Chapter 2
(The dual reality)

2.1) Starting from the individuality.

Why "starting from the individuality and not rather from the "totality"? For the simple reason that a philosophy which intends to found it on the reality must base itself on what is the "first" perceivable and certain reality "for us" (that are the subjects who look into), and it is that of "I", or if one prefers of the "himself". The totality refers to an abstract and unreal entity, appointable only how sum of all the real beings, and in as such a pure "flatus vocis" (a universal one) (42) to repeat the famous Roscellin expression. (43)

I will enter the subject from the outside, with a historical mention about the most significant modern thinker who placed the individuality and its rights to base of all his thought. This thinker, who was calling Max Stirner (44), more than a hundred and fifty years ago, was placing the problem of the singularity as human as "absolute uniqueness", combining this, in terms of "individual power", with the possession and the complete enslaving of every object both real (the things) and virtual (the thought), by which had to cease every physical or psychological dependence. Therefore Stirner is a subversive philosopher, which brand as "spirit" all what is placed outside of the individuality and prevent it from fully fulfilling. So his philosophy is one of the most radical materialistic world and existence vision. For Stirner what is "spirit" is shown like a set of "ghosts", among which are principally placed the religions and the humanisms (Christians or Marxists are they), but among which unexpectedly appears also the freedom, in as it, in its classical form, would be incompetent to express adequately the deep demand which is to the base of "uniqueness", which is not a " to free himself from" but a "to take possession of ". Coherently with this assumption in fact Stirner says that every freedom, more than to be realized, must owned and likewise the thought not exercised, but, just, "owned". To the base of the widespread possession that is realized for means of the "individual power" is an egoistic radical behaviour, absolute and unconditional, without which the individual would live "estranged by himself". (45)

Began this my speech about the individuality mentioning Stirner because I think I will not find better historian hook to introduce the theme I intend to develop. Already in the former centuries the ancient philosophers had placed the problem of the essence of the individuality (in secular sense)(46), until the Christian Scholastic thinkers who seal the uniqueness (or singularity) in the soul, immortal element without which the human individual should being only a living body among other ones. The interesting aspect in Stirner is to have turned over this perspective, attributing to the corporeal "willing" uniqueness the "unique" and absolute value which refer to, purely reserving to the soul a phantasmic existence.

The disconcerting and provocative way with which Stirner places the problem of the realization of the individuality certainly hides also the intention of place himself in antithesis to the romantic conformism which was attributing the "divinity" to the creator "genius" one. For Stirner the essence of the individuality is instead represented by the individual will to not depend than from himself, and to "only" draw from himself the reasons of self-being. However this last and original target of uniqueness make it very next to that blind "life will" placed by Schopenauer to base of everything of the "living" world (47), moved and stressed at individual level. But the important to notice is that, in any case, this corporeal Stirnerian uniqueness cannot escape from the laws of the necessity, to which is submitted the living matter in its generality and therefore it is absolutely different from the concept of individuality how is asserted in the RD.

I used the German thinker to put in clear terms the topic of a "strong" individuality, as by him conceived, to then notice the paradox inside his thesis and to oppose the our one, that centre itself in the core of idema, as uniqueness not just at the level of "necessitated" materiality but in that one of the extra-material tendency to made self free of the physic laws. On the other hand the idema is not any material "being" that live the instant of present (as in Stirnerian individuality) but is the potential "place" where happen the elaboration and formation process of something that is "irreducible" to the matter.

The theme of individuality, that I have introduced starting from the Stirner thought and on which have dwelt is one of the bases on which it has built the RD and it is starting from it that we will be able to gather the big differences with other immanentistic philosophies (from that of Buddha to that of Spinoza). In fact these ones hypostatize a Nothing or a Whole in which the individuality must melt to get the peace (the nirvana) or the realization of himself in the totality of the God-Nature. The individuality is actually represented above all by that "desire" of identity that the Buddhist wants completely to cancel, as primary source of the suffering. Desire of identity which stimulates and worries, that torments and exalts, but that pushes us to hypothesize a natural horizon of that desire, that according to the RD is an ambit in which are cancelled the "appearing" (or better "functional") qualities of the forms of aggregation of the matter (actually always reducible to the quantity)(48) and where emerge those authentic ones, escaping to such quantitative reduction. On this point a synthetic specification on which we will get back however becomes opportune. When we declare "apparent" the qualities of the matter do not intend to affirm that it is not possible to attribute some "qualities" to the material entities, but simply that they are not-substantial to the object which them shows and therefore (the pun is to forgive) are "not qualitative" qualities. In fact the qualities inherent the matter are actually "functions" and they have never "in themselves" the aesthetic or affective prerogatives what we can they attribute .

However the RD in its opposition to Buddhism an other ascetic philosophies, which pursue the fusion of individual in the totality for the target of remove the suffering, does not lead for anything the man to a situation of constant "tension", which in such case would be the exact opposite of what which proposes. In fact it places its "solution" not in the nullification of the individuality, but in "engaging" of it as starting base of positive evolution of the person and his realization. In other words, while the spiritualist monistic philosophies assert the "dissolution" of the individuality in the "totality", the RD instead wants its "consolidation" and qualitative formation into idema targeting "difference" and not "homologation".

Then we repeat again the initial question: why starting from the individuality? Because not only this one is the unique, certain and inalienable real for each of us, but because it represents also the real "frontier" of the matter. It is only in the individuality that a material entity loses the intrinsic character of the quantity, to access a quality that from the matter exceed, entering so in contact with that ambit which "is" the quality itself. Therefore this consideration diametrically removes us from a totalizing materialism where the individuality in the end is only the noblest appearance of the matter. And it is in base of this that we can say to indomitable materialists that since the sound which is to the base of the Beethoven music or the colour which animates the Michelangelo frescos are pure quantities (the acoustic or optic frequencies) looking in the individuality of the artist for what which turns such quantity into the music or painting quality becomes indispensable.

