on the conversion of desire and the magnum opus

Meister Eckhart ends his Sermon No. 29 on the subject of the mystical birth of the Son within the virgin soul with the following statement:

An indwelling, an attachment and a union with God—that is grace, and God is “with” that, for there immediately follows: “God be with you”—and there the birth occurs.

Let no one think this is beyond him. What matters the hardship to me, if He does the work? All His commandments are easy for me to keep. Let Him bid me do what He will, I care not at all, it is all a trifle to me, if He gives me His grace with it. Some people say they have not got it. I say, “I am sorry. Do you want it?”—No!—“Then I am sorrier still.” If you cannot have it, you should at least have a desire for it. If you can’t have a desire for it, you should at least desire to desire it. David says, “I have desired a desire, Lord, for thy justice” (Psalms 118:20).

That we may so desire God that He may be willing to be born in us, so help us God. Amen.

The Son of God shares his Father’s will and his Father’s desire, as when Jesus says, “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.”¹ The Son of God is born in us when our will is his will, and our desires his desires, as Mary, and before that concord is reached, the soul is infertile for this birth.

on the “Parable of the Sower”

Meister Eckhart says that if we do not have oneness with God, we should want it. And if we don’t yet want it, we should want to want it. I wanted to explore the notion of desire and higher-order desire—which is, the desire to desire—in connection to the theme of “turning” or “conversion” elaborated in the last couple essays.

on the “conversion” or the “turning” of the soul

“...And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.”

Everyone, by the time he or she awakens to him or herself to some degree, finds himself furnished with a whole palate of desires and preferences and habits and attitudes that steer the course of his life to a large extent. These desire constantly clamor for satisfaction, like a nest full of hungry birds. Plato was not far off the mark in symbolizing this palate and the drives that spring from it with the image of a many-headed monster, or a hydra that sprouts two mouths for every one that is quelled.²

Despite that we are continually chiseling and refining this panoply of desires through our decisions and actions, the process is largely subliminal and unheeded by us because most of our attention is oriented towards, and split between, the object of desire, on one hand, and the exercise of instrumental reasoning necessary to attain it, on the other. Thus, again, let it be observed that, to begin with, our psychological constitution and upbringing appears to have furnished us with a comprehensive palate of desires by which we are led around by the nose through life as we strive to satisfy them. In the Republic dialogue, Plato, as indicated, identified the desiring or appetitive aspect of the soul under the rubric of epithymetikon (ἐπιθυμητικόν ), and symbolized it as a many-headed monster or hydra to indicate both its compulsive and proliferative nature. Instrumental reasoning exercised for the sake of satisfying the appetites is carried out by having indentured the element that Plato calls logistykon (λογιστικόν), symbolized by the form of a human, to the epithymetikon for the sake of hashing out the optimal means to attain the stipulated ends.

Again, to begin with, this condition is given, and could be considered the natural state. But, as I proposed in the essay about the sheep and the goats, God has delegated the task of ongoing Creation in one corner of the universe to us…and that corner is us. In other words, the natural state of the soul is what has been given to us as a sort of inheritance and it befalls us to transform it into the perfect mirror of its Creator. Plotinus eloquently conveys this sentiment in a passage from The Enneads:

Go back into yourself and look. If you do not yet see yourself as beautiful, then be like a sculptor who, making a statue that is supposed to be beautiful, removes a part here and polishes a part there so that the makes the latter smooth and the former just right until he has given the statue a beautiful face. In the same way, you should remove superfluities and straighten things that are crooked, work on the things that are dark, making them bright, and not stop ‘working on your statue’ until the divine splendour of virtue shines in you…³

In other words, we should set to work on our souls in the way an artist approaches a canvas or a sculptor a block of marble. We should not be, towards God, as the “wicked and slothful servant” towards his lord in the famous parable, who “was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth,” and said to his lord, “lo, there thou hast that is thine.”⁴ Instead we should work actively to multiply our endowments for the sake of glorifying to the one who bequeathed them to us. In the prior essay, I quoted Dostoevsky, who observed that:

Every blade of grass, every insect, ant, and golden bee, all so marvellously know their path, though they have not intelligence, they bear witness to the mystery of God and continually accomplish it themselves….

…the Word is for all. All creation and all creatures, every leaf is striving to the Word, singing glory to God, weeping to Christ, unconsciously accomplishing this by the mystery of their sinless life.⁴

In other words, Nature embodies a certain unconscious perfection in itself. But we ourselves are unfinished and imperfect and will remain so unless we undertake a conscious striving towards perfection from our own initiative. Of course, we should not neglect Nature for the sake of this task, and on the contrary, tending and attending to Nature, as shepherds of Being, is one of the most effective ways of purifying our own hearts.

