Kearney notes

“The experience of God,” writes Caputo, “is to ‘see’ the hand of God in the course of things . . . to find a loving hand, a providential care where others see chance, so that when things happen they happen as a gift, not fortuitously but gratuitously . . . the gift is not a gift of chance . . . but a gratuity that is marked by a divine graciousness.”  Zlomislic, Marko; DeRoo, Neal. Cross and Khôra: Deconstruction and Christianity in the Work of John D. Caputo (Postmodern Ethics Book 1) (p. 134). Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Similarly, beings in a schizophrenic’s world may appear to her in a conspiracy saturated way, though others don’t experience that, though they see the same entities.   Dickens in this way brilliantly describes Love, where in David Copperfield the protagonist says of his beloved Dora: “I was sensible of a mist of love and beauty about Dora, but of nothing else … it was all Dora to me. The sun shone Dora, and the birds sang Dora. The south wind blew Dora, and the wildflowers in the hedges were all Doras, to a bud (Dickens, 2004, ch 33 Blissful).”

Kearney continues

The kingdom, as Caputo never tires of reminding us, is a cup of cold water given to the “least of these,” bread, fish, and wine given to the famished and un-housed, a good meal and (we are promised) one hell of a good time lasting into the early hours of a morning that never ends.  Zlomislic, Marko; DeRoo, Neal. Cross and Khôra: Deconstruction and Christianity in the Work of John D. Caputo (Postmodern Ethics Book 1) (p. 137). Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Previously I talked about the twofold purpose of the New Testament and Christ’s death (i) as payment for our sin fine/penalty, and (ii) seeing yourself in those guilty of God’s beloved (agapetos) messenger Christ’s wrongful death, which breaks the spell that the evil powerful entity Sin has you under so as to open your eyes to your sinful disposition so you can repent. The first is traditional sacrifice to appease the deity’s wrath, while the second is helping God to forgive you (reflecting God’s forgiving nature such as in the penitential psalms and the story of Jonah).  I spoke previously of the transformation of the soldier at the cross.  Numerous great works of literature explore the theme of transformation through the realization of hidden faults—often via a moment of anagnorisis (a sudden recognition or discovery that shifts a character’s understanding of themselves or their circumstances). This can lead to redemption, tragedy, growth, or downfall..

Anagnorisis, a term from Aristotle’s Poetics, refers to a moment of recognition or discovery in a dramatic work, often involving the revelation of true identities or hidden truths, which leads to a shift from ignorance to knowledge and frequently coincides with peripeteia (reversal of fortune). This device is central to many Greek tragedies, serving as a turning point that heightens emotional impact, drives the plot toward resolution, and evokes pity and fear in the audience.

Of course, the classic treatment in the New Testament is Judas who betrays Christ when Satan enters Judas, and Judas later kills himself when he truly understands what he has done. The example I like is knowing that if I was a Roman citizen thousands of years ago, I probably would have cheered on the brutality of the arena, even though today I find the needless bloodshed horrific. Similarly, the death of Socrates awakened in the ancient world an idea that resulted in civilized society no longer thinking someone should be put to death for leading a Socratic life.

The conversions at the cross of the soldiers, along with that of Joseph of Arimathea because of the quickness of Jesus’ death (showing God was sovereign over death, not Rome), were Anagnorisis.  Price asks “Whence Joseph’s epithet “of Arimathea”? Richard C. Carrier has shown that the apparent place name is wholly a pun (no historical “Arimathea” has ever been identified), meaning “Best (ari[stoV]} Disciple (maqh[thV]) Town.” Thus “the Arimathean” is equivalent to “the Beloved Disciple.” He is, accordingly, an ideal, fictive figure.”  Like the conversion of Paul showing the power of the faith to reach enemies, we have with Joseph a conversion of a member of the elite who convicted Jesus.

Now, Caputo says science is going to do with what is controllable and predictable, such as using criteria of authenticity to discern the historical Jesus.  For example, scholars once cited the criterion of embarrassment that the gospel writers wouldn’t have wanted to include John baptizing Jesus, so it must be historical.  While the criteria were once central, challenges from logic, historiography, form-critical assumptions, and memory studies have led to a notable shift. Many in the field now seek more integrated or memory-informed methods for studying the historical Jesus, without necessarily abandoning the broader enterprise of critical inquiry into New Testament origins. The debate reflects ongoing tensions between skepticism, methodological rigor, and the nature of ancient sources.  Some criteria have reappeared in modified form, like passages like the rich young ruler and sheep/goats go against the gospel bias to promote cross-resurrection salvation and so could be historical.

