are. Philosophical rhetoric
being an incident that we comment upon, the summation is that if such an ontology is in fact
Real, or even just has an effect upon what reality is or may be in itself, then reality is, in
itself, in fact, a theological manifestation, or perhaps to put it more kindly, a mythological
effect, or even more kind, a functional ideology; which is to say finally: Reality occurs
through faith.
What this means in the context of the topic of this essay is that where there has been an
overturning, there has been a feature that has not turned. If the manner by which we speak of
reality does indeed change and or otherwise establishes reality, then this essay speaks of that
by which such establishment is challenged; it speaks of an historical motion that defies the
human agent user of discourse, the progressive directional enforcement of thought to
discourse to reality. In this meaningful arena we can thus say that faith is usually understood
as another type of agency, at that, of believing. I agree with Bruno Latour that the idea of
belief is vacant, but perhaps go beyond him to notice that awareness of this idea is not
sufficient to change any sort of believing (ironically); still we believe. Hence, we say that
where belief is operative, now we have reality, but not the reality by which this essay finds its
true meaning. Hence, it is non sequitur to apply our sense of belief, or not-belief as the case
may be, to the sense put forth of this essay of the gospels. We cannot, in good faith, say that I
believe the sense I have of the gospels is true; if the gospels are true, that is, if the meaning
they convey is the truth then it has nothing to do with what I might believe, but yet if I say I
believe it, then there is evidence that the meaning I have might not be true and I must have
faith for it to be true. If the sense I have of the gospels might not be true, I then proceed upon
an insecurity that moves in the mentioned directional manner of proof through argument.
In this way we might apply the original sense of post-modern, as well as modern in the
sense that Latour uses it. It is not like somehow in the past there were humans that occurred
in reality any differently than the way we do now. It is more proper to say that the terms of
reality have changed. But to belay argument, we instead leave reality to those most concerned
with what it mayor may not be.
So in the gospels, when the authors say faith and belief, they are surly upholding the
meaning that stays consistent through Soren Kierkegaard, as well as our usual veins. The
difference, though, to bring in Kierkegaard, is that his intervention critically opens the door
for this overturning of which I speak. By this we need also revise our idea of the length of the

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past, for even upon his notice, there still we needed Husserl and Heidegger, if not all the rest
of the more contemporary philosophers and theologians, until now; it took 150+ years to take
the step indicated by Kierkegaard.
In contrast to this kind of faith that tends to become belief, the significance of this
overturning is that reality is a product of faith. Yet, in the moment of the gospels reality was
just reality, and this means that humanity was understood to exist upon a universal and
omnipresent plane, such that what might be experienced or come upon by one human being
occurs in the continuum of a humanity, and this is to say that what can and cannot be
communicated, as well as what can and cannot be experienced, exists in the same potential
across all human beings. Hence, the experience that this essay speaks of, more, the situation
that is come upon by Jesus and the Apostles (at least), should be able to be be communicated
as well as understood and known it its absolute manifestation of truth. Unfortunately, because
this is not the case, because, for example, the default put forth by Alain Badiou if not
Francios Laruelle and others (Latour might also be guilty of this), where truth is relinquished
for the sake of reality, the one for the multiple, is still a bad compromise (rooted in bad faith),
we thus speak of the truth to those who are of an experience that defies the common human
potential, a truth that has nothing to do with whether one believes or not. Truth is evident,
and, faith makes true. This is the irony of our time.
x
We will take up how the story traverses what we will call the scenario in
Absolution, Part 2: The Second Moment of Decisive Significance.
xi The significance of this story feedsback upon itself; as to my thesis, though the story
is presumably about Jesus Christ, the subject, its significance is found against the true and
pure antagonist: Not the Jews, but Pontius Pilate, the True Object. As we will see; the story is
about the existential situation of the subject-object, and Christ is thus a patsy, an occasion to
speak about consciousness and the nature of reality.
xii

The genre always vacillates with experience even as the experience is held onto for
the rejection of the Object genre; it can be viewed as the tie between the individual and the
group. The silence, on the other hand, having successfully parted from the Object, thus falls
either into a marginalization, which is the reassertion of the Object and a rejection of ones
success (if ever one was of a minimal humanity), or a resignation, where the minimalist resigns reality; which is to say, Jesus, as Moses, was resigned to the world. The former
explains the predominance of individuals who may be said to have been tested and failed, but
who then thus establish themselves, as volition, within the margin. They consciously, yet in
denial, manifest the boundary which holds the experience at bay to be objectified in
knowledge as spirituality or faith (this may be said of the tragic hero), and the latter
explains the one of silence who sees the basic sign in the reiteration of generic individuals.
xiii

Concerning Gayatri Chakravorti Spivaks noted essay Can the Subaltern Speak?.
The political silence must be addressed first, however it ends, concordant with the
philosophical motion of recession (philosophy is always too concerned with the past); only
then can that which is denied for the sake of reality be voiced. Reality must be universally
solute; which is to say, no longer caught in the ideal of different humanities; humanity must
attain the veracity of a True Object, so that essence can again extricate from it. In effect,
colonialism must have worked for the historicity of the matter to be able to be discussed.
Everyone concerned must be included in what it is to be human, even if in subsequence we
find that indeed there is no common humanity. This is the fact that underlies history.

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xiv One might want to call this anachronism therefore a mythologically extrinsic notion,
but we should be careful of this type of designation. To say that that the notion of God has
becomes extrinsic would be to say that the Object to which the term God refers, the
supernatural agent, so to speak, is no longer effective, and many might take this enforcing a
kind of atheism. On the contrary. We posit that a mythos is the entirety of functioning
meaning, and that discourse can be evidence of the mythos, with a caveat; if a term is used,
the meaning associated with the term is not excluded from the mythology. Here, it is not
proper to use a definitional exclusion; argumentative reference is not sufficient to define a
mythos. Hence, to say that God is ananachonistic idea or term, is to point specifically to a
particular manner of using terms, a particular manner of coming upon the world, what we say
indicates a route, but also indicates ones orientation upon objects. There is no bridge
between these routes, nor is there a reduction that can reconcile their stations. God has
become a mythologically extrinsic idea within the context that this essay attempts to pose.
xv The minimal human is constant through history, objects determine his path, and the
fully human changes and progresses with the Object of its pursuit. There is a calculus of
objects yet to be explored.
xvi

This blind spot might be said to be similar to what Slavoj Zizek might call the
parallax gap. Yet see; despite what theoretical elucidation of the situation might grant, the
manner by which experience occurs defies the theory: The meaning of the theory, or the
object that the theory is supposing to account for, is offensive to experience. But not just
common experience. Indeed, the gap itself is due to a theoretical situation; it is not that the
theory is somehow true, but more that it is real.
xvii My use of the term existence does not have the same connotations as the existence
that Martin Heidegger finds. Existence here is a foundational term; it is that which is. So,
while I concede to and agree with much of what Heidegger puts forth regarding Dasein
(English is usually translated as being-there), and grant that Heidegger even argues against
this: I simply grant that Being is existing in so much as when something is then it exists,
and when something exists, it does so there within the is, since, in as much as Heidegger
may be correct, what is there is just as apparent as what is, and together they thus bethere as this apparent meaning that amounts to the minimal human experience discussed in
this essay.
Likewise, while I may say experience, and still consistent with Dasein, there is only
an experience in existence in as much as we are speaking of meaning only, albeit, of the
appropriation of discourse, as said, of route and orientation.
The discussion about reduction of meaning to a one common human standard, which is
to say, the reason why Heidegger might be talking about Daseins (plural; a nod to Graham
Harmans objects), as though every individual Being is a Dasein, has already been
addressed by the two routes: It is a categorical error that is addressed by the meaning of this
essay. The purpose of having one route is to reconcile the True Object of faith to experience
of the one route of meaning; this can indicate the redundancy of conventional discourse, but it
also defines that which arises as contradiction in effort. To posit something that is beyond is a
type reconciliation by defeat; hence, often enough, spiritual and religious postures and
proclamations. It is the effort of reconciling ones meaning to indeed a one meaning that has
been defeated; always insisting upon one side or the other, discourse itself is already
bifurcated as material, already established in an object of faith that must be True, because, as
we say, faith makes true. This is why in the effort for truth (as opposed to the True Object)
doubt is instrumental but essential. We have here the makings of a type of historical calculus,

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an opening for an analysis of history by its terms, rather than by the True events that must
have occurred in this or that manner.
xviii Though the term existential is often associated with the 20th century philosophical
object coined by Jean-Paul Sartre called Existentialism, unless specifically sited, we will
stick with the usual meaning of or relating to existence.
xix It is wise men that inform us, as if from nowhere, of the situation, as well mark the
situation as significant.
xx The virgin mother, Mary, and the surrogate and or step father, Joseph, convey a
different reality by their parenthood.
xxi This is no slight upon families of homosexual or alternate lifestyle parents, merely
a usual, typical or common sense ideal based upon the historical-traditional egg-sperm
biological mandate. There is always a polemical relationship involved in existing in a world.
xxii This is the basis for the conventional, objectival psychotherapy. The patient is
supposed to be in a process with the therapist whereby the former is guided to identify and
express, to speak or talk about, repressed elements of their psyche (the object of neurosis) and
thereby solve or other wise heal their problem. But, as more thoroughly explicated by
Jacques Lacan, this method merely begs the question of a stable basis of health, and the
process thus sees that basis as merely an intermediary stage in the process of attaining health
since such a basis itself is merely another representation of repression, which is to say,
merely another story based in a factual beginning. It is no mere coincidence that that
purpose of psychotherapy advocated by Lacan is the dissolving of the therapist/patient
dichotomy, but not as a sort of co-dependant projection or absorption; indeed, the desired
result is a state of being where discourse is appropriated in the manner that is put forth by this
essay of the minimal human. Lacan proposes to be able to arouse or incite a moment of
decisive significance of the first type, but the categorical error is most often that the
contradiction that must dissolve remains such that in bringing it about, the second type is
usually enacted.
xxiii

Mathew 3:1-10; Luke 3:1-9; John 1:15

xxiv

Luke 3:8

xxv

See also John chapter 15

xxvi

John 3:3-21

xxvii As Issac was saved from Abraham, and from God by God due to Abrahams faith,
one can no longer rely upon a proxy. Indeed; it is the equivocation of Abraham and Jesus as
objects, albeit holy and distinguished blessed, chosen subjects (-objects), that Jesus
rebukes, and likewise Abraham rebuked even then, as shown by the willingness to bring
Issac, whom he loved (as God so loved the world) to the truth, to God, by any means. The
God of the Law that Issac has been raised to believe in, as well the reason why Moses goes to
sacrifice him: To exemplify Moses in one view, and to show Issac in another. The
mythological transference that occurs in the fully human projection of its own incompletion

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is not to be abided.
xxviii

Matthew 3:17

xxix Recall the difference between that which informs a position, and the consideration
of that information. The Gospels can be understood as a story about the interrelation of these
facets of experience. Presently, that which informs the position has been relinquished, such
that consideration of the position takes place as a fasting in the wilderness.
xxx Matthew 4:17. Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand; Mark 1:15. The
time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.
xxxi

See John 14:10. It becomes exceedingly obvious just how the fully human
interpretation has commandeered discourse to a one proper meaning when we compare the
King James Version interpretation to that of subsequent interpretations. Keep in mind that we
are not talking about terms per say, but rather about meaning, but indeed, the terms of
meaning. When this is taken into account, we might then see that the ancients had a
significantly better grasp on what was occurring with this whole Jesus thing, and whereas
groups tend to have a general feeling if not a direct understanding of what occurs under their
view, what is modern might better indicate a mark of when such feeling, such meaning,
has moved out beyond the grasp of the common sort.
I admit I do not read ancient Greek, nor any of the ancient languages wherein the books
of the Bible were written; but I submit that it would not matter. If I need not hold an example
of my own personal experience with original texts, then I surely can point to others, such as
Heidegger, that show for me that indeed what I put forth does not veer from our historical
move. If Indeed the King James Version was the first English translation, then we should no
longer look to some proper linguistic term-meaning with reference to some the times and
then come to our current modern better translation. This is indeed what people have done,
and we show thereby that we are dealing with two routes, the second of which that we wish
to elucidate by this essay. We should see that the writers of the King James version most
probably, intuitively if not cognitively, understood something that people of our day do not
commonly wish to understand, nor are capable of understanding and in fact are often so
blinded by faith that they will vehemently and sometimes violently act out their defiance to
that understanding; the developing myopia is evidenced in the subsequent translations.
One need only go on the internet to find a comparison of translations, but we need only
two to make our point here. [passages taken from biblehub.com]
King James Version: Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words
that I speak unto you I speak not of myself; but the father that dwellest in me, he doeth the works.