But what does this so-called “conversion towards, and striving for, perfection” consist in, concretely? Again, I have explored this question in two recent essays but I would like to continue the exploration by approaching the question from a slightly different angle this time. Let us return to the dynamic laid out above in which the logistykon is enlisted to justify, and problem-solve for the attainment of, given ends that have been specified by the appetites of the epithymetikon. The third aspect of the soul, the emotive element or thymoeides (θυμοειδές), which is symbolized by the form of a lion, supports the process by lending a certain spiritedness and determination to whoever is lord of the soul.⁵ If the many-headed monster enjoys dominion, then the lion will be his henchman.

As long as we maintain that arrangement, we are only propagating our imperfect state and living under a certain inner tyranny. That is, our actions and thought-processes are carried out under the compulsions of our appetites. Our logos cowers in the court of the soul and is forced to do the bidding of our epithymia or appetites. The turning or reversal, in these terms, transpires when the logistykon, which before was compelled to rationalize forgone desires and devise clever ways to attain them, supplants the epithymetikon and reclaims its throne as rightful lord of the soul. As a result, the willfulness and appetites that reigned in the prior condition must increasingly submit to the logistykon to the extent that the latter consolidates its rulership. Similarly, instrumental reasoning increasingly submits to moral or philosophical reasoning, which is to say, reasoning that evaluates proposed ends on their merits in light of the Idea of (the) Go(o)d as opposed to the immediate promise of pleasure or social status.

On modes of intelligence and the adequate idea of philosophy

For the first time, we begin to critically reflect upon and scrutinize the appetitive palate that before we had merely taken for granted and justified with statements like “this is just who I am,” or “I’m just the kind of person who likes such an such.”

Experientially, our existential “center of gravity” progressively shifts, as a result of the conversion here described, from an identification with the first-order desires to an identification with the agency to transform them over time. When we say “I,” we no longer refer to the more or less arbitrary heap of appetites and complexes and neuroses that we ordinarily identify with and instead begin to refer to the one who is responsible to reform them. In the first instance, we have identified with what we want and perceive everything that prevents us from achieving it as an affront to us. In the second instance, we have identified with the power to want what to want and perceive our earlier wants as obstacles and stumbling-blocks on the path to whom we wish to become.⁶ The ideal that we seek to embody is not arbitrary, but is rather conceived in light of the Image and Idea of (the) Go(o)d. Bernard of Clairvaux enjoins us to

Look carefully at the object of your love, your fear, the reason for your joy or your sadness… All your heart is in these four affects, and it is with reference to them that we should hear what is said about “turning to the Lord with all your heart.”

Jesus Christ is the Image of God and the Idea of the Good

People might object that the dominion of the logistykon sounds callous and rationalistic, and that appetites and willfulness are the sap of the soul’s life, without which life would be withered and desiccate. But this objection hinges on a conflation of dominion and domination. Even if you wouldn’t use those words to indicate the distinction, please attempt to grasp the distinction that I am trying to make. Traditionally, the hierarchy implicit in lordship entailed the obligation for stewardship and care. A father must have dominion over his young child, not for the father’s sake, for the child’s. This hierarchical relationship is perhaps most supremely illustrated in the iconic scene following the “Last Supper” in chapter thirteen of the Gospel of John in which Jesus washes the disciples’ feet:

4 He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself.

5 After that he poureth water into a bason, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded.

…

12 So after he had washed their feet, and had taken his garments, and was set down again, he said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you?

13 Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am.

14 If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another's feet.

15 For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.

Christ came to show humanity what “lordship” or “dominion” really means.

The question of “lordship” or “dominion” comes to a head in the notorious “dominion clause” from Genesis:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.⁷

Adam & Eve II

In essence, Adam was supposed to be the priest of Creation, which is to say, the intermediary between Heaven and Earth. Christ came to accomplish what Adam failed to do and show us the true meaning of lordship.⁸ The higher and the lower are bound in an integral hierarchy through love. This love, when descending the hierarchy from above, also appears as care, responsibility, oversight, and service, and when rising up the hierarchy from below, also appears as respect, submission, and loyalty. Similarly, our logistykon should be the lord and priest of the soul—mediating its relationship with its Creator, or, in Platonic terms, “the Good-beyond-Being”—because it is the only element of the soul capable of fulfilling this function. Neither the appetites nor the willfulness have any higher vision than immediate discharge of their states of tension. The submission of epithymia and thymos to logos does not entail that we cease to desire or cease to strive, as Buddhist doctrine often seems to recommend. Indeed, our desire and our striving often become all the more spirited now that they are no longer in vain; now that they are directed by a higher vision.

