The Metaphysics of Relation in the Sky-Veil
In a "unity of the two" with traditional metaphysics
Introductory Comments
Over a year ago, I posted on the “metaphysics of relation.” Inspired by Richard Capobianco's interpretation of Heidegger’s thought as a “new” metaphysics—one of temporal relation rather than eternal substance—I developed the nascent foundation of the Sky-Veil’s1 “unity of the two.”2
First a little background. I notice these days on social media in general—and Substack in particular—a tendency to continually recycle traditional metaphysical thinking through a myriad of opinions in the hope that something will change for the better. This manifests itself in an ongoing stream of posts on topics such as “Reflections on today’s gospel reading,” or “What Aquinas said about {this or that},” or “Why We Need to Restore Christendom.” All of these have one thing in common. They all carry a message summed up by:
“There’s a way the universe is ordered, and, by golly, if people would just listen and learn the right way of thinking, individuals and the society comprising them would flourish again.”
“Lex orandi, lex credendi”
“Modernism is the problem - I tell you - it is the problem!”
Or something like that. Traditional metaphysics. If we get back to traditional metaphysics—all will be well. Let’s write another post, and perhaps this time the world will finally hear and heed it.
In our metaphysics, we have defined what is right and “substantive” by the light of the Church, sacred scripture, and sacred tradition. And, we have developed a scaffolding of ideas and concepts that fits marvelously into a single architectural whole—thanks to St. Thomas and the scholastic movement of the Middle Ages.
Our metaphysical construct is a conceptual Chartre with the most beautiful stained-glass. We yearn in some fashion for the altar and the crown of the Catholic monarchy—a union of Church and Monarchy. We understand the need for a proper relationship among the sexes that stems from God’s natural law and is reflected in sacramental marriage and family life. We know order is restored in society as the result of our being ordered to the Divine Order. Religiously and liturgically, the Traditional Latin Mass should (must!) be restored. Gregorian chant must replace Sixties hippy music.
Traditional metaphysics. Let’s keep posting. One day… one day…
I would like to say, first, thank you to all who are reflecting and evangelizing for this beautiful metaphysical landscape! Over the past seventeen years, I sought the same goal—self-publishing books promoting the metaphysical “cathedral of concepts” mentioned above, while imploring people to finally “think rightly” for crying out loud. I even wrote one book on restoring the French Catholic Monarchy and turning America into a Catholic Monarchy as France’s spiritual sister(!). I wrote another on “The French Catholic Diaspora in America.” Far from criticizing the ongoing traditional messaging from new generations, I applaud it. I want to thank the emerging generations who continue, many years later, to urge the world to repent and return to the Faith and its metaphysics. Muaaah 😘
The only problem—for me—was that the flame of fire setting ablaze my longing for the traditional Latin rite, catechism of Trent, and Catholic social order came from somewhere other than traditional metaphysics. My intellectual understanding of tradition came from my Faith and by pouring over the Church’s teachings, scriptures, and the writings of the saints. However, the force of grace compelling me forward on my journey came not from the Summa Theologica but from an existential shock to my system—a flash of lightning, to use the old cliché. It was a confrontation with grace through the certainty of the sudden nearness of St. Joan of Arc. I described this moment in my introduction post, Walter Emerson Adams and my About page. As a result, my work of developing and sharing “right thinking” with the world continued to leave me unfulfilled and the world unconvinced. I could club others to the ground with a metaphysical bat, but I could not grasp what my relationship to St. Joan was in the aftermath of the shock. “Understanding the relationship” was an entirely different mode of thinking from that of “understanding ‘right thinking’.”
In my pleas for the world to heed the call to Catholic metaphysics, morality, and the social order of Christendom, I missed the entire point of Joan’s flame touching my heart—to give up everything and purchase the pearl of great price the Holy Spirit had offered me through her nearness. That search became a manner of being that blossomed as complementary to traditional metaphysics but was a different type—it was a retrieval of Being—an openness to letting the relationship confronting me in the world speak for itself. Metaphysics could not help. I could not define it into the scaffolding. With its definitions and syllogistic logic, metaphysics only obscured the pathway to this relationship’s unveiling. This was a journey of discovery—a story—a mythopoetic epic. It could not be explained with metaphysical definitions. What emerged over fifteen years was nothing short of a complete freeing of the spirit within the domain of the Church’s teachings. The metaphysics of “relationship”—alethic emergence in time—amidst the Church’s traditional metaphysics of “substance”—eternal and unchanging—made for the “unity of two.” It was a Catholic life filled with wonder, openness, and new horizons. The experience of living was grounded in the order of the metaphysics of the faith—yes—but it flowered as a mythopoetic epic story of lived Catholic faith.