The point for this text note is that the terms of discourse are the issue, but more that it is
about ones orientation upon the terms, and the object conferred by the terms. This passage
was translated in mind of staying as true as possible to the original text available, but in as
much as the meaning that occupies the space between the original and translated text cannot
be mitigated, set aside or disregarded, whatever that may be. Clearly Jesus is saying that the
words that he is speaking has nothing to do with himself, which can be to say, the real
Object-subject that is Jesus before them, but that the father that dwells in Jesus the Objectsubject does the works. The transitivity of words and works cannot be missed, that is,
unless you are already reading it from a distanced privileged place.
By contrast, and historical displacement, we have the
International Standard Version: You believe, dont you, that I am in the Father and the Father is

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in me? The words that I say to you I dont speak on my own. It is the Father who dwells in me and who
carries out his work.

Notice how the ISV has made more clear a distinction such that a kind of distance is
enforced in the reading. Clearly here Jesus is speaking about a True Object (-subject) called
the Father. This textual evolution can be seen to more thoroughly emphasize the inability to
reconcile in meaning the message of the Gospels; thus the meaning that find offense creates a
meaningful way to reconcile it. The Subject becomes more subjectivized and the Object more
objectivized. As the offense continues, the fully human gets more angry and defensive and
God becomes more and less True and False; which is to say, the religious comes to mean
something actually manifest and or indicating as a real thing, as well as atheism comes about
and is seen to be speaking of some actual True thing or aspect of reality.
xxxii This rebuttal is where the early 21st century Speculative Realist and Object
Oriented Ontology ideas take up and begin to repeat the historical discussion. This oddity
will be taken up in my next essay on the Second Moment of Decisive Significance.
xxxiii

The term-object identity is the assumed situation of the fully human. It figures an
attitude upon all that may be, an orientation upon objects where terms have a sort of essential
linkage or are able to represent or otherwise convey some aspect or elementary part of an
object in question. The term-object-identity assumes that there is indeed a one ubiquitous
truth that somehow and or somewhere permeates all of the universe and existence, and that
this one truth may be conveyed through terms of discourse, in potential. It is the vehicle by
which our current idea of progress has veracity.
The Kantian ubiquity of knowledge is not discounted here; rather it becomes a moot
point. The assumption of Kant as well as upon Kant is that he indeed was conveying or
attempting to convey a distinct and particular meaning, which we must count as the truth of
his proposals. Kant is therefore not only attempting to convey a true object, or the truth of an
object, but likewise is figuring upon the static and definite ideal of terms to be able to convey
this truth.
If we must follow the usual and conventional interpretation of Kant, then we can now
safely set aside his proposals as a kind of Lacanian mistake. We thus no longer are in the
attempt to make an argument about some essential nature of things; on the contrary, we have
moved beyond such pubescent ponderings to now describe what is and has been occurring in
the traditional philosophical method.
Further, the argument that would deny that there is any such term invested link with
truth due to the apparent discussion over what any particular term actually means, is missing
the issue for the sake of making an ontological argument and is missing the significance of
description over argument. Given now that philosophy likes to reside upon an arena that has
no fundamental substance, no essential truth by which to anchor itself, the predominance of
argument in philosophy should be called what it is, which is critical method, and oddly
enough, because it gets no further than itself, which is to say, the argument that itself has
deemed as essentially true, we should place such rebuttal at the level of freshman comment,
and get on to address what is significant of philosophy, so to be able to use the term,
ironically, to mean something specific.
We first need to see that we are in an effort of description of function, purpose, and
method. At dinner, we do not argue over what I shall pass to my friend who asks for the salt.
Likewise, we must begin with that there is agreement over what we are talking about, and
move beyond the self-centered hallucinations of discursive glamour and science fiction

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fantasy. If we can get to a point where we are writing fantasy that we wish to be considered
as serious input, then let us not disguise it in phantasms of philosophical mushy deception
and exhibitions of academic discursive gymnastics.
xxxiv

Our particular philosophical paradigm.

xxxv Quentin Meillassoux, in his book After Finitude poses the idea of
correlationalism on this same idea. The problem then is how to get beyond it. But this
problem is often mis-appropriated. Indeed, Meillassoux himself attempts to locate some sort
of mathematical primacy, but so far as Ive seen, he is not faring well for this. The problem,
though, is indeed what this essay addresses, as he puts it, magical thinking, as I put it the
transcendental clause. Perhaps we are speaking of slightly different aspects. It should be so
then in that if the question is how to get beyond correlationalism, then my answer is that we
dont ever get there, that there is no getting there.
Religion and rationality (read: philosophy) are merely two sides of the same real coin:
The only way we might get there is through the never-ending discursive process of poses and
postures, argument and rebuttal, the truth of any time being the real manifestation of
discourse within a proper and posed one real and true manner of meaning. This is redundancy
itself; that sentence describing and exemplifying the redundant motion.
It might then be more proper to say that the upheld one reality floats tentatively upon
a sea of what we might otherwise call a chaos of unknownness. Indeed, there are many
modern authors who have taken their ideas from this. But what some might not admit, the
situation where in the question of how to get beyond correlationalism arises, is no smaller
than the ideas that would write (science-)fictions about the possibilities of some trans- postor non-human existence; which is to say, they get no further than the correlational reality.
Hence the intrusion into reality by this chaotic field, could just as well be called a miracle as
it could be a monster. Whatever it might be, though, Slavoj Zizeks rendering is cool:
Something went terribly wrong.
There is no getting beyond correlationalism. We only are already there. Despite what
academic capital correlationalism might want to wield, and despite what author might have
coined the term for some actually meant, the term is best seen to reside as a kind of netherword, since it just came up at a time when many people already were standing around it. The
mistake of the Speculative Realist thing is that it took place under the guise of a certain sect
of the academy, and so will always now be in the throes of argument and rebuttal that is
always and perhaps did already miss what it should have meant if it doesnt already. It should
not be seen as a temporal-theoretical mark of some actual state of I dont know what;
thats what all the talk is about.
The question of the honesty that may or may not reside around this nonsense is also
taken up in my next book.
xxxvi Not necessarily correlational. It is certainly possible that the absolute unknown
vastness, incomprehensibility and general unknown-ness of the universe allows for a free
will that completely negates as it transcends our ability to know. In this instance of last case,
we then have to come to terms with whether or not such unknown-ness is allowed or able to
enter into our field of knowing, as well as how that might occur. It is not enough to merely
transpose or re-place the subject into is capacity for an imagination that nevertheless can
follow logical suppositions. It is this type of positioning that merely sets aside the more
significant question of how such creativity can be true. Again; my next book will address this
blatant commercialist philosophy.
xxxvii

Remember, we are not in an effort to reduce meaning to a one proper meaning.

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There are two routes.


xxxviii We have a description: The functioning of absolute objects tells of objects
entering and exiting the human field of view; this opposed to the True Object which is an
object of faith, a type of Platonic form. Nevertheless, it is a True Object that is able to move
in and out of view of human beings.
xxxix
See also note cxi. As we will discuss the unfolding and coincidence (the
simultaneity and coordination) of existence, the meaning of the temporally paired events is
not missed by the minimal human being and is in fact relied upon as it is known and as the
ministry proceeds. This is such that case that we can generally expect to understand that
significance is in play when a story includes two different tellings of the same occasion that
take the same form or structure such that they are often placed as two separate real events; for
example, the Creation stories of Genesis, this reiteration of the Passover, and as we will see
next, the further repetition involved of the vacillations.
Often enough, a story is taken to have an identity to actual (mundane, worldly, physical,
historical) events; this too is a repetition of the term-object-identity. But keep in mind that we
are not dealing here with real political-ideological contingencies of causal setting. The
distinction in this instance is the proposal of two routes; for, there is a necessary route that
must deal with things as contingent entities, as subject of choice, real things of essential,
individual and segregate temporally enveloped objects; yet as well there is the negated route
that is (unfortunately for hard-headed the common folk) the substantiation of this real
situation.
What we have in these situations (of the story) is what might be called initial and
subsequent ordinations. The primary issue with all (current?) philosophical addressing is
what ordination is presented; that is, the first question that must be asked if we are to discern
what is exactly philosophical from methodological is whether the proposal is of subsequence;
we must begin to have this conversation to find out what is indeed actually occurring. This of
course coordinates with the first and second moments of decisive significance. The current
(eternal) problem with philosophy is that no distinction of these ordinations are made in
coming upon a proposal; always, the offense inherent in the reduction to the common One
world, removes the ordinal distinction such that all proposals are understood as of
subsequence. In effect, to those so keen, we are thus putting forth one possible manner to
distinguish synthetical a priori indications, as to when the story is addressing and signaling
minimal human occasions.
Of course there are other types of indications, but we do not even know what they might
be. This is again due to the assumption of the ubiquity of subsequence, and this is, of course,
the automatic address that places the Subject always as a subject of political ideology. Many
noted current authors take this as an essential essence, take any and every discussion that may
be had as born of ideology and politics, indeed as a political statement. As we might see
now, this is not the case, but is only the case of the 20th century bookend of an enlightened
discourse that places all human beings, indeed all things and beings, within the scope of
potential that involves transcendence. Sensibly enough, this is why we have the contradiction
inherent of capitalist democracy: We are not all essentially equal, but only equal under the
Law. While enlightenment views itself as a trail burner of progress in every field, we might
be seeing now that as this idea is taken as obvious to nearly everyone who lives within the
capitalist reach (which is everyone), the application of the enlightenment maxim of action,
even by those who should otherwise appear to know better, is yielding a kind of intellectual
recession, a glut of enlightened rationale where you turn this corner and see this reason as

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reasonable, and turn that corner and find a just as reasonable reason completely contrary to
the one you just agreed with; the only out then is to assert your own enlightened reason to
discern what constitutes the best way forward. Sometimes it is discussion and negotiation, but
just as likely it is violence and killing. Both are a reaction, a motion of subsequence.
Nonetheless, it is not that this manner may be incorrect or that somehow humanity will
change in this respect; it is more that we are using the term enlightenment to fill in and or
account for a significant gap in understanding, and that despite the term, its real failure is in
its presumption of ubiquitous knowledge and the reluctance defiance, rather, in the face of
difference to venture new paths. Enlightenment, as an historical project has failed; which is
to say, where the term may indeed identify some aspect of being human in the universe, it is
in so much as this becomes a generic term for an essential aspect of a True universe does it
eventually dissipate and fail.
Where we are merely using the term enlightenment, and not relying upon it as some
sort of manifest destined universal saving grace, we have the indications that synthetical a
priori knowledge is being presented, but where very few have the resource to be able to
access it; oddly enough, in a quite Hegelian sense, it is the discourse of enlightenment that
allows the situation we are eludicating, of not only allowing for difference, but in fact
prescribing that difference as a mandate to use in whatever way its meaning seems fit, so long
as the essence of the generic meaning stays intact, to advocate access while holding within its
awareness the understanding that access is very limited.. In fact, the denial of the lack of
access is the instrumentation of inequality that then invests in the offense by most to take
recourse in the route of meaning to mean every person and her thinking,, which in Christian
terms is sin. The political attempts to reconcile such sin can be found in the variously
acknowledged political systems that we know of in our day, which function to project
ideology into the future (teleology) by defining Being (ontology), and vice versa, redundanly;
Fascism attempts to retain the inequality precipitated from the enlightened awareness to there
by enact a type of historical-universal propriety (the apparent propriety involved in becoming
enlightened); Western democratic liberalism, which assumes to be able to allow for a shifting
of present strata thereby to hear all the voices of enlightenment; Communism, which assumes
to be able level the field to allow for common enlightenment through the necessitation of
the enlightened agent having to curb its enlightened endowment. In this scheme, we are let
to seeing a process whereby the enlightened agent is brought down from its presumptuous
loft.
This is the reason behind the post-postmodern solutions. These solutions are still
involved with the project of enlightenment and so find themselves in a particularly sticky
situation because in the real historical play, they are 1) not allowed to assert their privilege,
2)have found that what they are attempting to communicate is not translating, 3) are never
thus having a level playing field. But they are indeed still stuck in the quite insistent situation
of their being enlightened, or such an agent thereof (however one would put that now). They
thus have found various ways to disguise themselves. A type of Speculative resurgence
attempts to find a manner of revealing their enlightened view in a softer, gentler way, by
turning attention to Reality, in the hopes that their agency will be now view as a real
occurrence as opposed to a sort of ideal occurrence. Others have turned to objects,
because enlightenment has usually been associated with a subject.
Yet all modern philosophical authors have the task of finding a legitimate teleoontological justification for their ability to have such views. Bruno Latour has suggested the
idea of a pass; this appears necessary since one is wanting to overlook that such real
objective proposals are still rooted in the modern enlightened situation that they appear to
want to critique. For example, the idea that novelty arises as chaos erupts into the stream of
the real. If we can be honest; this is just a different way of situating what past authors might
argue is the inspiration of God, and this then is also really nothing larger than the void

