ABSTRACT
In the present lecture we wish to complete the theology of which we made the abortive beginnings in Lectures IV and V. We tried to construct the object of religion as an idol of the cave, and found that it never became more than such an idol, a required synthesis that could not be effected, and that was always splintering into absurd, one-sided presentations. The religious object of our aspiration was one that embodied all the specific forms of value and embodied them in unity, but which did not embody them as an instance or particular case of them all, but as being the very values in question and being them together. It was also an object whose non-existence made no sense, which was completely a se, and which could not be conceived except as existing, though all other things required it in order to be. And it was, moreover, an existent transcendental, one that went beyond the distinction of the categories: it was as reasonable to speak of it as a character, a relation, an idea, an act, a process, an attitude, a manner, or a nothing as a thing or a person. All these requirements are necessarily formulated within the cave, but they cannot be fulfilled within it: they intend what they intend in an everlastingly empty manner. What exist within the cave are always instances of general kinds, things satisfying formulable conditions, and in their case there can be no question of a necessity of existence: the being of the instances adds something to the natures or essences they exemplify, and the latter could very well not have been exemplified in them. The this-world embodiments of types and values are, moreover, only embodiments of one type or value at the cost of not embodying another; sacrifice, one-sidedness, limitation is of the essence of this-world existence. This radical one-sidedness of realization can, of course, not be removed by any series or system of embodiments, however varied or prolonged. For, despite Spinoza, even when ‘infinite things in infinite ways’ are displayed before us, it is radically impossible to exhaust all things that could be so displayed: series and systems, however comprehensive, always give rise to further series and systems, and the notion of all possible series and systems remains an ‘illegitimate totality’. It is likewise clear that any coincidence of categories is no more than an empty desideratum within the cave: there it is always mere verbiage to identify an idea with a thing, a thing with a relation, a process with a truth, etc., etc. Analytic philosophy rightly protests against such verbiage which, from its point of view, can only lead to a general disorganization of discourse.