But even if our desires and our strivings were not more spirited, they would still be superior to the comparable impulses from before the turning, which was indeed a wretched and slavish state because everything we did was performed under a sort of compulsion as a result of having been bound to seek satisfaction in given ends predetermined by unconscious processes. As Meister Eckhart says, “we should become used to acting without any compulsion.”⁹ For the first time our will and our feelings are free; for the first time, we can desire what we wish to desire in light of (the) Go(o)d, and will what we wish to will in that same light. Therefore is the converted state infinitely superior to the ordinary one, and anyone who has tasted of its nectar, even if only in a single drop, would not for all the world depart from the promise of increasingly embodying it in himself through devotion to God and delegation to the task he has delegated to us.

A Latin proverb states that

si duo idem faciunt, non est idem

which is, being interpreted, “if two people do the same thing, it is not the same.” Charles Péguy writes about three stonecutters. Each describes what he’s doing: the first one says he’s cutting stones, and he despises his work and feels miserable and worthless and overworked and resentful. The second says he’s working to feed his family, and he’s content because he knows he’s doing some good. The third, full of abounding joy and enthusiasm, when queried, announces from the quarry “I’m building a cathedral!” Of course, he’s also doing all the other things as well, and probably better because one portion of his will is not pitted against another as is always the case whenever we would rather be doing something else. But purity of heart is to will one thing. “Be sure of this,” writes Meister Eckhart, “in order to be perfect, it is necessary for us to raise ourselves up in our works so that all we do is a single work.”¹⁰

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

1. Luke 22:42

2. on the threefold soul:

Freud’s tripartite theory of the soul is largely just a scientific (or pseudo-scientific, if we follow Popper) reworking of the Classical conception of the soul that is present already in Plato’s dialogues. In the Republic, for instance, Plato lends imaginal elaboration to his theory of the soul according to the following scheme:

(1) the rational element or λογιστικόν (logistykon), symbolized by the form of a human

(2) the emotive element or θυμοειδές (thymoeides), symbolized by the form of a lion

(3) and the desiring element or ἐπιθυμητικόν (epithymetikon), symbolized by a many-headed monster or hydra

Let’s call these logos, thymos, and epthymia, respectively, for short. The purpose of Plato’s metaphor is to indicate that a proper order or relationship amongst these three elements of the soul is the key to a good life. In brief, the rational soul or logos fulfills its function by identifying ends that are good and educating the the epithymia in its desires while ordering the emotional soul or thymos to repel any obstacles to their realization. In other words, the lion and the many-headed beast are meant to serve the man. Cormac Jones elucidates the true nature of these dynamics, which Plato intimated and strove to depict, but did perhaps not fully comprehend:

Thinking of epithymia and thymos in terms of attraction and repulsion — which struck me as completely correct — blew open doors for me in my mind, and all of a sudden I could see a host of connections. I’m not going to be able to write about all of them at once, but let me at least give a couple insights. Thinking of thymos in terms of a repulsive power is major. When you are sitting on your couch and craving ice cream, it’s the epithymetic faculty that does the craving, that locks its powers of attraction onto the object of its desire. It’s your thymic faculty, however, whose job it is then to repulse all the obstacles between you and the object of your desire. If there is distance between you and your freezer, your thymos repulses that obstacle by getting up and overcoming that distance. Your thymos thereby is the provider. Your logos, meanwhile, is supposed to be overseeing this whole volitional process… but you know, sometimes in this passionate life, things just don’t work out that way. The undertow of desire can pull the logos under and make it serve its whims. Or the madness of anger, the drive to repulse all obstacles for the sake of supremacy over others, may likewise subjugate the logos to achieve this aim alone.

As Plato attempt to illustrate in the dialogue, internal conflict is the result of disorder amongst these dynamics of the soul. The Republic largely consists in an extended conceit in which the state or republic is made to represent the soul. Thus, the condition of internal coherence, or “justice,” is represented by a harmonious republic while internal disorder is represented, in turn, by tyranny and civil war. 

A similarly threefold concept of the soul is also present in Paul’s letters in the New Testament, where he speaks of anthropos somatikos, anthropos psychikos, and anthropos pneumatikos. These terms can be roughly translated as “carnal man,” “psychic” or “soul man,” and “spiritual man,” despite that we lack very clear concepts of any of those words in our time. What, for instance, is the difference between the soul and the spirit, according to the popular conception? Perhaps Freud has taken a step towards regaining some of the significance of these concepts. It is possible to see the birth of psychoanalysis as the reversal of a trend toward reductionism that had seen the 3-part man become the 2-part man (i.e. beginning from the 8^th Ecumenical Council or 4th Council of Constantinople in 869 AD¹ and continuing with the Early Modern thinkers like Descartes) become purely biological man (i.e. beginning with Darwin’s The Descent of Man in 1871).² Many people today still speak in this way, when they, for instance, equate “human nature” with “the human genome,” or invoke evolutionary biology to explain ever facet of human life. Perhaps we will begin to see a richer concept of the human being in our lifetimes. I would be happy to see such a development and I try to contribute in the ways that I am able.³

3. Plotinus (Enneads, I.9.)

14For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. 15And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey. 16Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents. 17And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two. 18But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord's money.