But it is there of more: the individuality is not only what makes us to think and to love (or to hate) in a "certain way", but it is also what makes us speak in a certain way, say a yes or a not in a certain way, smile in a certain way, look in a certain way, walk in a certain way, etc. Then it becomes the true "emergent" element of the matter. Of other part we can ask the spiritualists what sense could be in humiliating the individuality, which is true quality, to make it converged in a general spirit in which it would reach a "widespread and abstract perfection". This appears a clear contradiction in itself, because what which is distinguished from the generality, as particular quality, must be considered a value and not a disvalue, and that, to me seems, can be worth in general. Unless please say that the only virtue is in the obedience or in the homage to an abstract principle (the Whole or the Nothing) and in the nullification of himself.

However someone could advance the suspicion that we have thrown out the concept of soul from the door to make it re-enter through the window by means of idema. This suspicion vanishes if one considers that the idema is material and springs from the matter, while the soul would be a divine element lowered in the body. While the first is the result of an evolutionary process of the living matter (attributable so, even if in forms probably more elementary, also to other forms of the biosphere) the second would be an extraneous spiritual entity on the body, which would only be lodged from.

Of other part it must saying that the "soul" concept, not as entity of divine origin but as material principle of "animation" (i.e. of life) is as ancient as the man and that theologies have simply assumed it, changing the characteristics. The same eschatological petition of the soul survival the death of the body has been yes theorized by the institutionalized religions, but it pre-exist to them as primitive anthropological expression of the real and not equivocal separation between the essence of "living" and that of "feeling" one. That suggests a kind of original anthropological paradigm (and not necessarily religious) that could be express with: "the body lives, the mind thinks it and the soul feel", where this sensitive feel about the soul is not other than the essence of the individuality. If this elementary ascertainment, what has done by the ancient man of a hundred thousand years ago as we do it and as with all probability the men of the XXII century will do we confuse with theology, that ratifies it to rear, to covering it of "divinity" and transcendence, we perform a historical and perspective mistake, with which we fall down in the stiffened schemes of the dullest materialism. And the overcoming of old mental schemes is actually possible only recovering the grain from the bran, that is distinguish what is authentic from what is only ideological dross.

The belief of the survival of the individuality to the death of the body is ancient as much as the man and the religions if anything, in their ethical and metaphysical setting work of what which was anthropologically guessed, have not done other but rearrange "feeling" in a "belief", stiffening it in the dogma. The man is wrapped from always in the mystery of what which his reason cannot analyse and understand; by way of compensation the intuition could feel the not-rationalizable one, as who, completely being in a room dark, can intuit the immobile presence of someone that he neither hears nor sees. This is really the point which definitely distinguishes a philosophy from a religion: this one fix that "presence" as sure for doctrine, while that one reasonably advances it as rationally conceivable but uncertain proposal, therefore it forces us to search verifications and confirmations (any way and always). Proposal that everybody can refuse, and in this case going back to the harsh alternative materialism/theism, or instead take it heuristically into consideration and keep on putting and putting back it in trial. For as it concerns us, this means that it is not necessary, in every case, to accept "a pig in a poke " what our philosophy of the dual reality proposes, as it would do himself with a religion, but simply to enter "in the field" of the placed thesis and to evaluate his validity.


NOTES 2.1

(42) I refer to the so-called "Controversy about Universals", which opposed (between the XI and the XIV century) the so-called "realists", who were asserting the reality of the general concepts applied to the individuals (as classes or species), and the "nominalists", who were denying such reality, claiming that only the single individuals are real and every generalization is only a name, a "flatus vocis" (voice emission).

(43) French philosopher and theologian of the Middle Ages (end of XI Century) considered founder of the nominalism who was thinking the Trinity without reality over (as pure name) and divine only the three divine Persons separately considered.

(44) Max Stirner (Kaspar Schmidt's pseudonym) (1806-1856) is considered the most important theoretician of the individualist anarchism. His masterpiece, to which we refer, is The ego and his own (1845).

(45) Concept tight derived by that of alienation. Initially given by Hegel as objectivation of the absolute spirit, is then taken again by Marx to show the process on the basis of which what which belongs "really" to the man becomes extraneous to him, because of the perverse social situation determined by the capitalism.

(46) It goes yet kept present the interesting religious phenomenon of the Orphism. It was a mystery-spiritualistic ideology, born in VI century b.C. in Greece that considered the life as a preparation of a more high existence, in which the terrestrial element resulted overcome and "purified" in the union with that divines one. In the Orphism, even if not at all explicit, is present a dualism body/soul that will have notable influence in the contemporary and posterior philosophical thought, above all in that of Pythagoras and of Plato one.

(47) Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1869) in his The world as will and representation (1818) has theorized the "life will" as blind and irrational principle that governs all the living creatures.

(48) The RD, as we will see later, correlates from a side quantity and necessity and at the other side quality and liberty.

(49) We here are referring for example to "seductive" colours and forms of vegetables and animals, which are actually "material" functions only to service of reproduction.

(50) The formation, as we assert, corresponds to big lines to the German bildung concepted as Goethe thought it. That is as formative process of the individual sensitivity in which, in some sense (as it happen for the forms of the nature) it happens the meeting between necessity and liberty.

2.2) A thesis seeking verifications.

The RD start from the thesis which the reality is not only one but plural and that inside the plurality for human species we can reasonably only place a second real "irreducible" to the that us constitutes and founds; therefore we can, anthropically, argue only in terms of duality. Leaving from the general hypothesis we therefore have a thesis where two reality ambits coexist and uniformly spread themselves, but whose natures, being substantially different, separate makes them, even if coextensive in space and compresent in time. To give a concrete idea of this coexistence in the diversity let us think to any foam (whipped cream, foam rubber, etc) where the liquid or solid substance shares the space with the air which wrap it up, without having any physical-chemical relation with it.

But in what this mysterious second component of the universe could consist? Try to take the things from far off: In my room there are the walls, the furniture, objects of the most various natures, air, light, noise and at last, in representation of the biosphere, I and a myriad of tiny insects, down and down until billions of bacteria and to billions of billions of electrons, neutrinos, quarks, etc. All that constitutes the material reality of which my room is a tiny fragment. Then, is this the whole that fills the universe and defines it? Under a point of view strictly rational nothing opposed to this hypothesis, but our general "sense of the world" and the set of our approach faculties to the reality reveals us that the things don' t seem really to be in this way. We clearly intuit that the matter, also in evolved form of our "cerebral grey matter", can' t constitute "the whole" of the reality, because if so would be it some main aspects of ours being men they would become absolutely unreal and illusory, considered that it does not present such characteristics to be thought over neither cause nor origin of them.

