M. John Powell (MJP) …………………… writes on Wittgenstein’s philosophy.

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We all occupy different parts of the same illusion.

Protagoras: “Man is the measure of all things …”  This world view pictures a humanity at home in the universe.  Legitimate.

My view is this.  That we have no place.  No home.  Humanity is the measure of nothing.  What we measure is pft!  Let’s say this: that because whatever we measure is imaginary we occupy an unexpected and paradoxical no-place in the scheme of things.  The ’no-place’ that humanity occupies is this scheme, such as it is, is an imagined one - it is inherently not real - in the way that we imagine.  The imagination is like the suspending filament of the Sword that hangs over the head of the courtier Damocles - threatening yet also preventing his imminent demise; allowing him breath and space: time. 

We don’t know who we are but our purposeless self-indulgent lives do nothing to alter the situation; our days are filled with meaninglessness and misery and expensively dressed as happiness: under the sword of course.  But - and here is our saving grace - at least we have the imagination’s freedom!

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And yet in the modern world … what is the imagination?  Science seems to have proved the imagination imaginary.  It seems to have shown something self-evident.  That our imaginings are not real.  The history of human culture is also a history of the human imagination - and in a way it is this ‘how’ it seems to be all that is all: the history of the thread that has prevented the sword from falling.  But for how long can we keep this up: the imagination’s ‘pretence’?  How long can we continue pretending to ourselves that its objects are real?  That the imagination’s logic of inversion has a validity? 

Reverse this argument for a moment.  Think of the way that it might be construed from a historical point of view, which is to say essentially from a religious point of view.  In these terms, historically, it would appear that we are saved from this dilemma because we do not imagine God for example; since God must imagine us … The compulsion is to invoke God in order to confirm the independent reality of that which would otherwise be the merely imaginary kingdom of human fantasy.  To show that humanity’s place is not merely imaginary but actual to reality.  This represents a metaphysical crisis in Western life.  We have already looked into this particular invisible metaphysical void in the abyss of the Twentieth Century.  What happens when we look again?  I - that is, the person here writing this blog - do not think that the invocation of a God is needed, if the decision is made again to look.  I think that our freedom lies elsewhere.  But the reasons for being so persuaded are uncomfortable.  They are to do with the initial recognition that humanity is homeless.

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Most of my writing is kind of place-holding.  (See ‘Writing on’).  Writing is a hammer and anvil.  But you need lots of reflexive practice taps of the hammer before you can deliver the blows that will shape the thing into actuality.  Most of what goes on here is just noise in the smithy.  I’m thinking.   That is all!