Metaphysics has given way to prose, the field of ethical experience. It is a prosaic religion in which Good is replaced by Goodness and Justice by compassion. It is the religion of the atheist, according to Joan-Carles Mèlich, that helps us to live after the death of God. By Juan A. Martínez de la Fe.
Philosopher Joan-Carles Mèlich offers us a new contribution on a subject about which we already know through other works of his, such as Reading as a prayer, The prose of life or Against the Absolutes. This is, on this occasion, The Religion of the Atheist (Fragmenta Editorial, Barcelona, 2019), in which he deepens and advances the approaches of his previous studies.
Try to consider what form an existence would be that would be transgressive with metaphysical thinking, that is, a life located in the perspective of time and situations; In short, in what the author calls prose.
Why this intellectual effort? Because metaphysics, that philosophy that believes it is possible to achieve unquestionable, firm and secure principles beyond space and time, history and contingency, is no longer sustainable. We must therefore think of a life in prose, that is, an existence built after the death of God: an existence that survives the ruinous remains of metaphysical thinking.
Human Prosaic
With this essay, Mèlich intends to argue that "the human" is not "a transcendent, immutable, universal and eternal essence, but something prosaic, something inseparable from the world, time and space, from the inevitability of chance".
That is, from the beginning, we are situational beings living stories in which we have never just settled, but we are always on the way. It denies the existence of an Absolute that offers us meaning in life beyond space and time. Our existence does not admit trials, but we are continually in what we have to live, without the possibility of changes.
This way of existence produces anguish, in the absence of absolutes to guide us; an anguish before a threat that we cannot locate in a concrete source, but its origin is in life itself.
Because that God who has died, according to Nietzsche, is not only divinity, but includes all ideas and ideals, all metaphysics that provided us with a security base. Given this, there is only living, what the author calls "prose", which "attacks all the totalitarian philosophical, political, moral and religious forms that reflect this same metaphysical thought."
Better expressed in the words of the author in the introduction to his essay, when he advances his thesis: “An existence located in prose and, therefore, a narrative formation, have nothing to do with the acquisition of skills or programming , but with the learning of a 'religion of the atheist' in which relationships and situations are configured on a horizon in which God has died, in which there are no longer absolute reference points from which to orient. ”
From here, Mèlich is developing his approach, based fundamentally on three characters: Nietzsche, Heidegger and, above all, Milan Kundera, with references, of course, to his opponents, especially, to Kant.
Let's go with metaphysics
Mèlich goes to Thales of Miletus, when he says that everything is water, and is projected to Hegel, proposing that everything real is thinkable from a unit, from a presence that guarantees its ultimate meaning.
Thus, metaphysics is not only a way of seeing the world, but, above all, a way of inhabiting it, based on the principle that thinking and being is the same. A journey through history is what the author offers us, to conclude that the most important contribution of metaphysics is the reduction of the multiplicity of world representations to a single representation.
And what would be its function, that of metaphysics? Well, offer an absolute and meta-empirical sphere of protection. It is something like a balm of consolation, facing the eternal silence that terrifies us so much, giving meaning to life.
And being a way of being in the world, it is here that morality makes its triumphant appearance, a moral that allows to segment the world into two halves of different value. The difference between good and evil does not take place in situ, but refers to a metahistorical principle that goes beyond space and time; and it is this principle that, a priori, classifies the actions in good or bad.
For this metaphysical moral, therefore, it is possible to know each other the good and the bad, as it adapts to that moral principle outside of space and time; if this were not the case, the existence of a morality would not be viable, being, therefore, all allowed.
Given this approach, Nietzsche arises, offering a philosophy in which nothing is fixed or predetermined, “in which life is seen as a constant flow subject to contingency, random, events and events. There is no meaning in life, let alone someone who determines or guides it. ”
Every being is precisely becoming, never being at all. And, of course, concludes Mèlich, metaphysics has attempted
Life as prose
And having a life, an innocent becoming, you arrive at the identity, the self. Because, like this, there is no pure self, there is no transcendent subject, no; there are only corporeal, finite subjects, beings that are born, suffer, enjoy and die. And this self has its raison d'être in being open to the world, as soon as it comes out to meet it and not in a guiding principle that dictates its duty.
Mèlich takes up the theme of life as prose and resorts to the novel because it contains the spirit of ambiguity. And it does so by taking Milan Kundera as its main reference, for whom prose “does not only mean unverified language; it also means the concrete, everyday, bodily character of life. ”
It is about this world of modest feelings that belittled metaphysics, occupied as it was in elucidating what Justice, Truth, Dignity or Duty is; here it is spoken, prose speaks, of friendship, of vulnerability, of pain, of intimacy, of kindness, of body or of humor.