What' s in fact a state of mind and how it would be possible define it as compound of elementary matter particles in activity (even if in neuronal and of synapses aggregation)? What processes of assembly and transformation can to arouse a feeling, when it would be under the point of view of the elementary constituting exactly identical to a piece of skin, but also to a piece of stone? Then, it become legitimate supposing that in the same space of the room, in which I am reading and writing, my mind state can belong to an "other" reality. This reality "other" could not be then founded by a more or less great number of immaterial entities which exist in completely independent way from the material ones and which I can only perceive some effects and so can only think them in terms of "emotional effectuality"? Or perhaps of them I can even some intuition? Maybe. But if this intuition, that everybody of us had tested at least ounce in front of a sunset on the sea or before a snowed mountain top, or in front of a beautiful painting or before the face of a dear person, really could be a sensible signal of that unknown reality which yet us escapes?

This was in fact the hypothesis and the starting point of the RD; but one must consider that all this, maybe unusual, is not completely new, since an important precedent exists. In a certain way even already the "res extensa" (matter) and the "res cogitans" ("spirit") of Descartes were alluding to something of this kind, even if at the end both were subject to the only "divine substance", and therefore this dualism is only apparent, because sentenced to fall again (even if by the "outside lines" of the Creation) in a monism one. But there is another great difference which divides the Cartesian dualism from the RD: this one in fact considers the intellect and the reason not in the res "cogitans" or "spirit"(as it thought Descartes) but in that "extensa" (the matter).

But a true dualistic theory of the world had already appeared about twenty-six centuries ago, in the context of the Indian thought. It were cultivated and developed until to receive systematic formulation in the XIV century, but after decayed, obscured by the triumphing Buddhist monism and by the polytheism of the dominant Hinduism, which was based on the dharma (51) , justifying the caste social set. I am speaking of the Samkhya (52), which is one of the six ancient philosophical systems historically identified of India.

Of it I learned after to tormented myself for many years about the hypothesis of the existing together of two different reality ambits. Hypothesis of which I had not found track nowhere and that was to me appearing as something of so queer that I not dared turn it into a thesis. From my dubious reflections was coming a mass of ideas quite confused, from which was emerging this charming dualistic hypothesis, which was making justification of the reality of our emotions and in the same time of our impossibility to have any notion of feasible cause one. My very vague hypothesis was to me appearing attractive but also quite problematic and as well in disagreement with my reason itself. I was also pushed towards to some dualistic sketch but was lacking the intellectual courage to assumes it seriously and give it a defined form. To me needed a ray of light that lit up the dark profile of it. To me needed a precedent, known and recognized that legitimated the appearance of that absurd idea and drove me to abandon my insecurity about the rational legitimacy of that hypothesis. That precedent I should have found by chance and luckily in that ancient philosophical system, of which I had found track in a comparative history book.

I am obliged to point out the fact that never was been interested in eastern philosophy, totally feeling that cultural context stranger to me and to which I was looking with deep suspicion. However, when among the folds of that world unknown to me appeared, in way random and unexpected, the Samkhya, I received suddenly that light and that courage blow which were helping me every delay break to. Slowly all pieces of my disconnected puzzle were finding their place, and little by little I was proceeding the horizon was opened beyond which appeared something of extraordinary, scandalous, denied and emarginated from always. Everything were appearing finally clear and what which had been only a hypothesis now was shape, until to keep the contours of a genuine and real vision of the world, which were reconciling me what I was feeling a long time from.

But at last, after all this, I repeat once the rhetorical question: why should must exist a second reality of which we don' t have any perception? This one in facts was the remaining problem, but I later became aware that was its premise to be wrong. The perception is a knowledge act due to the senses and "instead" those experiences, which I had always considered as fruit of an "other" reality differing from matter (the feelings, the aesthetic emotions, the ethical aspirations, etc.), they could yes come through the senses, but from them they weren't depending at all. Then these experiences must depend from "something" else having place in brain (as they are bonded in some way to thinking matter) but this elusive "something" must had a nature much more complex of what producing thought or psychic states, i.e. the electro-chemical processes related to neurons, synapses, etc. Because, placing this "elusive" one beyond the conventional emotionality to define it was no possible with a think of linguistic type, nor rationalizing it in formulable and verbalizing inductions or deductions, but it was relating to an extraintellectual "feeling" that was escaping to every solid determination.

With the time the answer arrived. It was simple, just too simple, but to the end it impose itself with a logical strength quite elementary that immediately convinced me: we can perceive and know only what is directly or indirectly "reducible" to matter which us constitutes, from the feet to the head, brain included. I once realize that answer was not at all original (53); but why he had delayed so to arrive? And however, if the feelings are born in an extraneous center to the thought, how is it possible to think of "think them"? Without some notion, if no rational at least rationalizing, on all that it was only possible to let a silence mantle lower, leaving to my personal imagination free field, but then closing all that in my head and throwing the key away. After, with the reflection, the suspicion came that this vice of mine always to want to take everything in front of the court of the reason could paradoxically lead to a kind of hyper-rationalistic "anti-realism". So was it that, little by little, I started finding most plausible my hypothesis and even reasonable. To that followed also some backgrounds of possibility in which the hypothesis was buying more reality. And the reality of it came setting up in what I would then have afterwards called argumentation of the irreducibility. Not long this remained alone, after another one came on which seemed me to throw a certain light on it, turning out a completion on the moral plan. In the end went the third argumentation, ascribing to a previous reflection about different perception of material reality and aitherial reality of any object or fact. To these three argumentations I gave then the names of "logic", "ethic" and "observational-perceptive".



NOTES 2.2

(51) The dharma in the Hinduism is the cosmic law that governs the world, which create the harmony to which every individual must concur, respecting the rôle that has been assigned to him by the birth, on the basis of the caste of membership of his parents. A strict religious collection of precepts prescribes for each caste the behaviour rules to respect. The accomplishment of such duty is one of the foundations of the Hinduist religiousness in general. Therefore the dharma owns this prerogative of absolute "ethical duty".

