Kant and John .3: Perfection Are We

Subjectivity endure

Perfection are we

If one looks with significance on the scene of a woman in the presence of a man, Eve (Gen 3) and Mary Magdalene (John 20), to signify the relationship of the chosen people Israel to God, what is presented is the manifestation of an interested nature within the deity. By the appropriation of a system of legality in Genesis, which occurs the moment rules are introduced to the newly created humans, Christ as a deified human reveals how God becomes completely interested in human subjectivity. Israel portrayed as a woman who has somehow disjointed humanity from creation makes the mode of creation a necessary expression of the fragmented nature of the relationship between God and man because it splits the two. One can say that union or unity of man and God becomes disjointed when the fall of man happens, but what seems more underlying in the situation is the split between the subjectivity of the two. So, in some way the aesthetic representation of God, the perfect creation, through man's failure is no longer operating as a means of endowing humanity with divine subjectivity, but it in itself can only point toward that being so that while man is a part of creation he is in some way distinctly separate from it.

It is also important to note that in the Garden of Eden, one scene depicts a separated humanity and deity, a fallen man who is unable to fully be the divine manifestation to the woman Israel, and the woman Israel controlled by the subjectivity of the man. In John's garden, however, there is still a man and a woman present, but in this scene the man is the manifestation of God and so one sees that the woman Israel is redeemed through submission to the perfect unity of God and man; God, through Christ, reappropriated himself to the subjectivity of humanity. The love of God becomes much more apparently universally accepting of the flaws of men as He decides to reunite the two together so that just as after the objective creation in the Garden of Eden there is a moment on the seventh day when he and humanity are standing in the first day of a perfect creation, so too after the seventh miracle, the resurrection, Christ as God is standing in the first day of a perfectly united creation. There is a sense, in this scene, that God can no longer be disinterested in the perfection of his creation. Kant says that "[i]nterest is what we call the liking we connect with the presentation of an object's existence. Hence such a liking always refers at once to our power of desire, either as the basis that determines it, or at any rate as necessarily connected with that determining basis" (506). By combining the subjects, God has become wholly interested in the aesthetics of His creation so that He no longer stands apart from creation as a separate entity, and somehow he no longer stands aloof from that perfection but is endowed with and in it; His omnipotent desire has overpowered the entity of creation no longer allowing it to be a separate perfection.

Subjectivity endure

Perfection are we

Kant and John .2: There is a Mind of All Union

There is a mind of all union

By which this story is bound

Safeguarded by destiny from somber crime

Revealing in boldness both Christ and Time

Ferverent to hold the thread bare world of fine

And hug us by death, an undue vigil and sign

It is in the sense of disinterestedness that John's gospel brings forth the idea of the subjective overtaking the perfection of creation. John relates, in reflection of the Genesis story, " In the beginning the Word already was. The Word was in God's presence, and what God was, the Word was[,]" which illustrates a point in which the objective reality of creation is no longer the focus of what occurs in the beginning, but rather the emphasis becomes a direct appeal to the subjectivity of God (REB 1.1). His eternal attributes are established, and though presently separated from creation, through the lens of John, "[…] without him no created thing came into being" (REB John 1.3). So that when Christ is risen and is presented as the Logos or "The Word" there is a sense that the subjective element of God has in some way entreated into the objective world seeking a form of unity to it. The image of Christ in a garden standing with Mary Magdalene creates a metaphorical tie to the same image of Adam and Eve standing in the Garden of Eden at the beginning of the new creation of the objective. For, after six miracles, which one may take to correlate with the six days of creation, Christ and Mary are participating in a form of new creation that has been presented in light of the death and resurrection of Christ. So, the fragmented unity of God and man is restored to by the resurrection of Christ, but even more, the subjective portion of God's thinking existence has taken on objectivity and proves His power over it so that in some sense he overtakes and participates in the perfection of it. This is further related in the garden scene of John when the deified Christ says, "'[…] go to my brothers, and tell them that I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God'" (REB John 20.22). Here John is revealing the mind of God, Christ as the embodiment of Logos, is creating a distinct equality with a lesser humanity. By allowing humanity to retain the same position as He himself has with the divine, there is a way in which Christ is pointing out and letting it be known that there is a new unity between the subjectivity of both man and deity; not only is the relationship now restored, but there comes unity in all levels of existence including the mind.