Below is the material I posted over a year ago that held the nascent thinking of the foundation for the Sky-Veil as the “unity of the two.”
The Metaphysics of Relation (January 2024)
Edith Stein said that the only way we can know that which is timeless (substance) in a temporal (time) mode of being is if the timeless 'known' has an analogous relationship with the temporal 'knower' or through the effect the timeless has on the temporal.3
This is a very Platonic concept. It struck me hard years ago and became a foundation for my own model. The reason I bring it up is that it can be applied to Heidegger's notion of Aletheia, or truth. Richard Capobianco makes a very reasonable assertion that Heidegger never set out to "destroy metaphysics." He simply wanted to go to its roots, to move metaphysics out of the way, so we could investigate the ground from which it came.
“Although it is true that his (Heidegger’s) reflections in these lecture courses bear out that he sought to move beyond a metaphysics and theology of substance; nonetheless, at the same time, they also suggest an alternatively conceived metaphysical and religious or spiritual perspective.”4
My own reading of Heidegger leads to the same conclusion.
Capobianco goes on to assert that Heidegger, in fact, went further by developing a refashioned metaphysics.
“To conclude, Heidegger’s readings of Heraclitus suggest to us that despite his determination to ‘overcome’ a traditional metaphysics of substance, he was, nonetheless, always in some way on the way toward an alternative metaphysical understanding of Being.”5
Heideggerian metaphysics is one of relation. He was reflecting on our dynamic relationship with Being in time as opposed to a timeless substance of Being, which is traditional metaphysics.
Heidegger's "metaphysics" was built around wonder, astonishment, unconcealment, i.e., "Aletheia." He pondered the relationship we have with nature as we walk through the forest or with the ocean as we watch the brilliant orange sun sink below the horizon only to mysteriously appear again in the morning against the opposite horizon. This is a very "refashioned" metaphysics, indeed! Heidegger was more concerned with the relationship of the trees and the “sense” of the meaning of their unconcealment as he strolled through the Black Forest than with the nature of "treeness" (traditional metaphysics).
Where I'm going with all this is that Heidegger did not "destroy" traditional metaphysics (unfortunate terminology he used in Being and Time). He discovered another manifestation of metaphysics as "relation." There is an analogous relationship with Heideggerian metaphysics and the Faith as represented in the mystics of the Church. Mystics such as Francis of Assis, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, and many more wrote down their thoughts in ways that seem other worldly from traditional metaphysics. They lived within that traditional metaphysics, but clearly found another manifestation of them through their “relationship” with Jesus.
The analogous relationship between Heideggerian metaphysics of relation and that of the mystics of the Church is a ground I intend to cover with the aid of Edith Stein and Martin Heidegger.
Sky-Veil - The threshold of Being in this mythopoetic cosmology, representing the veil between the mundane, flat world of day-to-day existence and the enchanting retrieval of Being—between symbol and meaning, longing and fulfillment. The Sky-Veil refers to this as moving from “forgetfulness” (flat world) to “remembrance” (enchantment gleaming around the divine we have always known but forgotten). It is across the Sky-Veil that hypostatic heralds of Being—embodied symbolically by the goddesses—shimmer, and through which the soul journeys in mythic wonder toward divine encounter. Saints dwell beyond the veil in the Highlands of Majesty and the contemplative Grove Beyond; the goddesses, as “hypostatic emergences” foreshadowing divine virtues, herald through the liminal “space” in the world we encounter.
Anonymous. Meditations on the Tarot, a Journey into Christian Hermeticism. Translated by Robert Powell. Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin Putnam, 1985. Section II, p.27.
“We ask first: is it possible for a mind that knows in a temporal process to know something that endures timelessly? For this an actual contact between knower and known is needed that is itself something temporal. This will only be possible if the thing enduring timelessly has a relation to the temporal; that is, either it is analogous to a species in individuo [a species in the individual] as we found in the units of experience, or it has an effect on something temporal. In no case can something that knows in temporal acts know anything timelessly enduring immediately in its timeless existence [Existenz].”
~ Stein, Edith. Knowledge and Faith (The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Vol. 8). Kindle, ICS Publications, Institute of Carmelite Studies, 2000.
Richard Capobianco, https://www.academia.edu/89105915/The_Metaphysical_and_Spiritual_Import_of_Heideggers_Readings_of_Heraclitus
Ibid.
I know basically nothing about Catholic metaphysics or Martin Heidegger. At the same time I wanted to understand the essence of your post. What strikes me is how the experiential dimension - feeling the presence of Joan- actually enlivens the metaphysics rather than opposing it. Doctrine can explain the “what” but it is often the mystical experience that makes us want to understand the “why”. It bridges the head and the heart. Am I even close in my understanding? What am I missing?