Kundera resorts to Husserl, telling us about how we are heirs of a world of facts, a world in which science and technology have invaded all areas of the human, forgetting what is really important: life.
But what is the problem? That metaphysics resists disappearing; Nietsche says that God is dead, but we do not know how to live without gods and we are dedicated to inventing new ones. Thus, for example, today the explanatory mathematics of the world now offers the security that God previously gave us, since it conveys an idea of immobility, of eternity.
Having said that, the author emphasizes that it is prose and not metaphysics that shows the different aspects of existence; an existence that does not take metaphysics into account, worried as it is in the essence, in the soul.
Prose and life
"It is prose and not metaphysics that has taken care of life, the uniqueness of the human being born, enjoys, suffers and dies." And later: "in the world of ideas we are beings for immortality, in that of prose we are beings for death, ours and that of others."
In the novel, being becomes time with what ceases to make sense; the novel shows us a world in which human beings realize that they are no longer the owners of the universe; It is not, therefore, only a literary genre, but a prosaic way of existing.
It is logical to ask, as Mèlich does, what is existence and how to understand it and, with Kundera, argues that existence is the field of human possibilities, is everything that man can become and what he is capable of.
And it is prose that teaches us that we are our situations, our relationships and our coincidences, since there is no essence, but only events and events. Thus, the existence of a previous morality is not acceptable, but to exist means that we have to find a solution to the problems that arise, those that break our tranquility and organized life.
And a very interesting aspect that brings the author hand in hand with Kundera is that of humor. According to him, metaphysics does not support humor, covered with the seriousness and depth of its concerns; Of course, what humor here does not mean laughter, mockery, satire, but refers to a specific aspect of the comic that makes ambiguous, as is life itself, everything it touches.
“You don't have to take everything seriously, [but] you have to relativize the imperatives and moral values, that you have to transgress them,” says Mèlich boldly. "There are no moral phenomena, but a moral interpretation of the phenomena," said Nietzsche and the author adds that "humor shows that nothing is inseparable from the situation in which it is."
Differences between moral and ethical
And here is one of the clues he gives us about the religion of the atheist he poses: the difference between moral and ethical. Once God is dead, how do you face the world? The anguish of being-in-the-world arises; an anguish that is synonymous with vertigo, vertigo to exist; It is not anguish before anything, but before the emptiness of the law, because "to exist in the prose of the world is to live on the edge of the precipice, before nonsense." A vertigo that is in the interstice between moral and ethical.
“No one can build you the bridge you have to walk on the flow of life. No one except you, ”says Nietzsche. It is an invitation to abandon the metaphysical vision, to inhabit prose being able to invent a life. An invitation that forces to separate from the word of the teacher and, even more, to transgress it.
Specifying: moral metaphysics stands on the basis of Good, Justice, Duty, Example, Reason, with contempt of pleasure, the situation of the moment, the body, sensitivity, testimony. To what Nietzsche, Heidegger or Kundera oppose that no life can be proposed as a role model, since life is always unique, unrepeatable, unique, a set of events and events without any purpose.
Transgression is not critical, since this is an alternative to the model; there is no ideal world to reach, which would be a rest of metaphysical morality. And here it is a question of not accepting a moral imposed from outside to which we must obey, but of seeking ethical answers; ethics is not an obedience to the law, but a relationship with the other, a fundamental point in this study by Mèlich.
Ethical responses cannot be established in advance. What the author does recognize is that a human life is not possible without some kind of morality to which principles, values and norms are transmitted.
We will never know
The author's conclusive words: “every system ends up sacralizing the world, erecting new principles that occupy the place that once belonged to God. To say it in one word, to live in the world of prose, to form and form narratively, is to accept that we will never know how to live at all. ”
God is dead, it is the end of the Absolute. But it is not the end of religion; What happens is that there is another way to deal with the fundamental questions of life.
Thus, in front of the grave in which the sacred lies, prose arises, the field of ethical experience, that of being-there; it is a prosaic religion in which Good is replaced by Goodness, where Justice is replaced by compassion.
Here there is no room for legitimate cruelty, which leaves a clear conscience; In this atheist, prosaic religion, holiness is a relationship with the other, in which he or she is more important than me; Holiness means giving.
There is no doubt that, based on the premises on which Mèlich relies, his argument is solid, although not invulnerable, since others, as valid as his own, point in another direction, although, reaching the final conclusion, the ideas of kindness, compassion, giving, of giving more importance to the other than the self, are shared at the end of an approach based on different starting hypotheses.