(52) I will provide a short picture of the essential aspects of the Samkhya system. For it the reality is dual, constituted by the prakriti (the matter) and infinites purusa (souls or individual spirits). The prakriti is the early element and origin and cause of all the existing things: chaotic, active, irresponsible, infinite and eternal. Instead the purusa represents the spiritual monad of the individuality, which (identifiable also with the "himself") is also it eternal. But unlike the prakriti, the purusa is immaterial, without form, inactive, immutable and insensitive. Of other part his existence is perceived as conscience of the individuality. It is furthermore pure intellection, light of the knowledge and cosmic stability. Unlike the immutability of it the prakriti is unconscious engine of "evolution", which determines the destiny of the creatures through the law of the karman (the dead is reincarnated in forms corresponding to the quality of the actions according to the kept behaviour with respect to the dharma) in an eternal cycle of revivals, the samsara. To reaching of the "evolved one" (the purusa of himself) one opposes the illusory and fallacious "empiric subjectiveness " (ahamkara) which is false and diverting image of the purusa. This ignorance of the truth is cause of that pain which soaks the human existence. From this depraved circle exit is possible when the thinking substance (the buddhi), also it material, comes to the true knowledge. In this process the purusa acts towards the individual prakriti as a magnet, which without directly acting, attract it towards itself up to the reaching of the truth. At this point, exceeded the reflecting in empiric ego, the self its authentic being reaches, in a superior, eternal and absolute, isolation state.

(53) Already Empedocles was asserting, "the equal knows the equal".

2.3) Logical argumentation. (The irreducibility).

This first argumentation can also be exemplified leaving from classical metaphysics, (all today to base of the Christianity), in which, placed two not homogeneous substances between them, like the matter and the spirit, which ontologically is cause of the other (God) can know the lower one created by him (the world) and not vice versa. But a time got God out of the way, the hypostasis of hierarchic relation between that two substance come to fall, they aren't connected between them any more and also the theoretical impossibility of any reciprocal knowledge emerges. Therefore, if my thesis of a double anthropic reality is plausible, the intellective and rational faculties of our brain (matter made) no possibility of accessing the "irreducible" knowledge of what which doesn't have origin in the matter (but in any other) they'll never have.

Let's go to develop better the theme. There are moments of our life during which we get some experiences whose mental effects will be referable, in hypothetical terms, to mysterious cerebral processes which escape to every scientific investigation. Their nature, just under a scientific point of view, is so ephemeral and insubstantial that, past the circumstances in which they happened, those effects seem to disappear in the nothing, only leaving of themselves a mnemonic more or less marked track.

They are as suspensions or accelerations of the vital flow, that alter for an instant of the existence the normal modality to exist and to feel himself existing, to then disappear, returning a metaphoric material light that makes recognizable the daily reality, the laws of cause and effect, the certainty of the facts and of the bodies, the sure perception of "I think", the awareness of our body and of the rest of the world that surround us. But, while we know exactly that constitutes the reality of the matter, that in every his details are able define and calculate, what do we know of the dark motive of the emotion that take us during the listening of a certain music? Absolutely nothing other the verifiable effects on our nervous system. But we are rather silly if limit us to identify it simply with that acceleration of the heartbeat that accompanies even every other more banal emotion. And yet, this mysterious "cause" we cannot besides think it few "real", but neither casual, since within certain limits it is repeatable. Not only, but it may straight be common to other persons with them we are in company. Of other part, a music is made of sounds, but are not the sounds to organize themselves in the music. So as a painting is made of colors, but with colors one does not painting. And likewise, the poetry is composed by words, but the words doesn't be enough to do the poetry.

Generally we may say that every feeling has yes even a material cause, that however is not at all able to explain it. Returning to the music I want take an example: in an air for voice of Mozart material are the sounds which constitute the background, as are material the tools that give out them, as is material the voice that sing, yet the result of all this possesses an "added value" without which that air "would not exist" . But from the moment that not there is its creator (Mozart) to re-create here and now, this mean that it has an immaterial and potential reality that is actualized by that set of material instruments that the creator has imagined and tied to the aitherial product, which can be repeated in thousands of technological products. The aitherial product of starting is only one, but it may actualize itself, in the time and in the space, in a practically endless number of executions, in which a further "additional value" can be given from every single performer that has the sensibility to go beyond the materiality of the musical text and of the given out sound.

In consideration of the fact that however that musical effect happens in our brain, of which are known structures and functions, you legitimately think that it is a secondary phenomenon of the cerebral matter, as the fruit of a particular state excitational of it, what some positivists philosophers have called epiphenomenon. I even had thought so for many years, without never derive authentic conviction, but with a certain thin torment of intellectual dissatisfaction that flowed in a definite refusal in the depths of my conscience. To enter still better in the theme I'll make a digression of historical-personal character, that will illustrate the antecedent and the genesis of this argumentation, that I have defined a little pompously: logical.

For a lot of years, in my radical materialism, that seemed to me the only vision of the world " rationally possible", I felt this epiphenomenal explanation as logically unexceptionable, but at the same time as intuitively unacceptable: a kind of " absurd ". And yet I did not able to imagine anything that were not, somehow and however, reducible to the elementary particles of the matter: position not void of schizophrenic elements. This conviction, inexorably come out throughout many of reflection years(and more wanted than heartfelt ) drove me in a deep state of frustration. It denied every reality to aesthetical emotions, to the affections, to the ethical feelings and to cognitive enthusiasms that I experimented and I felt as absolutely " real ".

In the adolescence and in early youth I thought that all that of beautiful and noble they had given me to was a sign of the divinity. Generally all the answers to my existential problems seemed me simple, immediate and convincing. All was clear, to the light of a faith that explained and guaranteed every thing or aspect of world. Now, as materialist, all seemed me to fall in a well of absurd nihilism devoid of sense. In the more serious period of my fifty-year-old man crisis, with phases of authentic desperation, I had tried even to revisit my fallen beliefs, in the attempt to recover them, even to cost to humiliate my reason. A great deal of time was gone, but not much to forget the bases of the faith in which I grew, that I had accepted and practised till eighteen years. Then I have re-examined the run that me had led to the materialism, ready and prepared for throw back it in favor of a return to a transcendentalistic belief that gave me psychic well-being. But to the end the conclusion not has been distinct from that acquired over the years: the idea of a God "creator, legislator, orderer and provident" seemed me more destitute of sense of when I never have thought, and that all in favor of the conception of a blind " necessity " of the matter.