As was made plain by the debate in Anglo-American philosophy of science over Kuhn’s idea of decision making in a moment of revolutionary science, criteria do not help in the midst of a scientific crisis, because the very idea of the crisis is that in this anomalous situation the criteria conflict with each other and we do not know which criteria to deploy; what is called for is a very singular judgment where the criteria are trembling. After the crisis, when the first reporters arrive at the scene (the epistemologists!), the criteria that after the fact adjudicate the undecidability will be formulated. Those criteria in turn will last— they will set the parameters for the new period of “normal” science that intervenes—just until the next crisis, at which point they will again fall into crisis, which is pretty much the definition of a crisis. That is, invoking criteria is a way to maximize the probable, the predictable, the controllable, a way to describe normal science, or normal judgment, and so to minimize the rich or charged sense of the “possible.”  Zlomislic, Marko; DeRoo, Neal. Cross and Khôra: Deconstruction and Christianity in the Work of John D. Caputo (Postmodern Ethics Book 1) (pp. 147-148). Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

There is going to be Deleuze’s attempt to recover the haecceities.  For example: Science.  There will be an academy of scientific entities/objects: psychological objects, physical objects, historical objects, anthropological objects, etc. These objects of scientific inquiry depend on the metaphysics of “the object in general.” The object of scientific inquiry is not just the object in front of me but the object of infinite repetition of the same, and so when I do an experiment to show water boils at 100 degrees Celsius, I’m not just claiming that this is when this water boils, but that under these conditions it is true of water in general, present, past and future, meaning it is infinitely repeatable. However, what is true of the object in general is not necessarily true of an individual object, and so a 50/50 probability of tossing a coin heads is true of a coin in general, but teaches us nothing about what the next toss will be because a coin toss is causally unrelated to the previous series of tosses. Similarly, childhood abuse makes it more likely someone in general will grow up with PTSD, but as Nietzsche said it tells us nothing about an individual victim since in a family of triplets in an abusive home, one might grow up with PTSD, the next one unaffected, and the third triplet stronger for it: Nietzsche’s maxim what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. In history, it is the case that Jesus has a low prior probability of existing because if you put the names of figures as heavily mythologized as Jesus into a hat, the likelihood of drawing a historical figure from the hat is no better than 1/3, and yet this tells us nothing about whether Jesus was a historical person.  And so, Deleuze and Guattari argue against a Freudian tragic causal unconscious where like trauma produces like PTSD and receives treatment, to a productive machinic unconscious. Similarly, as physicist Rovelli notes categories like substance with properties is useful for describing things at the macro level, but not the quantum level.  Deleuze’s goal, Foucault says, is to combat fascisms, both in society and in ourselves.  The object in general and its metaphysics are useful for making phenomena controllable and predictable, and include the limited domain physics but are not limited to it – and so Kant speaks of a metaphysics of morals.   We often make category mistakes trying to apply the causality of nature to the causality of the person.

Deleuze also addresses calculus in “Difference and Repetition,” although it’s been 25 years since I took a course on that book. The points seems to be, along with my above post on the objects of the various sciences, the object of mathematical inquiry/science too is the object in general and can break down at the level of applying math (s) to the individual. For example, for line segment AB, you can travel halfway between point A and B and mark point C. This process can go on infinitely as the line is infinitely divisible: point C = 0.5, then a little further on to point D = 0.55, then on to point E= 0.555, and so on to infinity. In fact, this is absurd because line AB is not infinitely long, but this is a problem applying mathematical concepts to a line at the level of the specific individual. Pi too is a powerful geometric mathematical concept that nonetheless results in an unthinkable infinite when we try to assign a number to it: 3.14159 is a widely used approximation of the mathematical constant (pi), representing the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. Likewise, as an antimony of space geometry, we can deny on logical grounds infinite space/universe because we can’t picture/think such a thing, but also by contrast, we can deny space/universe as a finite container because we can’t think that either, as to picture something with an inside we are forced to think an outside beyond it, and so there would be another space beyond the container as an infinite regress: For example, we can deny the universe/space is expanding because where would it be expanding into? Another space? Hence an infinite regress. As we are older and deal with math (s) on an abstract level, we tend to forget math(s) is grounded in the concrete, and so a child may be taught by rote that 3X9=27, but this understanding is groundless unless the multiplication fact is modeled in multiple ways with concrete examples such as if you have manipulative counters in groups of 3, and 9 such groups, this will result in 27 total things.