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interacting with the multiple. Then we have a more overt disclaimer that accompanies the
modern transference of responsibility: Alain Badious general notion that the operator of truth
must relinquish such truth for the sake of reality. Not only is Badiou showing his access, but
he is denying it through the necessity to answer to arguments that are stemming from a
position of no access, and thereby unwittingly is granting credence to the ubiquity of
subsequent ordination. They are still arguing over the facts, what are the facts, what
constitutes facts, and what the facts then are, what details may be describes of the facts
(Wittgenstein was not apologizing for modernity in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, but
indeed was trying to weaken its hold; the seriousness his proposals then merely brought about
a necessary (historical) furthering unto absurdity with the post-modern). Can we just say
plainly to the very enlightened intelligentsia: Lets get over our incessant self-righteous
capitalization of identities and bring academics back to the matter at hand: The facts are now
already there! We might just need to admit that there are existential situations that not
everyone has access to, be done with it, and get on to the description of the facts themselves.
But we should imagine that this will not happen for some time, if it ever does. A carpenter or
engineer may describe to a layman the general features of why a structure is constructed the
way it is, but she does not refer to the layman for the reason why it should be built in any
particular manner, that is, beyond how it may need to appear, which is to say, beyond
aesthetics. But ironically, this is why we say philosophy is more an art: The carpenter may
indeed have to answer to how the person wishes her house to be built, but the artist answers
only to the necessity of structural requirements. Again; we have barely even begun to look at
what these limits might be.
Once we may understand what has been signaled, then we find that the Gospel story
itself, linked as it is with the Creation story of Genesis, is an initial occasion, and the reader is
thereby involved in an order of subsequence, such that the story that is then told in
subsequence merely reiterates the initial occasion. The fully human will always have it that
this is improper and nonsensical, but we do not deny here that it is absurd. Likewise, though,
when the second moment of decisive significance is come upon by the same judge, he thus
sees the moment as indeed caused by some initiating factor, aspect or element. Nevertheless,
we have already seen how John the Baptist as well as Jesus treats this fully human
realization in Luke chapter 3 and John chapter 3.
xl John the Baptist announces Christ is coming; Judas announces that Jesus is going.
So it might seem that he one that is left, the one that Jesus seeks now, is the one who will
announce that Jesus Christ is always here
xli John 13:31-32
xlii

John 13:38. Also in Matthew 26:34 and Luke 22:34;

xliii

Jesus realizes this situation since faith is required only of the fully human

xliv

John 14

xlv Believe in me. We might take this to mean not to segregate the object of belief from
the act that is believing in its truth. To believe in me, then, is to have the belief of oneself
where there can be no object beyond or outside the inherence of the belief itself, which would
then deny that there is an object segregate from the act. Believe in me can be understood as
the negation of the conventional idea of belief.

Kair
xlvi

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John 14:6

xlvii

In particular, this connotation comes from Wikipedia, burning bush. The Hebrew
word used in the narrative, that is translated into English as bush, is seneh, which refers in
particular to brambles. Wikipedia sites Cheyne and Black 1899, Encyclopedia Biblica, the
Jewish Encyclopedia, and Peakes Commentary on the Bible. Many internet references
confirm this meaning of thorn bush, thorn, even to associate with a particular tree called
the acacia. Other similes have to do with mountains or rocks, but even more interesting is
that seneh also refers to a mountain range near Jerusalem, as well as deriving from the Arabic
to lift up, or high. Though our discussion centers around its meaning as bramble, none of
these other meanings contradict the discussion that follows in this essay, and in fact the
discussion could be taken along the varied vectors of meaning; if tree, I am just as sure the
Kabbalistic inference would not be missed as I am that the meanings of high, and rocky
mountains would not be missed for their possibly less privileged esoteric connotations, by
many. The point here could follow from the situation of the minimal human having no
responsibility to the True Object.
xlviii I was raised American heartland Lutheran Protestant; a nod to some embarrassment
of my picture of Charlton Hestons rendition in the movie The Ten Commandments.
xlix

Exodus 3:6.

l Here we have a reasonable implication of why we can say that Truth concerns the
orientation upon objects, and that the terms are thus the issue at hand. This approach can
account for the age old distinction between what we have called spiritual and mundane,
but also referenced to the subject and object, as well as what has been called speculative
and practical, among a plethora of probably other dyadic systems. Where terms (discourse)
are viewed to be tools of consciousness, already we have a division that informs all
subsequent investigations. This is why all investigations taken to their end result in
contradiction; investigations that taken to their end do not yield contradiction are those that
have a buffer, or patsy, term that acts as an interlocutor, intermediary, or for a modern
term, firewall, against contradiction, that thus allows for their being True. For
conventional reality, these firewalls are the subject and the object; they function to inform
meaning as to its purpose, as to its parameters (we might now investigate just how meaning
gains these parameters), because it is a contradiction to indict thought, since it is thought that
is doing the considering. We have yet to discover what firewalls there might be in
considerations that are not conventional.
So just as we have a real object, we also have a real subject. The real object cannot be
breached, or, it can only be breached along certain vectors of acknowledgment, because only
certain meaningful paths can apprehend anything, can get a hold of, something that can then
be knowledge that we can then use in various ways. Yet even along these paths, science has
moved so far into the object, breaching various levels of objectivity, that what they have
found is a kind of contradictory objectivity that they have called quantum physics. But
even this has not stopped them from going further; still they find out about things through
the various paths.
Likewise, the real subject is breached and inevitably finds contradiction, not the least
nor the earliest of which we have called correlationalism, but Phenomenonology is no less
an investigation that leads to contradiction; and again, Dasein; and again, Hegels historical
consciousness, and again Kants imperatives and such. All of these junctures find a
contradiction that is found a way out of through, again, vectors of meaning that correspond
with how the contradiction is proposed upon. But not only in the Western Philosophy, just as

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well Eastern Philosophy has a whole compendium of investigations that lead to


contradictions that are proposed upon for a way out. Philosophy is likewise always finding a
way out of the contradiction. The most noted of this is the notion that at the center of the
field of the world there is merely an awareness, or some source, or any other type or kind
of some spirit or energy, a kind of pre-consciousness that is before or at root of everything
else that can be experienced. Further then, religion also is a positive assertion of the negative
character of subjective investigations that yield contradiction; the Ten Commandments are
rules that are derived from encounters with the contradiction in meaning, but at times when
the way is was understood as divine providence such that prohibitive rules are put forth, rules
that tell people how to look, how to see, what to see, what it means, but as well, implicitly if
not explicitly, as where they should not look.
Hence, if we can see that there are many types of meanings that stem from the same
situation, then we might come to a link that can, not perhaps reconcile, but maybe re-settle
science and philosophy. We merely describe the situation. The problem is always that a
contradiction is located and a way out is proposed. At each of these junctures, the moment is
seen to arrive as purpose, as a moment that could not have arrived in any other way. In
other words, what ever the investigation, it is understood to have arrived necessarily, that is,
that the understanding did not arrive any other way. The understanding is that for whatever
could have happened, the fact that it did not happen is ignored for the sake of the revealing
moment; the fact that it did not happen is incorporated into the meaning of the moment, the
event. In this way, meaning itself is viewed as a divinely inspired event because it did not
mean anything else; meaning is understood axiomatically to have arrived via the inevitably
proper use of the tool of discourse, as this tool is conveying the actual truth of the thing to
which it has been applied. This is what we call the transcendental clause. It is a clause of
meaning that remains eternally transcendent to the operation at hand for the purpose of
establishing the purpose of the moment. At each moment, each revelation, each moment of
culminated meaning, the subject views itself or otherwise has an understanding of itself as a
significant contributor to the progress of reality, whatever that is or means, good or bad,
whether it is cognitively put in a religious, discovery, scientific, social,
entrepreneurial, self-reflective or any other arena; every human being behaves as if it is a
part of the progress of humanity. The point here is that the human being always acts within
an arena of free agency that we call reality, upon, what we have called, the True Object; we
behave as if the terms of our knowing relate to us objects in-themselves.
This relation thus may denote orientation, and hence, the minimal and fully human.
Where God commands as from a hierarchical position, there is also enforcement of a
boundary, of rules, of prohibitions. Such are terms that hold a potential of themselves as tools
to convey true things to the user of discourse, the knower, thus equivalent in function to
True Objects.
On the other hand; the thought, using discourse as a tool, when we focus on the tool
operating as a tool, obscures itself, removes itself from the picture, such that some kind of
truth is conveyed, whether it is a false truth, a falsity that in its falsity is true, or a true
true, a truth that is indeed true. The removal, the withdrawing of the tool from view further
allows for its user to have an essential quality about itself; it can mean itself to itself that it is
a true thing, and is why we call the subject in this situation a subject-object. This meaning
of the operation functioning as such is that there is an essential operator, a subject, that is
opposed to another essential aspect that we call an object. The mediation, the tool, is
contradiction itself. Once this is viewed an element that belongs to the real equation, instead
of projected up, out or beyond, then we have to begin to think about the world in a different
manner. The meaning of the world takes on a different dimension; we are moved to a

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different place; we have thus a different meaning of ourselves.