Anyway that investigation allowed me to recover a concept become then fundamental in the elaboration of the DR: that of soul , replaced only later with that of idema. It, after the abandonment of the religion, was remained in me as that vague concept of common speech that attributes to it feelings and behaviours of high-minded character. Suddenly it appeared me instead as that tool situated in the brain, which, as an aerial, were able to receive the signals of the "irreducible" to the matter (54). Signals not translatable in speech just because of different nature from that material of our mind. For this reason came the complete absence of perception of the "irreducible", but only its intuition in peculiar mental states, those in which idema is active. That this intuition can not be a pure hallucinatory state seemed me of all evidence: anyone is able to experiment, even if with different causes and circumstances, in normal health of conditions, to any race belongs, under any latitude and probably from the mist of time.

I have think over to long on the name to give to the "irreducible" and to the end, as already said, I have choose that of aiteria. But must repeat to avoid any misunderstanding: the aiteria not transcend us, but is immanent to us, even if unknowable: this differentiates from the traditional conceptions of the spirit of the abrahmitic monotheisms. It is " here ", around us, "to the margin" of matter, with which it go along, more or less as in a foam where a gas (the air) is present within the liquid without yet do part.

But where is to the end the logic of this argumentation? I would say in the deletion of any irrational hypostasis of the spirit and in the ascribing the so-called spiritual experiences to the essence of our individuality (the idema), that too being body exceeds material corporeity and that therefore (in its oneness) is subtracted to the "necessary" processes of matter. And it is just for this ability to get out to the laws of the matter (that too constitutes it) that the idema has then the possibility to enter to a relationship with that to that is "irreducible". The aiteria then is a unknowable reality, that is offered only to the intuitive sensitivity, always supposed from the man from the mist of time and which concept has illegally phagocytized and manipulated from the religions in transcendental sense.



Notes 2.3

46) Only later I realized the inopportunity of using a term by now so abused and equivocal, substituting it with idema.

2.4) Ethical argumentation (Sense of the justice and of the pity: the absurdity and the contradiction ).

In the daily life, apart from the satisfaction or dissatisfaction for as "go the things" we are continually struck from the inequity that pervades our world. Inequity that is not only produced from the so-called "wickedness" of the man, but that is internal and structural to the life and to the evolution of the biosphere. This is a site of ferocity and cruelty on the dry land, in the sea and in the sky, because the animals get out of nutriment the energy for life and that request and determines the terribleness in the food chain. Neither the perspective changes if we think about the natural happenings, in their effects, sometimes perverse, just on the existence of the most weak and defenceless.

Looking closer up what we are, is easy realize that our genetic patrimony has determined talents and handicaps, are they physical or mental, that are a great deal more conclusive, for the success or the defeat, of all the good intentions or of the praiseworthy efforts to reach a legitimate and desirable end. If the rectitude sometimes is winning it is often in uncertain and relative sense. Too often the arrogance, the astuteness and the fraud (among the beasts as among the men) produce positive and lasting effects on the existence of an individual or of a group, in accordance with logics that our conscience and our instinct of justice refuse. Generally the misfortunes or the fortunes strike the humanity at random, in a way that seem very "immoral". This has done say by someone that if God there is, he governs the world not in accordance with love and justice, but instead with perverse sadism. That especially for the fact that, with few exceptions, the evil and the good are feeding themselves as a contagion, off the good will or the honesty of the intentions of anyone runs away them or looks for them. The evil, with its happening, favors and provokes other evil, while the good " benefits ", " blesses " and produces other good.

The moral rebellion that rush in us in face of an iniquitous distribution of prizes and punish is not casual or sporadic, but general, motivated and deep. This demands an answer (and not merely consolatory) that delineates believably a conceptual scenery of global character and not depending on the case's caprices or of a God considered kindly disposed and not malicious. This demand real, constant and universal is.

In front of this scene resolutely pessimistic we oppose that optimistic coming by evolution of civilization, which besides legal culture and organization of action means even promote the ethics of pity and solidarity, joined with a democratic social structure efficient and functional, in which is recognized the human of rights and duties equality, joined to the care of unlucky persons, to whom a modern civilization has to recognize the further right to be helped and protected. But all that the civil man can do to correct the cruel laws of biosphere not changes the structure of the living world, that is biologically "perfect" and at the same time (from the ethical point of view) quite "perverse".

But there is of more; the reality that we experiment is not only unjust in ethical terms, but it is even strongly contradicting in cognitive terms. In the sense that just goes out from the hard laws of the physics and of the biology, that us concerns as men, all the happenings that interest the human race, to level of the individual as of the crowds, show themselves much often casual, incoherent and incomprehensible. And has to ask why never the man would have to be equipped with a so distorted mental capacities to do appear illusively negative that one would not exist in the reality: the contradiction and the absurdity of the world under the ethical point of view.

Then, if the contradiction exists, and if human feelings as the pity becomes in their turn absurd in comparison with the logic of the living, of the selection and of the predominance of the more adapt, must ask from where originates the ethical appeal that does be born those our attitudes based on affection or solidarity so different from collaborative logics of all the other social animals and from the common parental cares common to all living world. It is evident not be any biological nor rational logic to keep alive an elderly and only sick person to receive still her affection and to lavish the our. The human affections, in themselves, cannot have origin in the living matter, that goes on entirely different roads and that to positively evolve has, on the contrary, to ignore such human "degeneration". The flock of elephants abandons the ill old one, the more strong eaglet kills that more weak because his parents would not are able get both the food, the little cuckoo throws down from the nest his little friends that are the legitimate inhabitants, and we can do hundreds of other example of "immorality" in the nature (55). Likes us or not this is the "true" nature, that nature that some irrealistic and naïve jusnaturalistic (56) man of wild "goodness" (tardy follower of Rousseau) still today imagines as a biblical terrestrial heaven that the man would have twisted and of which instead the man has to rationally accept and understand the merciless, hard and ineluctable biological logic.