As Heidegger notes,

in characterizing the judgment “the sun warms the stone,” the sun is understood as cause and the warmth of the stone as effect. If we retain this in relation to the sun and the warm stone, we are, to be sure, directed to the sun and the stone themselves, and yet not immediately. We mean not just the sun itself and the warm stone itself, but we now consider the object “sun” with respect to how this object is an object for us [appearance],  in what respect it is meant, i.e., how our thought thinks it. We do not now take the object (sun, warmth, stone) immediately but in light of the mode of its objectivity. In this respect, we refer to the object in advance, a priori: as cause, as effect. … how our cognition crosses over to the object, transcendit, and thereby how—in what objective determinateness—the object encounters. Kant calls this mode of reflection “transcendental.”  Synthetic judgments expand our knowledge of the object. This commonly happens in such a way that we derive the predicate a posteriori, by recourse to the perception of the object. But we now have to deal with predicates—determinations of the object—that accrue to it a priori. These determinations are those that first determine, on their own ground and in general, what belongs to an object as such, that make up the determinateness of the object’s objectivity.  Synthetic judgments a priori are transcendental time-determinations.  To illustrate this, let us take the first group of dynamic-ontological principles, those which state a priori [something] about the existence of nature. Kant calls these principles analogies of experience (a term which we shall not pursue here) and mentions three of them. The first analogy is the principle of permanence of substance: “All appearances contain the permanent (substance) as the object itself, and the transitory as its mere determination, that is, as a way in which the object exists.” In all changes of appearances, substance is permanent. The second analogy is the principle of succession in time according to the law of causality: “Everything that happens, that is, begins to be, presupposes something upon which it follows according to a rule.” The third analogy, the principle of coexistence, existence at the same time [Zugleichsein] according to the law of interaction or community, reads as follows: “All substances, so far as they coexist, stand in thoroughgoing community, that is, in mutual interaction:”  So, for this last one, the totality of currently existing beings are united in their extantness, the totality of the “current/now,” or “Nature” in the usual sense.   Permanence, succession in time, succession and co-existence are obviously temporal relations. These relations are articulated in these ontological propositions as constitutive for the objectness of nature as such. These and other ontological principles are concretely and definitely present to Kant’s mind under the title of synthetic judgments a priori.

For example, Hume had noted we only ever see mere succession, A,B,C, etc, not rule governed causality.  Kant countered we do experience threefold causality according to the rule of irreversibility furnished by the understanding or faculty of rules: ball hitting ball is merely physical one directional, while boiling water a temporary change of form, and finally a perfect irreversibility of form with a cooked egg that can’t be uncooked.  Similarly, we don’t sense permanence of substance but rather it is furnished by the mind.  If you are reading a book and then put it down to go to the kitchen, and while you are gone, I switch the book with another copy of the same book, when you return you will experience the new book as the old one.  Finally, I analogize that a person in China is in the Now as I am, though I can’t see them. 

Now, “In order to understand, Heidegger says, one must see phenomenologically. He thus invites us to the first exercise of phenomenological “kindergarten.” To tear apart [zer-reissen] means: to tear into two parts, to separate: to make two out of one. If a sock is torn, then the sock is no longer present-at-hand—but note: precisely not as a sock. In fact, when I have it on my foot, I see the “intact” sock precisely not as a sock. On the contrary, if it is torn, then THE sock appears with more force through the “sock torn into pieces.” In other words, what is lacking in the torn sock is the UNITY of the sock. However, this lack is paradoxically the most positive, for this Unity in being-torn is present [gegenwärtig] as a lost unity.” (Heidegger, Martin. Four Seminars p. 11)

For example, I mentioned previously the Parousia (Phaedo) of Beauty in the beautiful thing (Phaedo, Gorgias) and that this needs to be thought as Beauty allowing Being to scintillate at the same time, e.g., Heidegger’s/Aristotle’s “Now this is Nature” at the circling eagle.  But the peculiarity is that the particular thing can simultaneously be a conduit for Being and not at all, like when two people experience a piece of modern art very differently.  Homer gives the example of the goddess appearing incarnate to Odysseus, but just as a young woman to Telemachus beside him.  The mansion may appear as houseness incarnate (Now that’s a house!), the average house being a mere example of houseness, and the shack deficient houseness.  Conversely, the next person may see the mansion as gawdy and the shack quaint.  A tourist may experience Niagara Falls as a wonder of the world, while to a local resident it is noise pollution.  Particular things are not just approximations of forms, but bear within themselves a logic of mixed opposite that points to what they came to be in, which Plato in the Timaeus called Khora.