More on this topic in a later essay.
li In all conventional fully human respects for knowledge, the fact of the matter is what
gains for us an ability to come to an orientation as to a truth of the matter, of the occasion of
the fact. The problem at the heart of the question of God or no God, is located exactly here:
In as much as I have to assert that (a) God exists, I have effectively negated its possibility for
the realm it is supposed to inhabit, which is other-wordly or heavenly or similar such
places; I have exhibited the compromised security of my position, my being in reality. For, I
have proposed this possibility of God from the position that God has chosen me to convey
that He/ She exists, and thus I enter into an arena of debate, whether diplomatically or
violently, a negotiation, of what is true. This is exactly conventional, of the fully human,
where no such absolute truth exists except in the negotiation itself, justified by which ever
side wins the debate; we just hope, have faith, that my assertion of God comes out in the
wash. Thus, no absolutely true God exists, God does not exist, and I am being merely
assertive of such truth in denial of my flawed position. Yet, in as much as conventional
knowledge cannot have arisen from itself, that is, spontaneously by the free will of humanity
(nudge, nudge, wink, wink to the contradiction inherent of evolutionary progress gained
through free will. Through free will is proposed that the theory of evolution is solute in the
cosmogony by which human beings arrived on the scene, and this arrival thus argues that free
will is itself a slight upon the theory. This is the paradox of the True Object: Only one or the
other can be true. Hence we have a matrix of determinate meaning. Free will is always a
religious position and at heart argues against the pure evolution of the scientific kind.
Evolution has yet to offer a solute accounting for how free will, the appearance of free will
and choice, could come about through natural selection; the best it can do is say that human
consciousness that includes the apparent free will is an evolutionary product, choice an
apparent result of having extremely complex adaptational manifest. In other words, we
literally behave as if there is choice. Yet while we are now beginning to find scientifically
just how our behavior is determined in many instances, the contradiction involved in this
awareness of scientific proof is always downplayed, is always projected out to another
subject; the individual who comes across these instances of instinctual behavior and the
illusions of our sensual apparatus somehow seems to be able to overcome this evolutionary
determination for the sake of understanding these conditioned responses. Further, in so
much as we might notice these determined-like responses, we are always left an out where
only some of our behavior is conditioned-instinctual and the rest is indeed left to actual
choice of decision and free will, not to mention that a whole causal series of chosen activity
went into the moment where we found that in a certain instance we were instinctually
conditioned-determined.), there must be some sort of effective God force. The issue here
then is one this essay deals with; the possibility of such foreign-thing (God) may inject
itself into this contained existence, the possibility of such a God being known, and or
knowledge having a capacity for expressing such a force as it is in-itself absolute.
By this, then, the question is left entirely to the issue of this essay and not so much
to the question of whether knowledge may be able to reflect such a force against itself
(knowledge) such that knowledge may actually know and or reflect the immanence of the
kinetic God (for the fully human Law of truth has foreclosed the possibility of God in just
this way, by reducing all subjects to a subject-object, and likewise the term god to a
buzzword or merely a shorthand expression, a colloquialism, a term of analogy, a jargon
similar to the meaning of karma that has it that what we do in life is returned to us as benefit
or retribution); the issue of whether reflection occurs is already answered by the denial of self
that is inherent in the idea that a mind can view itself objectively; it cannot. Rather, the
conventional idea of self-reflection, the fully human idea of self-reflection, of real self

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reflection, is based in an inability to come upon a true self reflection; it denies its inability,
and its offence (evidenced by the denial) thus reduces its inability to reject the possibility of
any other kind of self reflection beyond its own type of reflection that is a justified extension
of free will called objective reflection.
Hence, the question of being chosen by God is dealt with and the issue closed in
this moment by the occasion of this essay: Jesus is not speaking to everyone but only those
who have indeed been come upon by a true self reflection. The question of Gods existence is
moot; since existence is a quality of knowledge, we can only say that the ethical God of
religious position, the one (or more) that are supposed by the faithful to exist as some sort of
entity that is involved with this world in some way, from his or her other-world, is by default
of its own proposed ethics and rationale, not true: God as such proposed religious focus and
impetus does not exist beyond the negotiation of human knowledge for truth, and this is most
evident at the extremes of negotiation: Violence. So, in as much as this may be this case, God
exactly does not exist, because this world of existence is informed by knowledge of what is
true in reality such that, for fully human knowledge, reality and existence are equivalent and
subjectively limited reflection is the only self reflection that can possibly occur. This
knowledge (of reality) then is situated and determined in orientation as proposed by this
essay, minimal and fully human knowledge and it is not so much a question of whether this
is true, but instead should be a discussion about the ramifications of its veracity for
negotiated, conventional knowledge, once the parameters of the situation have been
delineated.
lii

Exodus 3:6

liii

Exodus 3:11

liv

Exodus 3: 12-13

lv

If someone will have faith, as an imperative witnessed of the future by the present,
then that person has faith, but more so because that person does not need to believe.
lvi

Exodus 3:14-15

lvii

John 14:7

lviii

A game Jesus plays with himself. In a way, the vacillations are the ironic and
repetitive result f Jesus in an effort to trick himself out of the vacillating motion. This
cannot be done, though, and in fact it is the playing of the game to its results, so that the
results eventually become expected, and then soon relied upon, that is the process of doubt in
faith that leads to wisdom (see below).
lix

John 14:7

lx

John 14:9

lxi

Paraphrase of John 14:10

lxiiA

strange sympathy resides between the actual ability to heal and the minimal
human. While indeed physical healing is a knowledge and skill that is often passed down,

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there is also a further innate knowledge that is somehow able to inuit what the problem is and
what to do about it. There are plenty of examples; the shaman and curandera are but two.
For what are we speaking of when we say healing? In one sense, it is only a correction
of one self unto oneself; healing here is based upon an unsegregated person (a body without
organs?). We might see this as correlative with a minimal humanity. In light of this, we might
also understand that modern scientific medicine on a whole does not correct a body unto
itself so much as impose a correction upon the body from what is foreign to it. These kind of
observations thus bring into question what we mean when we say life and what such
notions as quality of life really mean.
lxiii

John 14:11

lxiv

Again, faith that does not have responsibility to the True Object.

lxv

John 14:15

lxvi Recall notes xlvi and li. Here we can notice the grammatical transference of I am
Being, to the communicative metalyptical expression of possession; my commandments,
witness a shift from the directional [myobject] to the conspiratorial [my/Object], the
commands thereof begotten by the father are not so much orders or instructions that should
be (but might not be) carried out, but rather categorical imperatives. We make distinction
between the subject-object and subject/object here to indicate the conventionally ironic state
as a polemical option, either subject or object, a directional imperative, as opposed to a
conspiratorial imperative that is a category in-itself.
lxvii Being responsible for rather that to the object. Responsibility for an object confers
an ethics that ties existence and Being together, inseparable, both aligning as an imperative of
the category. Responsibility to an object confers the existence that will not admit its
existential intimacy to the object, such that what is ethical becomes a command.
lxviii In as much as there may be a Subject in-itself, thereby do we indicate an exposure
of the nature of a thing of the universe: An object. Until this moment, we have only subjectobjects and object-subjects. The meaning of this distinction is real; this is to say, in reality
subjects and object refer to relative things that always and never reduce to each other in a
never ending correlational cycle of redundancy that is stopped at arbitrary moments that
exhibit faith and point to the True Object. For example; the infamous ontological analysis of
a table (to be brief) of which finds that at no time do we ever find table-ness, but in fact, a
table is merely the Name of an infinitude of interrelating universal aspects and elements.
Here we have an object-subject; the object is taken as a substantial and segregate actual thing
that is not part of the human consideration of it, but yet in the consideration of what it might
be, as well as its uses, the thing reduces to the very human (subjective) consideration, which
is never exhausted. Likewise, but opposite, the subject is taken as a universal agent,
consciousness a working catalyst of things that may or may not come about in the universe,
its effect is directional such that there indeed is a table which can be used and situated in a
multitude of contexts for a plethora of meanings, particular, actual and metaphorical, yet,
when the table is taken out of its potential for use, the table becomes a thing in-itself, a
common and universal thing that is distinct and particular unto its own existence. This is the
subject-object.
Similarly, by the use of subject-object in this essay to refer to the fully human, I mean
to denote an already in transition state, that what the conventional agent views of itself as a
subject of discourse, is but merely another object of the universe. This is the case due to the

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usual misappropriation of the term subject of discourse to mean a universally segregate


agent of affect and cause, of mediation, that uses things that are given to her from an
essentially unknown source. This is to say the conventional subject of discourse has discourse
as a tool to accomplish things, for example, construct her own reality. No one has yet to
describe how or from where such a condition arises to avoid its own exemplary redundancy.
The point here is that we need begin with the redundancy, that neither of these views
may be relieved of the other, but only in the relativity by which each and the other are found
themselves as real universal things. The manner by which then to find what is True of an
object in itself is not to look to real relative qualifications, for this route merely avoids one or
the other aspects of its relative reckoning of universal being. This is to say that we cannot
find the object in itself until we come to terms with the subject of this situation. We must find
the Subject in itself to thereby find the Object that is humanity. We must admit that which is
withheld by contingency for the purpose of establishing reality. The question is not what is
this thing we call human, for then we leave open the possibility to merely call it something
else, to use another term, and then by our ingenuity proclaim that the human being is a
malleable object because we can use discourse to name it something else. No; by that route
we merely have covered one manner of consideration while cloaking the other. The question
must be what is its nature? and what does it do?. We cannot hide behind a privilege of
viewer/viewed; we must take notice of what the human being is doing to find out what its
nature is. In short, it makes sense. Thats all. We must first admit that in order to avoid its
own nihilistic existence, human beings rely upon a transcendent aspect, and have a
relationship with this transcendent aspect, To expose this feature of the human being truly,
we therefore, like the material of a forensic analysis, in effect, destroy the transcendent, if
even for a fraction of one moment.
lxix

Heideggers Dasein, in different terms.

lxx

John 15:1-9

lxxi

The term-object identity.

lxxii See note lxii. Here we refer to healing of the latter sense, of correction of the body
through the imposition of something foreign to it.
lxxiii For our current ideological paradigm, this, of course, is the general scientific effort
to reduce the works of Jesus Christ and other miraculous events in the Bible to natural or
what can be said as not supernatural or un-miraculous explanations. Of course, the
significance of this effort is not understood by the fully human beyond its own intrinsic
mythological significance, which is that of discovering the true explanation of what those
past (and present) ignorant and superstitious peoples believed. The significance, again, of
course, is that mythology is that which is the story of truth, and faith is the operative
element of mythological reality. This is to say, that, of course, science would be able to
reduce such superstitious events to its own rationale for truth, for that is the operation of
consciousness: To make sense of the universe; to make the indicator of the limitation
involved in the human experience. And, of course, it does not mean that this or any other
scheme of this making sense has any actual relation to any truth of existence beyond what can
be said to be an ideological justification of power (a redundant justification), but it can
implicate a true universal motion of which the behavior of consciousness is included, at that,
in the possibility described by this essay: The possibility of an exclusion that is not

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recognized by the real mythological reckoning.


In this latest sense, a miracle is an historical mark that indicates what distance is being
enacted by the mythological redundancy through its own theoretical posturing. Hence; the
question aroused by this essay might just be how the author is able to come across such an
understanding. This question has been posed in various places as to how, if discourse is an
enclosure (we have come upon a term for this: Correlationalism), then is it that an author may
suppose to gain a view that is outside of discourse, or for a more regular or common
meaning, outside of the real universe, outside of the enclosure that it surly is? They key is to
see that the solution to every problem is encoded in the the situation of the problem itself. It
is not so much, now, that there is a solution that exits from the matrix of the problem.
To step gingerly into the philosophical tennis match: When Guiles Deleuze and Felix
Guattari talk about a plane of immanence as opposed to thought (maybe), as a kind of
analogy to a thinking subject and political object or world, we can see the type of repetition I
have noted above concerning the possibility of a synthetical a priori operation. Yet just as
significant is the anachronism that is enacted by bringing their ideas into the current state; for
then the repetition occurs again, and we risk gleaning from this occurrence that indeed
repetition is an existential maxim, and again refer to D and G or others for the solution to
how it all fits together. They are thereby arguing their own predicament, but not an
existentially True situation. The deception perpetuates in a type of Lacanian mistake. The
repetition does indeed occur, but only in reality.
We might see how the repetition is mechanized in the simple statement taken from their
book What is Philosophy:
The plane of immanence is not a concept that is or can be thought but rather the image
of thought, the image thought gives itself of what it means to think, to make use of
thought, to find ones bearings in thought

The very simple idea here is that there is a redundancy involved in the statement, and
this redundancy can be solved by one of two moves that are consistent with this essay. The
first and most usual move is to see agency. Here, this statement is exhibiting the potential of
the True Object, involved in itself with a capacity to present an objectively True thing of
existence, and or the human being. As an author has commented,
The task, then, is to construct the image of thought adequate to our historical present
since it is the plane itself that determines what Thought (and philosophy) can rightfully
call its own, or properly understand its broader social-political function in the
present. (from the site/blog: thetragiccommunity.wordpress.com: We Head for the
Horizon and Return With Bloodshot Eyes. Posted April 9, 2016. Used with permission)