Therefore becomes necessary to think that what is absurd for the living matter and infringes her laws must somehow turn virtually "off" the biological reason (57) that it governs. So this ethical argumentation send back and may find confirmation in the connotations of that reality "other" that what the DR has set to side (to the margin) of the matter. A reality that somehow itself reveals and us involves, in which ambit have to be absent that aspects of the world that reveal themselves incompatible with our human "ethical sense" of the justice, that the living matter in its remain and evolve doesn't resolve, but, on the contrary, dramatically stress.

Then we are able to take an other footstep forwards and arrive to form the hypothesis that our individual sensibility contains an element "of contrast" with the laws of the matter and that it would be theoretically able to not be liable to the laws of the living, or, at least, tend to free of them. If this hypothesis is legitimate "something" of it would be able then perhaps even get out to the death of the body that supports it, in an enough reasonable extramaterial "permanence" more or less long. Yet, if that would be acceptable, this is not surely not it is some for a naïve and trivial principle of compensatory indemnity, as propose the religion, but because the finitude of the material body perhaps cannot implicate the annulment even of that with all evidence pursues logics very different from that of the living matter.

The contradictoriness of the past and recent history of the human society seems therefore confirm the existence of something that " pollutes " the mechanisms of the perfect world of the matter, regulated from the physics and from the biological reason of living matter in evolution. This "something" is then to suppose to be an unknown constituent of the general reality, even if heartfelt and intuited, but completely incompatible with the evolutionary and conservative reasons of the biosphere, which put aside entirely from the our "moral" motives.

On the contrary, our moral motives are often opposing and straight injurious of the laws of that biological reason that govern the life and its maintenance to the best. What do we think of that glorifies champion of the feline evolution that is the male lion if after killed the rival not will kill even all his children? If he would be taken from the pity what is becoming to his offspring and of the laws of the selection? And what say of the lionesses if not will come at once in heat to make children for the new head, but instead she will loiter to cry the killed ones? How to is seen, already only taking in consideration the ethical feeling of the pity, we realize that this is itself a serious insult to the laws of the living matter.

So far all answers to the inequity and to contradictoriness of our world is substantially referable in three categories, which, for simplicity and conciseness, will define "rational", "elusive" and "transcendental". The first, native in the antiquity, but imposed itself in the eight hundred with the evolutionistic positivism, denies all kind of extramaterial reality that can us concern and postulates, with the death, the zero resetting of all living being in its individuality, in favor of the " life " in its totality. It sees therefore the justification of all that happens in the general mechanism of the macrocosm and in the evolutionary logic of the living species, which are maintained and are improved through the fitness, the competition and the struggle for survival. The development and the amelioration of a species happen just because it is able to react positively, adapting to the happenings, changes and evolutions of the context where it is integrated. While the decadence and the extinction is the result of the weakness, is it sexual, psychologically disturbed or somatic of an individual, of a species or of a genus. Finally, the biological "good" is ascribing to the unstoppable affirmation of the more strong or of the more adapt and the "evil" to what damage this eugenic principle.

We can find the second answer in the great oriental spiritualistic philosophies ( Buddhism, Taoism, etc.) which postulate, approximately, a formation and elevation process of the individual soul toward the soul of the "Whole", with the abandonment of the individuality, as slave of the desire and of the pain, toward a condition of " fusion " in the Global Spirit (of the Whole), as stable, final and permanent reality. I have defined "elusive" such solution, because to seem me that attribute the pain in the world to purely psychic or intellectual causes (attachment and ignorance) and think that it is enough to "discover" the "truth" to do disappear it, means elude the terms of the reality itself.

The third answer is that expressed (even here a little generalizing) from the three "abrahmitic"(58) and monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), and more specifically from the second, which affirm that the misfortunes and the sufferings (the effects of the Evil in general) are by God allowed or sent to put the men to the test of their faith and that through their behaviour (fidelity, devotion or submission) shows the respect for the divinity (or its sinful contrary). This is an answer of great effectiveness, because it guarantees an indemnity of the suffering, even if deferred, for anyone has faith and lives it in accordance with the doctrine, dictated divine revelation in terms of commandments and precepts. Besides it is a "perfect system" of prizes and punishes post mortem, closely connected to the good or to the evil that the men produce with their profession (or negation) of faith and with the their voluntary actions.

Evidently the first answer seems too cruelly inhuman and nearly revolting for the greatest part of us. The second, a little too elusive in its escape from the suffering, with the negation of the reality of a perceivable and managing individuality, to advantage of a vague and abstract " totality ". The third one, in its marvellous arbitrariness, is " divinely " and " providentially " consolatory, heralding with hope in a future when God will pay justice, but clash against the more elementary relative scientific knowledge about our universe, in imaging "out" of it a prize and a punishment places on absolutely material connotations. Therefore the first insults the feeling, the second insults our men identity and the third one insults our reason.

In face on this incompatible opposition the DR offers an answer that confirms the first (with regard to the material ambit) and, in a certain sense, makes nearly true the third, provided that it come ascribed to a, perhaps possible, immaterial future yes, but however immanent to the universe and not transcendent or fantastically located " out of " of the reality of it. And here I neglect that contradictory and absurd " resurrection of the body ", for which our body would come to coexist with the divine "Spirit", which, a time of more, to underlines the evident "materiality" that pervades the abrahmitic doctrines, where the hypostasis of the Spirit grafts on concepts exclusively referable to the matter.

The ethical argumentation therefore is useful to put adequately the idema in the physical and extraphyisical context of the existence and of the eschatology. The idema, as we seen better later on, has to have probably the function to percept, receive the aither and elaborate it, producing that kind of " individual spirit " (or idioaitherion) that, perhaps, would be able, coherently with the premises, subsist even after the death of the body, entering then in an eschatological future that in a all new way would replace the mystifying "life to come" of the religions and of the parapsychology. But the idioaitherion doesn't be able obviously and in any case to have consequent and functional characteristic to the idema that is its origin and then get out totally to every spiritualistic relationship not only with the "soul" of the western monotheism, as well with the âtman (59) of the oriental philosophy.

