Mazeppist Paideia

Bosnian gentleman reading the Qur'an at the graveside of a loved one.

Like that of John Keats before him, one may regard as truncated Richard Rorty's schema of "Soul-making." Rorty's tripartite schema (contingency, irony, and solidarity) can be expanded to include a fourth (Thoreauvian) dimension: ecstasy.

Through a "proper" education, i.e., one that disabuses the student of foundationalism and other forms of naive realism, the contingent nature of the human condition is acknowledged. Note that "acknowledgement" is the goal of this paideia: knowledge that is self-reflective. The journey to such acknowledgement is typically a long one. When it is reached, the student has come to terms with human being-in-the-world.

The tarbiyya (character building) involved in "coming to terms" with the human condition is not only lengthy, but also painful. Here Keats is indispensable: for he recognized the critical role of suffering in the vale of Soul-making.

Coming to terms with the process of suffering by which an individual "soul" is differentiated from a common pool of intelligence amounts to one act of reconciliation; a second act of reconciliation occurs in the aftermath of the first: for how does one go forward in light of the past? Rorty prescribed irony. The Mazeppist would agree with Rorty, but stipulate to a particular species of irony: the Jobean (Ayoubian) variety. "Though He/It slay me, yet will I trust Him/It" (Job 13:15). One moves forward not at all blind to the hazards of the road ahead but with lucid comprehension: this is the hand we are dealt; let us play it with as much wit and class as we can muster and, in so doing, demonstrate ourselves to be better than our fate.

When the ironic comportment is achieved, it is added to the acknowledgement of the first dimension. Now the student has entered her "sophomore year" as it were. She has acquired a degree of worldly wisdom, but the paideia continues; for now (if she has not done so already) she must look about her--look beyond herself--to discover the suffering of others. The fully ironized consciousness will recognize itself adrift on a ship of fools and will make a choice: for compassion over contempt, for affirmation of the human condition over self-pity and despair. And she will apply herself, to whatever degree she is capable, to alleviate the suffering of others and to enter the historic struggle against man's cruelty to man. This is Rorty's third dimension: solidarity in suffering.

At this point, Rorty's pragmatism finds its hands full. He can go no further; his spade is turned. Frankly, for many people, to reach this level of the paideia is quite an accomplishment. Indeed, if every man and woman on the face of this earth dedicated him or herself to reaching Rorty's third dimension and lived out their days actively fulfilling its requirements, we would find ourselves inhabiting a veritable Golden Age. The Mazeppist would have no objection to living in this Rortian Utopia. But there is a further possible dimension--a "fourth" dimension--available to those who can achieve it: and Mazeppist paideia would offer nothing beyond Rortian Romantic Humanism if it did not venture further.

The "fourth" dimension is the dimension of raqiya or "transcendentalism." It is the dimension of Thoreauvian ecstatic witness.

And so the fourfold paideia of the Mazeppist is as follows: contingency, irony, solidarity, and ecstasy. But what constitutes the fourth dimension (the dimension of "spiritual seniority" or shaykh-hood)? Well, courage for one thing: the courage to confront the worm that Jean-Paul Sartre asserted lies coiled in the heart of being, i.e., nothingness. Such a confrontation is a supreme exercise of freedom in the face of one's own mortal fate; and every exercise of freedom in this way requires of one the supreme sacrifice of emptying oneself of one's self. In other words, the confrontation with the emptiness that lies coiled in the heart of being requires one to identify with that emptiness and to become empty.

The fourth dimension requires yet another form of acknowledgment: for to come to terms with it, one must likewise come to terms with the fact that one has been empty all along. Being is shot through with non-being just as life and death are caught in mutual embrace.

Existentialism is a mysticism that proposes an ironic "solution" to the human condition: life lived to the full is an empty life. And so it is traditionally said that the "true Sufi" is the one who is not.

The final irony belongs to Thoreau: for the one who has stepped outside of the illusions of being this or that and comes bearing "ecstatic witness" has achieved itlaq or liberation. She is now free to redeem whatever time is allotted her brief spark of individuated life in a manner that incorporates, yes, but also goes beyond Rortian solidarity. For now she sees through the veils of being (maya). And every moment is pregnant with the new possibilities that this kind of visionary way of being-in-the-world presents to her.

She has died before her death. She is an abdal (a transcendental changeling): no matter where she goes, no matter what she does, she is free.