It is not difficult to see that there is a kind of spirit (for a term) at work behind the
scenes, a kind of immanence that functions to grant real conditions against which thought
then may work to bring about a particular world for itself.
The second manner of appropriating this statement by D and G is to see that they are
presenting a contradictory situation. The question must be: How are we to conceive of a
conception that is not a concept? Here, we follow their lead and see that even the concept of
a Plane of Immanence is a faulty conception. The idea that there is a plane that resides behind
thought, behind conception, is itself merely a conception, and so should be set aside. This
situation then corresponds with the minimal human of this essay. The concept that activates
the fully human agency is where the image of thought is the material by which thought itself
is allowed as a real estimation; this is an objective reflection.
An issue that this essay also treats is where the question stops its teleo-ontologial cycle,
for this stopping is not made by a choice, but indeed reflects an existential condition of the
question itself. The question involved with its solution enacts as it reflects an inherent
distance between what is proposed as true, which argues its own limitation as a relative

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position within an infinity of unknowable relations, what I call Real, and what is actually
True given the entirety of the condition of discourse at hand. So the question of how one
might step outside the correlational limit is really merely a notice of where, within the
potential that lay in the correlational scheme of meaning, thought begins and ends, which is
to say, for another term, where faith lay. The point of philosophy that is concerned with
ontology and teleology is to locate where and or when in the questioning of things thought
finds its end, and this, to mark a persons Being in existence, where thought becomes
offended, and thus, in the extension that we call humanity and then the world, the real True
Object.
lxxiv In this light, technology (the object) can be seen as the actual determining element
of reality. Since, if knowledge proceeds along particular vectors that are limited by
conditional clauses, then it is no longer sound to believe; that humanity is discovering or
creating anything, but rather is merely unfolding in being lead along a particular universal
objective path, a path, the objective, purpose or end of which, ironically, is eternally obscured
and essentially unknowable.
lxxv Genesis 1:1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. If neither of
these elements were created, or rather, established, then neither could exist. Ironically, in
our particular scheme of knowledge, it is the earth, the element with which we have an
absolutely necessary relation, that allows for heaven. The earth in this sense might be seen
analogous to the Object. In order for there to be a minimal human, there must have been a
fully human, or everyone would just be human, and there would be no history, or rather, there
would be only one correct history which again, ironically, is exactly what the fully human
truth proclaims within its disclaimer of relativity. Thus, the impetus of this essay: That this is
the case ironically.
lxxvi

John 15:11

lxxvii

John 15:26

lxxviii The fascination of the fully human for the minimal human gradually wears off;
this is the reason for the foreshadowed torment the disciples will soon encounter, as well as
Jesuss inevitable crucifixion. This is because the fully human being cannot suffer against
what it knows as true, which is the Object of faith. Its minimal human basis, though,
(everyone is at least human) hears or otherwise senses its own resonance in the subject, and
so is called to by the voice of the true Subject (its own voice), so to speak, that is the
Subject of Truth. But because the truth of the Object is founded in the individuals
renouncement of its own subject (-object) hood, the fully human is ultimately offended at
the Subjects voice (the Object of faith constitutes the effective basis of true reality, the real
truth of all that is possible), for it announces the fallacy of the individuals Object of faith.
Echo Nietzsche: The offense is resolved through individual resentment, which is an assertive
motion based in the denial of its own basis of existence. The end result is always the same:
The individual will not tolerate the constant assault upon its bases of truth (reality) and so
must remove the threat, which is always fatal, for the Subject (of truth) never stops its
insulting barrage. Though at first the subject-object thinks it may relent at some critical but as
of yet unknown moment, and so entertains what the Subject says because the beginning of
the Object is always the announcement of the subject, which is to say, the subject hears
itself in the Object as a type of longing for home, the discrepancy is soon felt all too close to

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the real home in the individuals heart of truth, so the Subject (truth) must die so the Object
(faith) may live.
lxxix

John 17:1

lxxx At some point I will write an essay that will discuss how it is that someone can be
human and be determined in its motion despite moments where choice appears. In short, it is
because at each juncture of decision the ramifications of the decision become already
manifest, so the decision is always in line with that which must be. This situation is
opposed to the complete misunderstanding and misapplication that would reduce such states
to psychology or some sort of possibly trauma enforced behavior. One can never get through
to a scientist that reduces everything to the results of science, nor convince them that there is
a human existence that does not follow its rules: Faith makes true. The situation that is
intolerable to such orientation upon things is that the orientation as a function operates along
side of another that is not included in its proclamations.
lxxxi

Matthew 26:37-38

lxxxii

Luke 22:43-44

lxxxiii Genesis 8:11. Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. But
where to land? If Jesus had not already known, by now the waters were abated: The
deluge was the encroachment of the Object upon his Being in the vacillations; in the book
of John there is no last temptation but the temptation of the Object represented by his
disciples. One may be tempted to associate the deluge with the upcoming passion, the
physical torture and such, but by that time the move had already been made. Indeed, we can
make sharper the distinction explored later in this essay: Matthew and Mark, those authors
who seem more to have justified their faith by the Object, have Jesus respond again to the
taunting Objects (objections); Luke and John have Jesus remaining detached and secure.
Since the storm has run its course and the waters cover the face of the earth, now a dove
returns with an olive branch, so Jesus knows for sure (the Mount of Olives can be either a
sign of the comforter of Jesuss, or at least as a mark of the story) that the waters were
abated and that he would soon find landfall, that his destiny, his purpose, was intact.
lxxxiv The Cross is a literary device and symbol, but not merely and only these. The
coincidence of appropriation, meaning, performance and activity are not independent events
of a causal arrangement. In a sense they can be said to be correspondent in existence,
inextricable to a causal field. Nevertheless; A life that is not fulfilled still ends with death, but
Jesuss life ends at its fulfillment. This can be seen as the difference between the life of faith
and eternal life; again, the term death can be read in two ways as well as unfold upon two
routes.
lxxxv

John chapter 18 leads this next section.

lxxxvi

John 18:11

lxxxvii

John 7:15-16

lxxxviii

This is the real method we know as argument towards proof. Everything does not
make sense automatically and indeed to overcome the gaps in sensibility one looks for proof
and presents arguments that are tempered by rebuttal and counter argument. The route upon

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which one looks for and finds proof is the issue at hand; or rather, whether or not or how well
the route is bound by thickets and walls.
lxxxix

John 7:17-18

xc

John 7:19

xci

John 10:1-6

xcii

Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

xciii

Jesus is speaking as this process indicates the potential in hand for the moment that
would have the subject-object be able to comprehend the Truth if indeed one were able to use
the correct terms. This situation thus indicates a more substantial historical motion. Yet even
as Jesus indeed is using an unlawful manner of discourse aimed at the very few, the
contradiction inherent of the minimal human at this moment can be seen in that there is still a
vision that sees a common humanity, where all may be recouped by a common discursive
meaning, this under the rubric of everyone can be saved.
History might be better understood in this light as a coming to terms with the actual
human being of an irreconcilable existential situation; hence, the need for the projection of
faith that perpetually reconstitutes the reconciliation under various headings, various
meanings, like some sort of living motor of humanity, creating a future, but caught in a
redundancy of repetition. These ideas have been tossed around for some time, but we have
never come upon how it actually occurs; it seems always left to the spirit.
The historicity of humans being might be seen as cycle of forgetting, of missing
the determination of the object for the sake of the choice upon the True Object. Here change
occurs at significant junctures of meaning that would expose the fallacy of the real, but
junctures of meaning that are passed over, set aside and effectually denied. However, change
is the retaining at each juncture the continuity that the pass allows, such that something is
learned; this is to say, the mistake is seen to be cause not a mistake that causes, but
actually of a rejection, a revolt, toward which the object is reconstituted under the exclusion
of the previous incorrect meaning. By this route, through small, cumulative progressive
meaning(s), the capacity involved in the possibility of consciousness, is filled out, so to
speak, in and as history such that a divergence precipitates out of the one route to establish
the two irreconcilable conditions, and a present reveals a sort of finality. Evidenced in the
apparent prevailing conflicts of humanity over various True Objects, the collapse of the world
itself is avoided in the last instance, the end itself is passed over, humanity itself as an
exclusionary group recoups its unity in the total explanatory trope, the true meta-discourse
by which all human activity may by accounted for as ontological-teleological purpose (some
theorists have called this transition Capitalism to Communism, but the effective move
seems would be more toward a universal catholic religion), and history begins again in the
new basis from which humanity may diversify into its various affective truths; which is to
say, the meaningful accounting of human activity begins to fail. History, as a total
accounting, is forgotten. But this forgetting has nothing to do with what symbolic
manifestations might remain, for we are speaking of the appropriation of meaning. This is a
topic for another essay.
xciv

Though religious dogma and theological affirmations may indeed have a valid
interpretation, they are insufficient to the meaning here. The many born again Christians

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will argue their positions by all sorts of discursive strategies. As much as the Christian will
pose exclusivity against the want for belief, though, it is obvious (to some) that such clauses
are not exhibiting exclusive meanings posed within the the necessity of witnessing. The
problem is that such Christian clauses are understood all too well by believers and nonbelievers alike. The effective partition between believers and non-believers, that the believers
understand as semi-permeable, is not the situation presented of this essay, as much as it may
be analogous. Indeed; there is no impetus here to argue for some sort of conversion, no
imperative to enlighten, but only a description of the situation at hand.
xcv

John 9:35

xcvi

John 9:41

xcvii

John 10:24

xcviii

John 10:25-31

xcix Not for works, but for blasphemy. This can be seen as pivotal, since the term
blasphemy
is
generally
understood
to
mean
to
speak
evil
of
[http://www.etymonline.com/blasphemy]. Hence, in the sense that this essay suggests, where
his works might actually be words, the power of discourse, by this part in the story, the
glamour of the arousal of the minimal human echo that lay within the fully human is starting
to give way to plain confusion. Whereas before people were interested yet leery, now people
are awakening to the apparent nonsense; whereas before they thought they were coming upon
something in Jesus and his ministry, some event, of a person that is significant, awed by the
plain auspiciousness of the occasion, now their fully human heritage is asserting itself in the
call for identity, and are finding none.
Further; the story itself seems to incorporate a creative technique, literary devices, to
emphasize what is occurring, telling about the turning while exemplifying the turn in the
mechanics of the story itself. At this point the words that are the works, which is a kind of
glamour of smearing distinction, are falling into distinction, into identity, such that if the
works were indeed experiences upon words, the experience in meaning and of meaning itself,
now there is a questioning upon what exactly was going on. The fully human is beginning to
seek the Law in the works such that some sort of actual activity must have occurred apart
from mere words. The tension has nearly peaked because the echo of the minimal humanity is
fading and credence is moving toward the Law of the fully human, and Jesus as an identity is
getting in the way of what sympathy might have been resonating. The contradiction that is
the existence of God is becoming pronounced, becoming palatable, and it is not comfortable;
in fact, it is offensive.
They go to stone him (to kill him) and Jesus asks them for what, and they say not for
any of his works. Whatever had occurred prior to this they are not so concerned; whatever
miracles may have happened is not the issue now. Now the words and the works become
distinguished against the Law, as though recognizing the remaining overlap that still is
informing them to what Jesus may be, they are going to stone him for speaking evil of
to specify the intensive meaning here that which is The Good. Contradiction now emerging
as the indicator of what is false. But the glamour, the resonance, is still there, albeit barely,
and Jesus still talks his way out of it by referring to the scriptures.
c

John 10:33-39

ci

Psalms 82:6

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Jesus attempts to appeal to the intact experience of the minimal human, but it is

fading.
ciii

John 10:42

civ

I concur and rely upon Soren Kierkegaards appraisal put forth in his The Sickness
Unto Death, with a caveat that I discuss elsewhere. Nevertheless, I will not reiterate him
here, but offer a little something more.
cv

The truth of the matter is revealed in its own time.

cvi

John 11:15

cvii

Mark 1:22

cviii

See below, and note c.