The idema, that extracognitive "function" of our mind, in its working to receive aither and transforming it, "build" itself for concretion and evolution (51) . That hypothetical future then would be able to ensure survival of something of us that has become "irreducible" to matter and that is no more subject to inflexible laws of necessity. Becomes then even legitimate and consequent add that in us, as of now, can be building an extramaterial entity that would be able to go, perhaps, toward an eschatological future. If so were, we can be protagonists even of an autoevolution process toward an aitherial entity, for which (and in a certain sense) would be able affirm that we perhaps "will be that we are now becoming ", every day, till the moment when our marvellous bodily machine will return to the nature from which originates.

In any case the future of the essence of our individuality is not imaginable as a heaven, in the sense that all that concerns the aither cannot arbitrarily be expressed in human categories and then material ones, type pleasure like or beatitude. Since a thing is of the all obvious: the suffering and pleasure categories, tightly connected to our material structure, are of the all destitute of sense if report to an extramaterial entity as the aither.


NOTES 2.4

55) That is one of the reasons for which the RD think that the "poetization" of the nature is a specific human phenomenon, relative to idemal perception of the aither that wrap the matter.

56) The doctrine of jusnaturalism is that doctrine philosophical-juridical that affirm the existence of rules of natural and rational laws to which the human ones have to conform. Elaborate in the XVII century it had as initiator Huig de Groot, followed by Locke and Hobbes. Jean Jacques Rousseau intervened on the theme hypothesizing a primitive and perfect natural state (of "good savage") that the human culture would have perverted, favoring the inequity and the embezzlement.

57) I introduce here the concept of biological reason, as complex of necessary laws to assure the biological progress and the life continuity in general. It favor the species of the individuals biologically more efficient in assuring, starting to stated conditions, the best vital performances in general to conserve and improve the reached evolutionary level.

58) In the sense that they recognize to Abraham the paternity of the "opening" of the direct relationship between the man and God.

59) In the Hinduism and in the Buddhism, with few differences, the âtman is considered the spiritual essence and first/latest cause of all universe. In such sense it is even identified with the brahman, the vital power that produced and holds in life all beings of universe. The idema results instead conceptually neighbour to the purusa of the Samkhya, which is spirit or individual conscience, but that means even simply "person" or "man".

60) I advance here that the aither would be able possess basic elements (like the elementary particles of the matter) as minimal unity bearing the characters of the aither. To these hypothetical unity I have given the name of pneumas. They could be the aitherial "first matter" which the idema perceives, introjects and elaborates, forming and growing the idioaitherion. The pneumas would be besides considered (for the idema) even of the analogous of the fundamental sources of energy for the subsistence of the body: like the food, the sun and the oxygen.

2.5) Observational-perceptive argumentation.

This third argumentation was added after over six months from the end of the layout of this first part of Necessity and Liberty. I have qualified it with a double attribute because did not still decide if in the phenomenon that intend underline prevails the pure perception or the intention (or the attitude) of the observer-receiver. In other words: it is the perception "guiding" the observation or is this that "decides" what has to be perceived? The odd fact is that such argumentation appears after the other two, while the awareness of it has preceded for a very long time every other consideration on foundation of RD, going back really to the years of my distant adolescence. In that time I used ask me if it were possible with the painting testify of a possible hidden reality of an object, beyond of what revealed from its physical appearance, that already the photo stood out quite perfectly (even if bidimensional simplification). This my ancient reflection seem me today that, even roughly and naively, was recalling approximately the very learned husserlian phenomenology, which, in that moment, was to me completely unknown and that even after interested me not much (61). Perhaps because it was deeply presupposed before the birth of the RD, this observational-perceptive theme was so taken for granted and so not emerging as argumentation? Probably!

To get to the point: every aspect of the reality (is it natural phenomenon or object) is unobservable and imperceptible jointly and contemporarily from a physical-structural point of view and from an affective-aesthetical one. This is the thesis that I intend sustain. All of us had been able to do this enough banal verification in more occasions and with the more varied elements of categories of the reality. If we observe a flower from the point of view of the botanist not are able to do it contemporarily from that of the painter. This not means that the painter is not able be a botany researcher and that the botanist not is able to be a painter, but simply that the approach of the observer to the observed is "here and now" either scientific or aesthetical and that is unable to be in both way in the same time.

But I foresee a possible objection to this my assumption so expressible: it is not a problem of alternative catching, but of attention; our mind is in fact functionally structured to selectively perceive the reality, otherwise would come submit to a super-work improper and unproductive! From here the necessity of the intention-attention that leads the mental system to consider the elements of the reality one at a time, to be able focuses them opportunely, with an appropriate and concentrated psycho-cognitive investment. The objection is correct and motivated, but it not goes against the presented thesis, indeed it completes it, in the sense that the DR duality coincides with the monothematic focusing of the attention, phylogenetically made to the target to avoid not-working of our brain. In other words, the theme of the attentional selection to the perceivable things of the reality, biologically accompanies that observational-perceptive one, which sets on the philosophical ground what here we are developing.

Yet our operation, that look at divide still a time the reality in two ambits even on perceptional plan, is legitimate and objective or aprioristic and instrumental? If we analyse with calm the subject, have to ascertain that to be conscious of the ecosystem that contains a flower, or of the structure of the carbon, which is the base of the organic matter that it constitutes, or the electromagnetic phenomena that determines its color, are actually all elements concurring with the reasons of the forms of petals, anthers and pistil in view of the reproduction, while the aesthetical elements remain entirely extraneous and even diverting. And viceversa, if a flower is seen for its beauty (or for the memories that recall) all the considerations of physical or biological kind not only are extraneous but even diverting the mood that is tried. With that we intend to say that exist two blocks that give us information, the first (physical, chemical and biological) concurring to the cognitive approach (intellective-rational) and a second one, emotional-abmotional (about beauty/ugliness, appeal/repulsion, etc). This one leads to conscience states of feelingly (idemal) character and therefore the two blocks are (under the observational and perceptive point of view) between them incompatible and alternative.

The further problem, but that pertain to the cognitive sciences and not the philosophy, it is if the various information sent from observed to observant are separated in starting or if is our perceptive systems to do head to different nervous structures that creates and elaborate the mental image. But, as we already observed to the paragraph 1.1 about the transformation of the animal structures in consequence of the information taken from the environment, we are inclined to give greater credit to the cognitive theories on "ecological" base in comparison with that "analogical" ones (62), even if they concern a field of investigation that lies outside from our purposes and whose developments we will limit to follow with attention, but from a distance.

