Tricksters and Platonism (from Twitter)

[endymions_bower]

So-called "trickster" Gods are definitely Gods, and anyone who would claim to be a Platonist and denies that They are, isn't doing it right.

 

When something happens by accident, it shows that formal causality underdetermines being. In us, this is a matter of deficiency; but in a God, of surplus causality.

 

The God who creates by accident expresses Their transcendence relative to intentional creation; the God who subverts or transgresses demonstrates transcendence over the rule-governed cosmos, which is necessary in order to have the power to institute new rules.

 

Where a "trickster" God creates the cosmos, or establishes crucial elements of it, the question as to whether that God is "good" seems vacuous, regardless of how They are said to do it. It is good that there is something rather than nothing.

 

Theologies that privilege the "trickster", positioning such Gods as demiurges, that is, as chiefly responsible for the cosmic organization, are very important, precisely because of the seam they illuminate between intellective order and that which is prior.

 

We see this especially where the Gods in question have the forms of non-human animals, subverting anthropocentricity. This is not some something opposed to the Platonic project; rather, it is the very essence of it.

 

This is why I have said at various times that we must regard the concepts of Platonism as semantically "thin", or even empty, because they cannot be allowed to obscure the theologies (that is, the theophanies).

 

To the degree that they are philosophical concepts, rather than theological symbols, they are pure relations anyway, syntactical determiners. Platonism is about patterns, relations, ultimately, not substance.

 

Nothing can be allowed to restrict the ability to shift the center. This is the point of the concept of "polycentricity", and of henadology.

 

We have to be able to think this God at the center, with everything falling into position accordingly, the meaning and value that flows from it, and now shift that perspective to the periphery and center a different one. This is the demand placed upon the philosopher.

 

(It is *not*, please note, a demand placed upon any particular worshiper. Nobody has to worship any Gods other than their own. What constitutes appropriate "peripheral regard" with respect to deities not one's own is a separate issue.)