cix

Matthew 5:17

cx It is easy to conclude that this is where faith becomes operative as a means to


salvation; indeed, the whole of Christendom, of not Islam but all types of religious posture,
can be said to involve the insecure individual, willing to believe this religious item over what
she knows seems questionable. As we have said: There is no overcoming faith, and such a
faith is found in redundancy. It is the necessity to resolve the double move of meaningful
existence to one side or the other, apply it to the either/or mandate, to thereby reconcile it to a
sort of fulfillment, that arrives with the distinctions of belief, faith, knowledge and all sort of
variation of the theme. Irony is the suspension of this mandate.
It should be no surprise that Kierkegaards original contribution is the question of
epistemological teleology, Is there a teleological suspension of the ethical, is not an ethical
question; it is not to be applied in its original meaning to questions of the spirit. The
questions of spirit that Kierkegaard considers are based in his moment, where the failure to
reconcile this polemical condition means a necessary recourse to some ideal agent, some
essential extra-universal interlocutor that solves the problem and reconciles the discrepancy;
Kierkegaard could not see for his moment that the discrepancy occurs only in a particular
scheme of meaning, by a particular orientation upon reality. Irony is not an uncertainty, as
Kierkegaard (ironically) evidences by his writings. It is the aggregate of opinions that attempt
to keep the suspension for the sake of uncertainty, as an uncertainty, to thereby reify a
faithful comfort through the fully human methodological route, to justify reality and its
mandates, it commandments, that miss the true stakes of the issue.
Faith is thus the hope and wish for certainty in a cloud of meaning that is uncertainty
itself. As history moves away from the sensibility involved or behind any faith, faith itself
comes to posit more and more absurd qualities of this Object, as its Object is supposed
eternal and immovable, such that we find with Kierkegaard a positing of Christ as an actual
(non) Object, whereby only faith can traverse the abysmal gap between the position and its
Object, at that, brought down as an analogy in Christ, which then must be the first and
primary ironic object. We see, though, by this irony of irony a historical mark, a
mythological stratum, so to speak. Irony in its suspension, rather than in its recollection to
reality, on the other hand, is founded in certainty, in knowledge of the truth, but it is the

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appearance of this truth that calls for faith in its reflection. Again; the Gospels are a telling, a
working, of the minimal human conditions of meaning, of humanity coming to terms with
itself, the movement from faith in reality, to knowledge of truth.
This is the significance of Peter, and why Peter becomes the basis of the church:
Because his condition marks a factual instance of historical meaning. If one has only faith,
then no church is founded but merely rises and falls by the dictates of her religion. Peter
searches for the truth, and finds it in the very real situation of being, through actual
occurrences.
cxi That which is is justified by the True Object is justified by nothing, emptiness; this is
to say, there is no knowable object in-itself except that which is justified by a type of
Kantian intuition, which is for my terms, conventional faith. But the irony does not stop
there. The manner by which we might even say that there is no object in-itself, is, in itself,
merely a manner of meaning, which means, albeit redundantly, that there is no knowable
object in-itself because that is how we are knowing things through this particular manner of
meaning, an evidence of a particular historical motion, a certain indicator of historical
phase. Conventional faith is the suture(pass) by which the manner, route, or orientation, of
knowing may be solute, that is, may operate for a viable reality; faith is the counter weight of
such meaningful limitation that allows for the logical invocation of the transcendent. The
exposing of the transcendent to the sensible appropriation of human experience without the
need for fantastical explanation, forms the impetus of this essay.
cxii
cxiii

John 1:1

sufficient density This sentence suggests that such a significant experience


(Christ) is a form of common human experience, one that nevertheless is uncommon or
exceptional. We mean here then to indicate what is common in the sense of the unknown
potential involved with the inability to know which person might be privy to the experience,
and not common in the sense that surely every human has within them, within their being, the
potential to come upon the experience. It is this exceptionality that this essay addresses. So it
is, it seems so exceptional that it would eventually have to be put into context in the manner
of the Gospels, as, indeed, an exceptional event. Because of the offense involved in most
people not having been come upon by the experience (though one would have maybe liked to
have been), this exception is the indicator of what is not common in the potential of some
whole human organism, as well as the indication for a divergence and the pronunciation of
power.
The gist of having a sufficient density of people who are come upon by such an
experience relies upon the notion that such people are or were diffused within a certain
populace, any particular group, and so the expression of such an experience was necessarily
subordinated to what I have termed fully human discourse, as I describe, which could for a
more general description of this situation involving various culture groups be more properly
called a priority discourse, a proper manner or method by which to make meaning of any
situation. Such priority discourse thus has then given us various tellings of such events yet
disguised or appropriated for the fully human discourse of what is real, keeping in mind,
though, that our description here is in the context of our ability to know and designate, and
that such diffusion most likely merely constituted the gestalt affect cohesion that is the
group itself; which is to say, in supernatural, superstitious, and mythological realities that
go to explain away ignorance for those who are so ignorant, for example, elves, ghosts,
daemons, witches, possession and such. Such a posited divergence then indicates a pivotal
moment of such affect. The inherent resistance of those people for whom were come upon by
such an exceptional experience must be seen with reference to the frustration imparted by the

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counter-partial magnanimousness or mere strangeness of such people by the majority as the


former dealt with the challenge of expressing such apparently (to such person) intimate and
important knowledge, as the priority discourse repeatedly and surely usurped for itself, the
fully human (true-) reality, the meaning the person was trying to convey. (I am reminded of
the part in the story Fight Club, when a man dies because of the antics of Project Mayhem,
and the narrator, the sane half of the authorial duo, is trying to get the people to see the the
insanity of the Project through the reality of the mans death. The whole scene represents the
real insanity of the narrators actual situation.) Hence we may have extrapolated the
meanings of certain cultural contexts of possession, blessed and auspicious into what the
rationalism of the West typically associates with insanity, but vice versa, where the idea of
insanity may thus find a more exclusive, particular and limited definition of itself. Indeed,
now, for example, Derridas and Foucaults use of madness likewise had asked us to further
make a distinction between actual mental disease, and mere alternate if also divergent ways
of coming upon and knowing reality.
It is not unsound to suggest that in the time just prior the Roman Empire, such
distinct and segregated cultural discourses, beforehand being only marginally and
superficially integrated perhaps through trade, were held apart from the intimacy required of
communicating their respective world views by physical distance as well as the tendency
for cultural hegemonic propriety. The enjoining of such distinct groups through the
encompassing empire (the world is Rome), may have brought a certain opportunity for
more intimate and integral communication. Likewise, people of such exceptional experience
would likewise have an opportunity to find each other and speak openly to each other by a
different form of communication that would then be developed in their interactions to the
opposite effect of the oppressing situation wherein such people had found themselves
beforehand, but likely the situation by which such people found themselves different came
about with the arrival of Rome.
An example is the hermaphrodite. Certain cultures have had meaningful room for
such anomalies in their society, whereas other cultures required some sort of physical
disruption to place them within the social order. It is such subaltern experience, removed
from its political foundations and connotations of the 20th century, that then can be seen to
come to a head in the telling of the Gospels. Yet when we replace the political meaning, we
are able to draw an analogy from the cultural isolation of yesteryear to the politically
enforced isolation of our day where reality itself is a particular proper and legal existential
mode.
Yet despite what cultural conflations may have allowed for of those different
people coming together, there is of course the more plain occurrence of the cultural
conflation of products. In as much as there may be a group of Jews, say, that came upon or
were come upon by some products of another culture, practical, discursive and material
products, products that were foreign, or perhaps were made foreign over time by the
consistent enactment of prohibitions to the shared cultural experience, there could be groups
formed, perhaps, that through the engagement of such products, found themselves
apprehending the world differently, which is to say, in the manner and logic that this essay
espouses, such that a unique form of the invasive cultural product emerged in the presence of
this new medium, namely, the Hebrew worldview, such that both were transformed. The
material itself can also thus be said to have or otherwise attain sufficient density.
cxiv Further questions raised in this essay is whether all the Gospel authors are likewise
merely talking about themselves, and to what extent or in what capacity for meaning might
this be true.

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cxv As an analogy of this situation, we might see of this difference, this difficulty, an
expression of a three-plus dimensional state expressed as two dimensions. The difficulty does
not lay in that fact that a multidimensional space can be sensibly reduced to two dimensions,
but it is the expressing of that two dimensional state (of the three-plus state) in the terms of
the three-plus state that poses a challenge, because the continental bound native of the
three-plus state will always want to see the expression of the two-dimensional state as a
three-plus expression. The difficulty arises in the primary sense of what is foundational; if
multidimensionality is primary, then any expression of two-dimensional space is
automatically relegated to its being within a multidimensional truth for its sensibility. It is
the recurrent instalment of multidimensionality to the disruption of multidimensionality
(seeing disruption as evidence that three-plus equals three-plus) that may be analogous to the
correlational limit of discourse. Again: The limit is solved by suspension.
cxvi

John 1:1

cxvii This is the question that Jean Franois Lyotard addresses in his book The
Differend. The question he poses is of the historically advanced situation: How can a
plaintiff get justice for a case that the court cannot (incapable) hear?
cxviii A more precise way for this classification might be people who believe in the
dogma of the religious institutions, but the manner by which the Judeo-religious doctrine has
been disseminated through scholastic teaching will not exempt near everyone from the
religious category. The persistent and incessant problem with some areas of academic
philosophical effort is found in the inability of many people to get at the meaning of the
philosophical texts. In this manner, many philosophical discourses are misappropriated as
they are misunderstood. This arises due to a confusion involved with method; it is always
founded upon an assumed common practice and or arena of practice. This is to say, on one
hand, quite often if not historically proper, those who would be appropriating a kind of
correct meaning still involve themselves in an effort to exhibit and prove for others but
everyone the veracity of their solution. And, on the other hand, those who indeed are
misappropriating and misconstruing the texts are confirmed in their mistake (that it is no
mistake) by the former authors addressing the latters objections. This is the problem we
come upon presently. The issue at hand is confused as it is conflated into a one common
discourse. It occurs of course because it is offensive and illegal, as well as institutionally
undemocratic, to presume privilege upon any situation. No one is allowed to understand
anything that does not present itself in a continuum of common human potential. Ironically,
this is what eventually allows all discourse its inherent ideological hierarchy, which is to say,
religious founding. For, if we could admit that there is knowledge that is privileged in an
essential case, then, again ironically, we would have the conditions for a true egalitarian and
democratic state. But of course, as we see and are coming to terms with, this never happens,
and further this is the reason why it appears to some philosophers that some kind of grand
reckoning is occurring, some final and all end of the world. What seemed to be the ethical
and proper route for discovering or uncovering a saving truth is actually turning out to be
contradictory in-itself; that is, to be unambiguous as possible, as a route for meaning, those
who are invested in the discourse of term-identities see the state of discourse (its meaning-full
state) as revealing its collapse as if the world is actually in the throwes of dying; it becomes
evident everywhere. They await as they are witnessing the great world catastrophe; this is a
religious view. The meaning of the texts is found through a misappropriation, an incorrect
route, and this route followed leads to catastrophe but only unto itself. So it is, we need not
and cannot simply decide that this calls for no action; on the contrary, real estimations must

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be acted upon because they are real.


Hegel and others are always already lost because humanity is caught by a method that
must always reduce meaning to the lowest common strata of inclusion. We never become
lifted up; or rather, we only become lifted up in so much as we rise on the shoulders of
others, whether they want us to or not, and often even against their protestations.
cxix

or some given/unknown-effect rationality. Most critical theory resides upon the


given situation that is unquestioned. The term God is excluded from most of these socialpolitical analyses to avoid aggravating already foggy inroads to the situation at hand.
cxx I am of course referencing the notorious oddity of the Genesis Chapters 1 and 2.
Conventional religious are often heard explaining that the second chapter is just an
elaboration of the first chapter, but we might gain a better meaning when we see the literary
function involved as reflecting an actual situation of being human (already created).
Consciousness has a type of experiential occurrence of meaning that conveys or projects its
meaning into the actual occurrence of activity come upon in subsequence. The subsequent
occasion unfolds differently but the meaning upholds its consistency throughout the events.
In this specific case, Jesus first comes upon the experience for itself and draws the meaning
of it in itself. He then is in a position to recognize the experience once it is going to occur
again, but albeit, this next time, as an actualized objective event, what we call proof, and thus
verification of the Truth.
cxxi We should be careful not to reduce this manner of description to mean that its
meaning must fall to one side or the other. To say discursive trope can be taken to imply
that it is all merely a literary device, and reduce the human being back into the common
contingency of human choice and activity; which is to say, political and ideological
psychological theories. We are not dealing here with a segregated real-truth, but instead are
involved with the presentation of truth itself, which then conveys the consistency of the
literary and the physical, the metaphor and the historical, as inevitably coincidental.
cxxii

This is the beginning of the conventional religious mistake; the beginning of the
True Object.
cxxiii

The death of the True Object of the subject-object.

cxxiv

Soren Kierkegaard. The Concept of Anxiety, and as anxiety might culminate in


despair, as well The Sickness Unto Death.
cxxv
cxxvi

See the discussion about Moses and the Burning Bush.