There is a mind of all union

By which this story is bound

Safeguarded by destiny from somber crime

Revealing in boldness both Christ and Time

Ferverent to hold the thread bare world of fine

And hug us by death, an undue vigil and sign

Kant and John .1: There is an Art that Burns but Not of Flames

There is an art that burns, but not of flames

Creation unbound by marble and clay

Acrylic and canvas nor bronze and wood

A mind concealed, so sweetly, of inner humanity

Burning in order to touch you if ever so faintly

There is an art that burns of passion

To begin the search for the Kantian aesthetic through a discourse of John, it becomes imperative to see that the opening chapters of John set up a connection to the opening chapters of Genesis. In Genesis, though there is an express and intentional appeal to the spiritual intervention of God, it presents the creation of the physical world. One will observe that in the initial sequence of events, after the six days, there is a picture presented in which creation is new and perfect, and in this new creation stands a man and a woman, Adam and Eve, on the first day of a new and perfect reality. One can infer that this picture, especially in contrast with John's picture, shows an overt appeal to the objective world so that the subjective mind of God has begun His great work by separating himself through materiality from his perfect creation; there is a bridge between the existence of man and God which manifests as the objective world (the external world of things)

This picture of creation as a perfect objectivity masks within it an expression of the Kantian aesthetic through the idea of disinterestedness. Genesis relates, " In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (REB 1.1). God in this instance becomes the creator, just as a painter might create, but what is more implicit is the separation between God and His creation that is assumed. One might say that because creation is perfect at this point, it is somehow at one with the author, but creation, with similarity to an art piece, anticipates a nature, and may be a reflection of the innate nature, of a disjointed human mind; though one may argue that creation, in this scene, must be linked subjectively to its creator (that is to say that because the creator has a mind), it anticipates a time when humanity and divinity are strictly subjectively separated, but through this "we glimpse for an exhilarated moment the possibility of a non-alienated object, one quite the reverse of commodity, which like the 'auratic' phenomenon of a Walter Benjamin returns our tender gaze and whispers that it was created for us alone"(Eagleton 78).

Though separated from perfection, humanity is able to gaze upon it in a some formal sense. Also, with the world being the canvas of an almighty creator, one sees that it is not through the interest of even God's own subjectivity (again his mind) that the world is presented as perfect, but that through some sort of innate characteristic endowed onto it by its creation it is able to know perfection, for "[…] the presentation of this object is also judged to be connected necessarily with this pleasure, and hence connected with it not merely for the subject apprehending this form but in general for everyone who judges [it]" (Kant 505).

True, God was the one to give essential characteristics to His perfect creation, but even here, beyond the point of actual creation, the world knows and embodies perfection only by its appeal to the very nature that is endowed to it by the universality of its beauty which was established by God so that, in some sense, once creation is presented as perfect, even the omnipotent deity is helpless in disinterest to its display. Terry Eagleton has an interesting take on this when he says, "However contingent their existence, these [aesthetic] objects display a form which is somehow mysteriously necessary, which hails and engages us with a grace quite unknown to the things in themselves, which merely turn their backs upon us" (78).

One may here object that an omnipotent God could in fact change creation in anyway that He saw fit so as to extract His own disinterested association to it, but this would suggest that perfection at some point would not have actually been perfect due to some defect of God's handiwork and would thus actually strike at his omnipotence.

There is an art that burns, but not of flames

Creation unbound by marble and clay

Acrylic and canvas nor bronze and wood

A mind concealed, so sweetly, of inner humanity

Burning in order to touch you if ever so faintly

There is an art that burns of passion

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*Eagleton, Terry. The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990.

*Kant, Immanuel. "Critique of Judgment." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et. al. New York: Norton, 2001.

*Oxford Study Bible. 1976. Ed. M. Jack Suggs, Katherine Doob Sackenfield, and James R. Mueller. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford UP, 1992.

Crash; My Angel

I might have met an angel tonight.  His name was Crash, and he smelled of cheap liquor.  My only penance for the disquiet of his spirit was the solace of offering him a clove cigarette.  He told me he was a true American, and I could only see irony in the statement as I knew the bench he sat on would be his bed this night.  After I told him I studied English, he shared with me the good times he had in his earlier days at school. He reminisced on the times he would carve crosses in his arm during English class -- "it was my favorite subject!" he said.

His greatest advice? -- "Don't get too busy!  They will steal what you already have!  Don't let them steal what you already have!"

I left him to his darkness as he continued to mumble at me. David Crowder's "Obsession" filled my head. Smoke from my lungs intermingled with the steam from the crisp December air. Each street lamp burned its brightest but gave no light.

"Don't let them steal your shit," he continues to say to me. "Don't let them steal it!"