The "duality" of approach to the reality is regarding every aspect of the visible world, as of that audible, as of that exclusively thinkable or imaginable. As we consider the water of the sea, or the solar rays to the sunset, the earth under our feet or the bugs which live into, the sky by day or at night, always we behaviour either as potentially "aesthetical-affective" observers or "scientific-pragmatic" ones. In our consideration of the other human subjects this matter can present itself in a way decidedly more complex, since it is hard to judge when the liking for an other person is assignable more to estimation or more to sex appeal, or the antipathy to the fear to receive damages or to physical repulsion, but certainly we are always able to individualize, in the complexity, two perception spheres that separately pertain to the physical-structural elements of the observed person or that aesthetical-affective ones. A doctor, accustomed to judge the health of his patients from the state of the skin or from the colour of the ocular conjunctiva, whereas gathers negative aspects on the face of his mother he will only in the following instant to the "clinic" remark notation transfer on the plan of the feelings what he has perceived and surely not contemporarily to the scientific remark. Or exactly the contrary will happen, and the initial perception of the state of pain of a dear person (and the impulse to remedy) will push him to the clinical observation to decide what to do to solve the problem.

The fact that a spiders researcher or of worms arrive to love so his objects of investigation from to judge they beautiful and love passionately such animals he study, contrarily or what thinks the profane, not invalidates our observation but it is only a corollary. In fact the beauty or the ugliness, so as love or deprecation, they are not objective phenomena but entirely relating to the subjectivity of the judging one. It is instead important notice that when the scientist considers analytically his object of study left aside the sympathetic attitude that made him an entomologist rather than a botanist, while in an other moment he is able to think about his little animals with apprehension or liking without activate for nothing his usual professional criterions of investigation, that will reserve to other moments.

But one other consideration is still to do for completion of this argumentation. Any is the reason for which an aspect of the reality offers itself to the unintentional perception or to the voluntary observation they are always two consideration blocks that meets in the general judgment about them, which stay originally separated. The considerations about the utility and the usability are always separated from those of pleasure or repulsion in front of the reality. The admiration of a underwater fisherman for the elegance with which move a shark in the water not has any possibility to coincide with the terror that tries when gathers the threat; that even if the two feelings are able be together in producing the resultant to the base of his behaviour. So as the temptation of a meteorologist to stop in place while the hurricane approaches, to gather completely the appalling beauty, it is extraneous in the instinct of self-preservation that would push it to run away. In other words, both the underwater fisherman and the meteorologist, are on the razor's edge of the material experience and of the aitherial one and just the superimposition of the two submits them to a terrible stress because that opposition. This kind of dissociative experience there is probably not in the greatest part of the other animal species, where the idema is much primitive or irrelevant for the behaviour.

The material/aitherial stress of some dissociative situations, certainly appeared in clean way in a certain phase of the hominization (63) , has probably had also an important effect on the evolutionary plan, even if I think to be a lot of difficulty to judge (I suppose even for the specialists) if such stress has been able to lead modifications in the genome of the homo sapiens (64) or more simply was fundamental is ground state for the cultural evolution, with regard to the emotional dispositions in situations of appeal/fear, of interest/repulsion ones or of authentic pulsions of love/self-destruction.

The access of the homo (in some phase of its evolution) to the idemal perception of the aither has brought with it a complex of emotional and intellective states unthinkable before that moment. If the actual structure of the idema would appeared suddenly it probably would have devastating effects on the maintenance of our species, for which it is to think that in a gradual (even if rapid in terms of cosmic time) formation of the idema as we have now, such to allow the adjustment of the other mental organizations to such disruptive emergency. Remain to ask us because of the plurality that we hypothesized only one other (the aither) besides the matter (the substance that flow within us and about us) and not "others" became accessible. Probably that happened because we not would be able "to bear" the information bombardment and solicitations that from them would come. But we cannot exclude that future mutations of the homo sapiens, heralding of a new speciation, or the appearance of new species derived from other biological lines, are able go toward horizons of such kind. But if that had to happen (or even were already happened in some place) we never know it.



NOTES 2.5

(61) Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) with his phenomenology wished an approach to the reality of an object leaving aside the practical-empirical connotations of it. For Husserl the "true" reality of an object (the essence) is offered only in a contemplative type of cognitive attitude, with a suspension (epoché) of the common and current judgment. It seems to me rather evident the platonic foundation of such conception, which has had a notable influence on the philosophy of the XX century (Heidegger, Scheler, Sartre, etc.). In any case even in the husserlian phenomenology we meet a vision "hierarchical" of the reality. The physical-phenomenal data are believed in a certain sense only "appearances" of the thing and contrasting with "essence" of it. Still a time we meet not the "pluralist diversification" of the reality, but its "monistic dissociation" , what leads to the subordination of "evidence" of it to what would be the "essence".

(62) Without to go into the complex debate on this point, that cross from some time the world of the experts of the cognitive sciences, are enough say that the approach that have here defined "analogical" founds on the principle that analyses the operation of the human brain as a special structure, which would create mental images (informations) on the external world apart from the intrinsic reality taking in consideration ( in such sense "analogous" to the reality), while for that "ecological" one the information is already present in the stimuli that the reality (the environment) produces on the observant-thinking function, which not does that record and entering in resonance with it. This in accordance with point of view placed by James J.Gibson after the 1970, which contested the approach tightly cognitivist grounded on the HIP (Human Information Processing), which founds its searches on the analogy among the operation of the human brain and that of computers. From the 1976 (with Knowledge and reality) even Ulric Neisser, one of the founders of the cognitive sciences, accepted the thesis of Gibson, even if with some variations.

(63) It is so defined in anthropology the complex of evolutionary processes that from the early hominid leaded to the homo sapiens.

(64) About this theme is interesting the point of view of Konrad Lorenz; explained in The other face of the mirror (Adelphi 1974 pag. 302): << When we find that conclusive motor schemes and fixed norms of the behaviour are able to be called "generally human", that is when their presence is verifiable in the same identical form with the men of all the cultures, then we are able suppose with probability near to the certainty that they are planned phylogenetically and that are set by hereditary way.