We are reminded of Derridas commentaries upon women and the feminine. The
truth, in this view, is a kind of double departure, a double withdrawal; a disruption of sorts
that thereby disrupts by coming forward and then retreating from the advance. The selfconsciousness thereby has no self-consciousness prior to this moment but is instead involved
with merely a motion of faith, determined as such in contongency. The advance is thus a kind
a falling out of grace, against which the retreat disrupts everything that has been known of
faith until that point. It amounts to the question that must be answered but continues to
supply questions as a sort of route, which we might say, is a route out of faith and into truth.
Nonetheless, there is no transcending transcendence; rather, where faith posits transcendence

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in a redundancy where the Object of faith is seen to have intervened to grant faith, there only
may we transcend transcendence. But Hegel was incomplete; Kierkegaard completes the
motion. What occurs in this second transcendence is actually a return to, not immanence,
but existence, and at that, its material. As Nietzsche, we return back to the earth, to
actuality, and this is because we (in regards to the rebuttal at hand: The fully human) are
already oriented upon transcendence. Where the fully human sees in its meaning an essential
meaning, an inspired meaning, there do we have indicated the real ability to transcend this
mundane reality. All this occurs in a specific paradigm of meaning, and, if we can reference
the simple translation of books, this specific paradigm was indeed masculine; in the Bible we
have The Father. In reference to this state, whilst occupied by this real-truth, the only
meaningful way to transcend this situation is found within the structure of meaning itself, that
which carries and informs what masculine is, what faith and spirit is. The distance that is
occurring, that is suspended within this paradigm, is exactly what is feminine, what is notfaith, not-transcendence, not-sinful, this last meaning in reference to the Kierkegaardian
sin, not in despair and not stemming from offense. We there by face what is before us
without reference to anything outside the paradigm and address it as such: As actuality.
Hence, it is the feminine that leads one out of faith, to wisdom.
cxxvii One day, perhaps, I will write a book that considers all we have on the topic,
though this essay might do very well at closing the need for such a volume.
cxxviii The indication of repetition is present in this. Once we are able to explain a
situation without reference to an outside influence or creator, then what is left is how that
situation came to be. This is the default ground from which all religious speculation arises,
and is why we can say that if history is a process of humanity coming to terms with itself in
the universe, its placement and purpose, then with this explicatory disclosure, history will
now begin to repeat, because the fully human will not be able to resist, again, positing what
this outside aspect may be, and will develop, again, further rationales and explanatory
theories that appear, again, sensible and reasonable, which is to say, they will develop another
meaningful encompassing identity (institution) that we call the True Object.
Such an explanation must encompass not merely what means, such as psychology and
neuroscience decide upon, but moreso must address route of meaning, for the current
platform of sciences will not ever get into just what is occurring so as to be able to come
across their own scientific proposals for example, no matter what chemical-neuro pathways,
no matter what plasticity might explain how the organ of the body functions to make
meaning, it will never directly address the scientist who is using such knowledge; as we
might say, the scientist always withdraws from its findings, for its use. The issue of route,
nevertheless and strangely enough, just may allow us to come to terms with our situation so
that we no longer have such paralyzing meanings that propose endless arguments for the sake
of the the faith invested by the Truth of the term in questions, arguments that are never
communicating to one another but are rather asserting their difference upon one another.
Maybe not now, but at some point, everyone will have to be included, for we are still caught
in the truth that faith is providing; as Slavoj Zizek has been noted to say, it is the most
difficult thing to imagine outside of capitalism.
cxxix The same just noted; Matthew 26:58, 69-75; Mark 14:54,66-72; Luke 22:54-62;
John 18:15-18, 25-26.
cxxx

Luke 22:51

cxxxi

Matthew 27:1-8

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cxxxii

There is a certain kind of honesty that is not found in capitalistic states. We might
imagine that the vacillations are indeed a personal experience of intimate insecurity, and the
Gospels were the product of various people who had indeed experienced such sorry
moments, such anxiety and came together to talk about them, finding the commonality of
such experiences. This as opposed to the capitalistic mode which upholds the insecurity and
keeps it for oneself and uses the experience, the lack of confidence, to gain leverage and
advantage upon everyone else. We might find thus a new definition of individualism in this
withholding of insecurity.
cxxxiii

Matthew 26:59-62; Mark 14:55-60

cxxxiv

John 18: 19-24

cxxxv Many modern English translations have this terms a advocate to emphasize, in a
manner of speaking that Jesus, The Object of their faith, advocates for their sinfulness. One
has to wonder of the term advocate did not exist yet at the time of the first translations of
the Bible into English.
cxxxvi It is significant that Jesus rebukes such retaliation, such attack and reaches out to
replace the stricken ear.
cxxxvii Like Jesus in his vacillations. So this story of Simon-Peter might be seen as
conspiratorical with this story (of Jesus) in which it is embedded. That together they evidence
a beginning of a type of existential historical motion.
cxxxviii Peter has overridden the choice that is no choice. He has made and is an example
of the real act and therefore of redundancy yet set aside, which is the object. I will take up
this question more thoroughly in my book The Significant Event. Absolution and The
Second Moment of Decisive Significance..
cxxxix

Matthew 16:18-19

cxl

Matthew 16:4

cxli

Luke 22:67

cxlii

Luke 22:68

cxliii

John 18:20-23

cxliv

John 18:30

cxlv

John 18:31

cxlvi

Matthew 27:14. Also note that while Mark has Jesus answer directly to the high
priest that indeed he is the Christ (Mark 14:62), later with Pilate present in Chapter 15, verse
2, Jesus replies merely Thou sayest it and then upon further pleading by Pilate, in verse 5,
But Jesus yet answered yet nothing. This would seem to support the suggestions of this

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essay that Mark was indeed moved, but could be seen to merely be iterating what he heard,
being the most distanced from the event and so evidencing an orientation toward the truth of
the story rather than the event itself.
cxlvii

John 18:14

cxlviii

The forgoing excerpts are from John 18:33-38

cxlix This flies completely in the face of the Kantian universe. The point is that even if
there is indeed no object, as Kant put it, in-itself that we can know, the fact that is
insinuated in the notion that knowledge is the only possible platform upon or through which
to know of any object, is that such objects behave as in-itself objects. To argue that any
particular object is true or false, and then to bracket this postulate within an arena of essential
not-true-ness, is might we say that Kant was indeed correct in his, perhaps unrecognized,
irony a metaphysical proposal; which is to say, utterly contained within a certain
ideological frame, which is also to say, utterly mythological. Human beings must have True
Objects by which to negotiate reality; in order to posit anything about the ultimate nature of
reality, True Objects are objects in-themselves.
cl

Phenomenological intension is the real aspect of the fully human. Yet, regardless of
what discursive formations or conceptual exercise, the situation may be more properly
understood as a result of the intuited object. When we turn the usual understanding of faith
on its head, we find, contrary to the Husserlian idea, that intentionality is an object derived
affect, that objects have intension that are reflected in our concepts of them. This can be
easily realized when we attempt to honestly form a concept around an object for which is
inconsistent with the presented object; it is not a contradiction that arises but plain and simple
nonsense. We might be able to use this adjusted formulation to distinguish when authors are
merely using their creativity to come up with ontological possibilities. Here, we are
attempting to relieve ourselves from theories that should be set more in artistic arenas. We
call to mind the Sokal Hoax, perpetrated by Alan Sokal, that, at least for a moment, called out
certain post-modern theoretical presentations. Just because human beings can sculpt terms
and squeeze out detailed meaning from clausal structures, does not mean they contain any
actual truth. There are still theoreticians who love to stay within this paradigm of discursive
fantasy. So, one of the issues of truth is how it is possible for a human being to see nonsense
as sensible. But we know why they might have credence and staying power: Because human
consciousness makes sense, and because faith makes true. One cannot argue sensibility into a
person through arguing with the sense they make; this yields all the more violence as the
nonsensical object of faith asserts the propriety of its sense.
Of course; there will be those social advocates that will move in to suggest there
is some sort of attempt at hegemony going on here, but those activists should first see that I
am not proposing that reality can occur in any other way than it does, and then see that
everyone (every political identity) is already included in the discussion of how they might be
excluded or marginalized; the issue is that indeed we assert a hegemony when we propose
certain people and situations be heard in their own voice. I am not suggesting that reality is
incorrect in its determinations; I am pointing out that reality and its ideological constructions,
such as psychology, have yet to be able to account for all that may exist of the human being,
most probably because the psychological framing of the human being is founded upon
subjects that are already admitting or otherwise assumed to be or are evidencing that they are
encountering a problem with their Being. Nevertheless, the presumption of potential is a
faulty, even as it is necessary, real conception. The issue should not be what is the in-itself
object, but how it behaves. Presently psychology is entangled with presenting the object of

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humanity by the reasoning from effects. Hence as we have mentioned elsewhere, the idea that
there are other human beings and or other cultures, social, gender and racial groups that
amount to existing in an ideologically enforced silence is founded upon an incomplete
motion. To end with ideology and politics is to be fully invested in the mythology wherein
such political ideology resides, as well as to assert a historical static and determined common
human subject; we have come to call this correlationalism. Yet see; we have reached a
moment of humanity where everyone is included automatically, despite what ignorance may
be, where the process of social justice has become an ideological norm, a means for identity
and generating capital, a routine process of modern colonialization.
cli This can be to say not real but true. Jesuss ministry is a correction and not a
negation. The correction is upon that discourse that understands its power to be of negation.
clii

John 17:38

cliii

This is a pivotal notion in the Non-Philosophy of Franois Laruelle.

cliv What divides is a question here, placed in the declarative. If there is a thing,
then the conventional route sees an investigation into that thing as a manner of dividing, of
looking into its components. These components are thus found to be a reason for the thing,
as these components are likewise viewed within a particular contextual vector of further
division to get to cause. In this scheme of meaning, the process has yielded a progress; the
information gained through the process of dividing is understood as a progressed
knowledge, more knowledge, better knowledge, more thoroughet cetera. The significant
question upon this situation, though, is whether or not a different result could have been
gained through the exact same application; the answer that says that there are never the same
exact circumstances has never gotten further than Heraclitus stepping in a particular stream:
We cannot step in the same stream twice, then might we completely disrupt that keen
observation and suggest that we cannot even once!? (Thank you for that, Soren.) The actual
question concerns if the result was different that it is; the situation is so absurd to
conventional method that one should not even attempt to get through that faithful direction.
In all these considerations, though, it should be amply clear that no, the situation could only
have yielded the result it did, and it did yield only that result. Hence, if this is indeed the case,
then what divides is the result itself, but that which then constituted the situation in the first
place. The same can be said of any decision and thus to find what this prior decision is, is
merely a matter of describing the situation at hand. Also, though and this is key: A
description of how a thing is, functions and or operates does not negate that thing for what it
really is and still is; e.g. when one describes a table it does not invalidate, negate nor remove
the table from its existence or its being a table. Still I sit and type this essay with my paper,
books and computer sitting on the table. The description that the table may be multiplicity of
aspects, an infinitude of sub-molecular particles that have no mass or even negative mass, or
a social-linguistic construction does not remove the table from it being a table. I might
suggest that those who would unilateraize social constructions of objects as a ubiquitous
human function is really a Capitalist who is conflicted in drawing profit from her theoretical
privilege, and should draw a couple more bong rips while contemplating whether the THC in
the herb is really doing anything to relax her or change her mood, or if she is just thinking
that is occurring due to the social construction behind marijuana. Regardless; likewise,
does the description of how reality functions do nothing to argue that it should be any
different than it is; this is not an argument of how this thing called progress occurs as

