On Friday I was with my parents walking in the city. I looked up at the
full moon and it was not only enormous but it was alive with a laughing face
that one might see in an old cartoon from the 1930s. I wanted to take a picture
of it but I thought that my camera was at home. My plan was to get the camera
but that led to another part of the dream that I don’t remember other than that
I realized that I’d had my camera with me all along as usual but I still never
took the picture. The desire to do so was there but the will seemed to be
absent.
I typed out my lecture
notes from Thursday’s philosophy class then I looked online and found that the
TAs had posted the weekly question on time. I re-read the relevant section of
Avicenna’s Metaphysics and answered the question, “Why does the Necessary
Existent have to understand everything through itself and in a universal
manner? Relate your answer to the nature of necessary existence.” Here’s my response:
The Necessary
Existent is considered by Avicenna to be the justification for everything that
exists. He thinks that anything that is created must have a creator and that
such a creator must be omniscient. If even some of the Necessary Existent’s
understanding came from outside of itself then it would not be omniscient and
it would not owe its existence to itself because complete understanding is
synonymous with its existence. For its existence to be complete its
understanding must be complete. Understanding cannot be an attribute that it
has because that would make understanding a mere part of it and so
understanding has to be what the Necessary Existent is. Understanding from
outside of itself would be subject to change and if it depended on such
understanding that would make the Necessary Existent subject to change, which
for Avicenna would be an absurdity. If the Necessary Existent could be taught
that would mean its understanding could be caused which would mean that aspects
of its own understanding would be merely possible and therefore non-existent.
Therefore if god could learn it would have to not exist.
I’ve been reading T. S.
Eliot’s The Wasteland and found it interesting that Eliot uses the personage of
the ancient Greek prophet Tiresias as the spectator and a bridge between the
past and present and between the female and male elements. The legend of
Tiresias is that he struck a tangle of two snakes with his staff and was
transformed into a woman. Seven years later he struck two snakes again and was
turned back into a man. With the knowledge that he’d gained from his experience
he intervened in an argument between Zeus and Hera. She had insisted that men
receive more pleasure from sex than women do but Zeus disagreed. Tiresias
confirmed that Zeus was right and it made Hera so angry that she cursed him
with blindness. Zeus couldn’t undo the curse but he compensated Tiresias by
giving him the gift of prophecy.
That night I rubbed a
boneless pork sirloin roast with olive oil, garlic, rosemary, thyme, sage and
orange zest and roasted it for dinner.
I
took out the garbage and as usual for that hour I saw my next roof neighbour,
Taro. I told him about the pigeon hitting my face but what was on his mind,
like last time, was the fact that Caesar, the guy who lives above me is always
standing at his back window and staring down at him. He asked me why he does
that. I said, “I don’t know, but maybe he wants to see if you’re smoking pot.”
“Why would that matter?” “Maybe he thinks that it’s wrong.” Taro declared that
it’s very annoying because he can see Caesar’s shadow cast down on him when
he’s standing up there in his window and it might get to the point where he’s
going to throw a rock at his window. I suggested that might make things a lot
worse and related to him how I lived on the street for ten years and had to
deal with a lot of different kinds of people. What I learned is that some people
can’t help themselves. They’re like bad weather and have no control over their
actions but you can’t throw a rock at a rainstorm.
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