John Dunn

Construct it new

Monday, 31 January 2022 at 20:40

Giambattista Vico (1668-1744)

Construct it new

Remarkable thoughts by Vico, captured by Giovanni Gentile and fed into The Theory of Mind As Pure Act.

Note that in the following line, the word ‘making’ is used, not ’made’. Emphasis on act, not fact.

The true is what is in the making. Nature is the true, according to Vico, only for the divine intellect which is creative of nature ; and nature cannot be the true for man, for nature is not made by us and into its secrets it is not given to us therefore to penetrate.

What then is the meaning of this doctrine of Vico? We can only know the truth of an object in the making by ourselves, not as a presupposition presented ready-made to us. Elaborating on Ezra Pound, ‘Make it new’… and know it to be true.

Vico's doctrine teaches us that we can only say we know an object when there is in that object nothing immediate, nothing which our thought finds there already before we begin to know it, real therefore even before it is known.

Nothing but the constructive process is.

John Dunn 2022

© John Dunn.

Transcend all

Sunday, 30 January 2022 at 21:19

Transcend all

The work of Giovani Gentile continues to feed into the development of my own writing, and, no doubt, will do so too into my next published book. In the text below, Gentile seeks to resolve the opposition, resulting from common sense, between his own empirical personality and other persons and surrounding things.

…moral problems arise in so far as we become aware of the unreality of our being as an empirical ego opposed to other persons and surrounding things and come to see that our own life is actualised in the things opposed to it. such ground the moral problems arise, they are only solved when man comes to feel another’s needs his own, and thereby finds that his own life means that he is not closed within the narrow circle of his empirical personality but ever expanding in the efficacy of a mind above all particular interests and yet immanent in the very centre of his deeper personality. (The Theory of Mind as Pure Act)

Gentile is not saying that the ‘I’ is lost in the feeling ‘another’s needs his own’. On the contrary, the I unifies in itself every particular and empirical ego becoming, in the maturity of its thinking, the transcendental ego.

John Dunn 2022

© John Dunn.

Precursors

Saturday, 29 January 2022 at 18:02

Precursors

There were precursors to the light, not the light, but each bore witness of that light.

A first encounter with the works of W. B. Yeats

On first motorcycle, riding across the great arc of the North Yorkshire Moors, the Northern Dales, the Forest of Bowland and the Lake District… alone.

A first recognition by the Fenian that I might have something to say.

Young first love, of course.

Living deep in the suburbs of a strange city, immersing myself in it, losing myself without a map of return… and, in parallel, doing the same with great works of literature.

The shock of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony.

John Dunn 2022

© John Dunn.

Contentment

Friday, 28 January 2022 at 11:17

Blake's Urizen. 'And Urizen cast the net of debt over all.'

Contentment

The children of Satan led the innocents out of themselves with the promise of happiness to come …into Beulah. “We just want to be happy…, we just want to be happy…”, the innocents droned on and on.

And the children of Satan led them into debt, and with this came the objectivisation of past and future; the future extracted from the present and the cost of the past born by the present.

The innocents were resigned to the only existence they knew, and Urizen was respectfully acknowledged at the due times and dates.

“We just want to be happy…, we just want to be happy…”

And the children of Beulah found contentment;

and the children of Urizen collected the taxes and the debts;

and the children of Beulah were born into debt;

and the children of Urizen provided the drugs;

whilst the children of Beulah descended into the One, which is to say they were dragged down to nothing, to death.


Children of Urizen

They hide amongst the Innocents.

They feed off the Innocents.

They set Innocent against Innocent.

They send the Innocents to war.


You know you've met them,

probably when you've thought about it afterwards.

They don't smile, they sneer.

They look at you with calculation.


Snared in Urizen's net, they are the living dead.

Their lives are empty and uncomplicated.

Being themselves devoid of love,

when they meet Him they murder Love.


God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. (I John 4:16)


They that dwelleth without love, what are they?

The anti-Love; the masonry of hate; the children of Urizen.

Root them out, pleads Eros to the Innocents, root them out!

© John Dunn.

Devoid of Love

Thursday, 27 January 2022 at 21:07

William Blake’s Urizen “The Accuser of the World”

Devoid of Love

Satan fell into the objectivised world, to become god of this world, and Adam and Eve and their issue worshipped satan as the god Urizen, the demiurge, a distant Jehovah, the 'self-deluded and anxious' shaper of pre-existent matter.

And the children of Satan led men and women into Beulah with the promise of happiness to come, into the land of false innocence,that is innocence devoid of Love, from which arises the constant and nauseating refrain… “we just want to be happy…, we just want to be happy…”

In a world devoid of Love, they objectified god, which isto say they idolised their god; they were idolaters and their children were born into idolatry.

And their god was an all-knowing god who controlled the affairs of man from across a divide, the puppeteer pulling the strings of mankind, an over-bearing father, a failed architect, and the ‘Accuser of the World' who unfairly condemned Adam and Eve when he was the one at fault.

The deluded innocents of Beulah had carried over the worshipping of the demiurge from the followers of Jehovah, which made it Devil Worship.

© John Dunn.

Being: what is it?

Wednesday, 26 January 2022 at 11:25

Being: what is it?

It just is. Being is active thinking, the Logos and Love; for the Logos is Love.

Man can be dragged in and out of being, some are never in it.

The children of Satan actively oppose being. They murdered Love and continue to do so.

The Resurrection is the victory over death and the pathway to redemption; easier for the meek than the rich.

Redemption is the escape from the clutches of Satan and the fallen world, the objectivised world; it is a return to active thinking, the Logos. It is the resurrection of the self. It is the birth of Love.

The adoration followed the birth of Love; for to love is to worship. Being is active thinking, the Logos and Love. To be is to worship.

© John Dunn.

This time as as a personalised narrative

Tuesday, 25 January 2022 at 11:30

Adam tempted into knowledge, Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1531











This time as as a personalised narrative

(Previous blog) Beginning, always

There was nothing before or after the beginning

The beginning is a constant, now, in my thinking; it is simply life.

There’s nothing outside my thinking, that is, nothing but death; believe me, I’ve been there. It’s a world where thoughts are reflected back as entities in their own right, with existences in their own right, a world where the abstract takes on the appearance of the concrete, where living thinking is objectified as dead matter.

I was once there, before the beginning, where there is unity, one nothing.

I wasn’t the first in there; Satan beat me to it, seeking freedom from the Logos. The One, the indiscriminate Oneness, was the realm of the Devil and the Devil’s children, and remains so.

From there, Satan used Eve to tempt Adam into knowledge, meaning knowledge of the objective world, into which both were condemned. They objectivised each other and were ashamed of what they wanted, but shame never stopped them wanting. They believed they could pick and choose their way through the seemingly ready-made material options laid out before them.

Yes, I was there, thrown into this reflected world at birth: a fallen state, but I knew no other. I return still.

Satan tempted Christ to his realm, where power might be exerted over a temporal world; you know, stones into bread, defying gravity, ruling over nations. Christ’s rejection of Satan was an assertion of the point I made above, that there’s nothing outside my thinking, that is, nothing but death.

© John Dunn.