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though somehow progress is a fallacious term or idea. Progress may be a problematic notion,
but the description of how or why progress occurs does nothing to suggest that it is an
illusion or somehow faulty in its conception. This is simply to say that where progress is
viewed as accounting for the entirety of how the universe occurs, often enough, the
description of a prior decision becomes a problem in-itself, vague and full of opinion, and
hence then my point of an object in-itself.
clv

This is one translation of the meaning of the collusion in Alain Badious discussion
of void and multiple.
clvi This different manner in equity of universal objects. No one asks a table a reconcile
to a chair, and if I walk my face straight into the low branches of a pine tree, I will most
likely find discomfort; when glaciers melt and oceans may rise. They behave as objects unto
themselves. A True Object reduces such horizontal equity to existential conditions that are
more true and that we call metaphysical speculations; yet, science is more a vertical
substantiation.
clvii

See Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling.

clviii

Matthew 27:22-23; Mark 15:13-14; Luke 23:21-22; as well, John 19:15

clix

John does not have this reproach, as we continue to discuss.

clx

Mark 15:15

clxi John 19:1-2; Mark 15:17; Matthew 27:29. If there was any possibility of Jesus not
being crucified before, there is no turning back now. The soldiers mock Jesus by draping him
in a purple cloak, put a crown of thorns on his head, and giving him a reed staff. They then
take a knee and worship him; the full mock. Yet the irony has just come complete to end the
mockery of the trial and to begin the real mockery, the real trial that humanity thenceforth is
occupied in acting out, that is, real history of the subject-object. Before this, there was no
question. The crown of thorns is reminiscent of the burning bramble of Moses mentioned
earlier. By Jesus, the True Subject has reached a level of conventional exposure; whereas
before there was always a certain amount of legitimate denial in plain ignorance that is found
in the newness of things and events. The Old Testament might then be seen to be the
repetition that occurs in cycling of learning, of showing, forgetting most of it, re-presentation,
revelation, denial, and then the acceptance that only come through reality witnessing a
divergence with itself, a splitting, since such an experience is not common to humanity, but
only a part of humanity. History now becomes the story of humanity coming to terms with
itself in denial, humanity as a product of justifying itself against what is denied of itself.
clxii

John 19:4-6

clxiii

Otto, Rudolf. The Idea of the Holy. 1958 Oxford University Press.

clxiv

John 19:7

clxv

The foregoing concerns John 19:8-15.

clxvi In the context of the Bible, so as well this essay, we can say God, but the same
formula follows for any transcendence come upon even as it might be denied and placed into

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some sort of other category, such as, spirits, psychological diagnoses, or natural
phenomena. In general, an irregular occurrence of meaning where the consistency of
understanding is disrupted to be placed, whether it be momentarily or lasting, in an alternate
context or frame of meaning that calls into question the former framing. In a manner of
speaking, we can call such movements of frame as common real possibility, and thus come
to categories of experience that thereby, by such inevitable reductive displacement to infinite
redundancy, are allowed to be broken by such essentially other possibility, or for another
term, essential transcendence. The idea of God and a monadic first of anything or situation
is the term that is always ultimately called upon to support or refute. No other term resides in
ultimate primacy; even sciences Big Bang, or philosophys nothingness or void or
chaos, never completely avoids a fundamental positing of God meaning. This is why
redundancy is an appropriate idea: It gains slightly more than repetition.
clxvii Many philosophers through through the ages have talked about an abyss in the
context, if not explicitly, of freedom. The basic idea is that there is a limit and what is beyond
the limit is an abyss. The implicit theme involves an encounter with this limit as in incurs
what is beyond it, which is, for all meaning in every context, nothingness, void, or with some
authors, even God. The distinction that we find with the second moment, exemplified with
Pilate, concerns a founding term. The founding term is a type of ideological base where when
all routes of meaning have been exhausted, which can be to say, when one comes upon the
mysterium tremendum, the nothing that resides behind the thing, she encounters the
contradiction inherent of the situation and she, as Sartre says, revolts from it. The meaning of
this move makes sense if we consider that if a person were to really encounter nothingness,
then there would be nothing left for us to be considering it; not just for her but all would
simply
This is the case because nothing cannot exist and still be known. If there was a nothing
that was known then it would no longer be nothing, in fact, it would be something, the thing
that is nothing. So it is, the only possible manner by which knowledge may encounter
nothing, which is to say, the only manner that consciousness may know nothing is for there
to have been a break, a discontinuity in the stream of knowing wherein knowledge make
sense. The break must be effective and not merely another type of understanding; it is not unconsciousness, memory loss or the like because these occurrences reside within the
sensibility that marks the knowing of real things. The break therefore institutes another
knowledge, another manner of knowing.
Hence it is the meaning of the revolt that is significant. In the Existentialist-postmodern sense, the revolt allows for a new agency; the person sees that all reality is made of
arbitrary constructs and so is now able to move freely. Having now an awareness of how the
constructs are not merely arbitrary, the agent herself sees her involvement in that very
construction. The existential agent thereby is free to construct her own reality. The founding
term is that first condition that allows for the revolt; which is to say, she revolts back into the
conventional construct with a new awareness of it. In this modern existential case, the
founding term is nothing, or perhaps void, but in every case, the term itself is understood
implicitly to be the first and only term that is not arbitrary, the first identification of a True
Thing, the only term that transcends the situation of coming upon a nothingness on the other
side of the limit to be able to link itself to an essential substrate of the universe. In this case
the essentially True Thing nothingness somehow is not included in the real construction of
reality; upon this void the agent thus finds the freedom to construct a new reality. The issue
we treat in this essay is the elimination, or at least displacement, of the founding term, but the
next book will deal more squarely with the repercussions of this situation.

Kair
clxviii

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John 19:19

clxix The most controversial psychological explanation is also quite common. It


describes the incision where the conventional discipline of psychology falls in two like
philosophy. The proposal is that the individual in question is involved with two aspects of
behavioral representation. Overt behavior might be said to be the face that can reveal any
number of meanings. Behind the face, psychology resides as the thought comes to question
and answer itself. A spiritual awakening is when there no longer is a series of thoughtful
considerations upon the basic question of which of two thoughts should preside. See though
that this is not a comment upon a function of a thinking mentality; the spiritual answer is
already involved in the manifestation of the individual. The spiritual awakening occurs when
the consciousness allows itself to stop deciding; thereby is the real person relayed. This also
brings in the question of Law, or for a term, the Name, and when decision has ceased it is
because either the Name has changed (conventional spirituality), or the Name has
disappeared. This last is when we find a more proper indication of the motion of history.
Admittedly, there is no proof that this is the case. One cannot prove that there was this
actual person inside a faade of behavior that is suddenly or at some point allowed to take
over. The point is that likewise one cannot prove that the experience would not have
happened otherwise.
The significance of the second moment is that there is a first moment wherein
consciousness is not allowed to reveal itself unto itself: The first moment is when
consciousness is forced to reveal itself unto itself, which is to say, when one comes upon a
choice that cannot be made. Herein lay the irony of the second moment, as well, the irony of
the typical mistake of the conventionally enlightened that sees irony as an indication of a
spiritual meaning.
clxx

Matthew 27:24

clxxi

It is in this moment that we become able to speak only of objects, but that topic is
for another essay.
clxxii Bruno Latour is the first author I have been let to find who has attempted to
develop a theoretical avenue to be able to allow for such an opening. Likewise, Francois
Laruelle and his Nonphilosophy has allowed for an opening that I believe is often being
framed as philo-fiction, but unfortunately, I have to tell, it appears the intensity as well as
the depth of his nonphilosophical discourses have lead many instead into a type of philofictional-hell, where the result of his dense verbosity has been a kind of secularphilosophical-religion of sorts; a clergy who lay in a nonphilosophical dogma of
misinterpretation. Laruelles fears were warranted: what should have been an opening has
been shut in to another philosophical object.
In either case, though, the need for an opening has been understood; as much I might
lament the monster that has been made of Laruelles Nonphilosophy by some philo-religio
zealots, as the meaning of Laruelles works may fall simply under the route that this essay
presents, Latour seems to have granted us the least harmful of theoretical frameworks by
which to move forward the process to actually gain an opening (the operative term here is
seems). See An Enquiry into Modes of Existence, by Bruno Latour.
clxxiii

Yes; I have evoked Theodor Adorno. Once we begin to describe the Event, it
could only have already occurred but is occurring, yet in so much as it seems apparent that it
has not happened, that there indeed are people who are trying to figure it out and or trying to

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Absolution

find out what has already happened, that there might be this realization that what seems so
obvious and omnipresent is yet more prosaic, there we might say that it has not happened and
will at some point occur. Yet by this description, we undoubtedly must say that it indeed did
occur and was missed, and so will never occur. For at some point we need see that our faith is
not sufficient to bring about the product and hope of its affect, and indeed merely serves, at
some point, to cause to bring down the whole faade upon itself due to the eternal denial it
upholds over what is truly occurring.
clxxiv

Again, effective denial.

clxxv This is where feminist critique gains its foothold. Recall the earlier discussion
about wisdom. Though the post-modern was taken in its moment in the same stride a postcolonialism, we find inevitably that post-modernism was a patsy, a puppet discourse of
colonialism for the purpose of reifying and reinstating the modern as the ubiquitous and
inescapable condition of The world. We can say this because of the dual voice that sounds at
every event; the distinction between Hegel, historical consciousness, Nietzsche, Ubermensch,
Dasein, Heidegger, Nazi Germany, modernism and post-modernism is ultimately found only
within the post-modern discourses that propose as well as suppose that it is the inescapable
limit of discourse that finds modernism as a particular political movement, a particular
ideological enforcement. Through this late 20th century critique, though, we find the reenforcement of the ideology by post-modern argument as it has gained a certain dogmatic
ubiquity: It is not so much that, as Zizek has said, capitalism is so difficult to think beyond; it
is more that particular post-modern arguments have become axiomatic in the discernment of
what reality is. This is to say that Dasein persists as well as our modern state. It is the purpose
of ideology to replicate itself for the purpose of enforcing power. While the post-modern
proposed to relieve oppression and bring about some sort of freedom, some sort of human
equality, we find now that all that has happened is that everyone can speak the same
language about what is occurring; every has become modern, or at least is in the process of
catching up, everyone has RSVPd or assumed to have done so; everyone has been
colonized. It is this condition that some of the speculative realists as well as object
ontologists are attempting to get beyond, attempting to break free of.
If we can say that this whole affair is quite ironic, then we should see that feminism,
while using the platform of post-modern and post-colonial, (in the same way as the disciples
use the Jewish rhetoric) is ironic to the irony. This then does not mean it returns itself to the
modern state in which irony tends to indicate some great enlightened future, on the contrary;
what is ironic of irony is that irony is revealed unto itself, not as a flattened horizon of
inspired ethical agency, but as to what it does. The attempt is to stop (if I can use Graham
Harmans terms) overmining and undermining real estimations of things. The feminist
critique has always been an effort to get back to the things in themselves, and to reveal what
is occurring in the encoded politics of modern ideological thinking. We might then call this
wise.
clxxvi

But probably all the names

clxxvii

Soren Kierkegaard. Fear and Trembling.

clxxviii

Ibid. The Crowd Is Untruth.

clxxix

Though I do not believe Slavoj Zizek uses this notion nil subject, it is possible to

Kair
derive this term from the meaning he intends. See Zizeks book The Parallax View.
clxxx

Slavoj Zizek. Living in The End Times. 2011 Slovoj Zizek. Pg. 15-16.

clxxxi

The Black Notebooks. I have not seen them; I have only heard about them.

247

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