19After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them. 20And so he that had received five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents: behold, I have gained beside them five talents more. 21His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.

22He also that had received two talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents: behold, I have gained two other talents beside them. 23His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.

24Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed: 25And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine.

26His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed: 27Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury. 28Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents.

29For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. 30And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

4.

5. The Thomist philosopher James Chastek has an outstanding explanation for these three elements vis-a-vis their relation to the Good:

What is the basis for Plato’s division of the person into reason, spirit, and appetite?

Plato is trying to explain action and therefore something relative to the good. The triple division can only be into different modalities of goodness.

Goods divide into the apparent and real. Any real good is absolute, but apparent goods must appear to something. Things can appear to a person in two ways: in a way proper to persons and in a way common to persons and animals. So we get

Reason: The power that apprehends goods as such, or absolutely

Spirit: The power that apprehends apparent goods proper to humans

Appetite: The power that apprehends apparent goods not proper to humans and therefore common to non-human animals.

The goods of appetite are the most well known and we can fill out most of the day by passing from one to the other. Warm blankets and soft beds give way to warm breakfasts and coffee to soft chairs to filling dinners to cold, boozy drinks and a warm kiss and blankets again. While there is an obvious human element in all of this (more on that in the end) the pleasures as such do not need an apprehension of reality in order to be enjoyed. We enjoyed the goods of appetite years before we realized the world was real and could be spoken of truly, and they are apparent precisely for this reason, not because we have to assume they are illusory or evil or degraded.

The goods of spirit comprise the wide class of things done for glory or the respect of others. Students seek grades, men want to be seen in sports cars, women get their hair done, Achilles slays Trojans, etc. Such goods, while properly human, consist in being seen and judged in a certain manner by others and are therefore apparent.

Beyond this we can seek something precisely as true or real, or in a way that is not indifferent to the reality of the experience. Animals wouldn’t be dissatisfied by lives spent in Nozick’s experience chamber, nor would it make the experience of eating a brownie any different. The life of glory is different, so far as it seems like it would be a lot easier to enjoy eating a brownie in the experience chamber, even knowing it was fake, than to enjoy being praised by others in the same place while knowing they were fake. But while the reality of those who praise us is closer to the real it is also not identified with it since there is nothing at all to glory or esteem beyond the opinion of others. If everyone respected you for riding a dragon, the respect would be real even though the event was not. Again, apparent goods, while not illusory, are not inherently opposed to illusion.

Adding reason to a being that knows the other sorts of goods doesn’t mean it shuns the other goods but that it begins to care about their reality, just as Nozick’s point is not that the goods of appetite are bogus but that we care about their reality. It’s just this human demand that all goods be real that requires that reason lead the appetites, and which specifies the manner in which it should lead them. For example, a desire for unlimited consumption of food doesn’t respect the reality of food, but is like a wish to consume it in an experience chamber that would edit out all consequences that attend this sort of consumption in reality. Pornography likewise denies the reality of sexual experience, which is always situated in a life of persons which can’t simply cut to the next scene. The demand for reality in the goods of spirit is perhaps more straightforward: we don’t just want respect but want to be respectable.

https://thomism.wordpress.com/2019/11/06/21207/

6. Steiner designates these two conditions as the astral body and the life-spirit or manas, respectively, which is the product of the self having worked upon the astral body to transform it.

7. Genesis 1:26

8. Plato’s Republic dialogue explores a similar theme in one of the early exchanges in which Socrates attempts a painstaking refutation of Thrasymachus’ attempt to reduce hierarchy to oppression. As a doctor plies his art for the sake of his patient and not for his own sake, Socrates argues, so the ruler governs for the sake of his subjects. “But the doctor actually works for money and not for the sake of his patients’ health” is Thrasymachus’s rejoinder, indicating that Socrates is naïve. Certainly, a doctor might be less obliged to clock in if he were not compensated for his work, but insofar as he is allowing pecuniary considerations to inform his action, he is acting as something other than a doctor. Put another way, a doctor is only measured by his actual orientation towards the health of his patients. If there were a doctor who refrained from healing his patients out of protest or for the sake of going fishing, he would not be a doctor at all, but a protestor or a fishmonger. Similarly, the ruler who governs for anything other than the sake of his subjects and the welfare of the state is serving in an ulterior office and thus should not be regarded as a ruler altogether.

9. Meister Eckhart, Selected Writings, 45.

10. Meister Eckhart, Selected Writings, 250.