So, as always, there is a need to summarize 'what is going on here'.
Esteemed Dubious there are 5-6 different points I would like to comment on but more pressing matters demand attention. If we are not summarizing, if we are not making the effort to actually grasp what each of us is saying (and some,
saying, say nothing or next to it, and that too must be included in the summary), we are getting
no-where.
My first thoughts are that Dubious denies the reality of the metaphysical:
Dubious writes: It was never a matter of convincing anyone directly but analytically purveying a subject or some aspect of existence and simply seeing what we can see instead of over-inflating it by a too luxuriant imagination...and once again, wishful thinking that there must be some actual, inviolable objective truth out there to be discovered by way of books and authors of all kinds only to resolve in more useless speculation. I regard this type of literature as a fictional romance with the metaphysical which is often quite brilliantly expounded as a true love story with the abstract...a continuation of the Eternal Feminine drawing us on.
Be that as it may (obviously he has his eloquent if somewhat rhapsodic way of expressing it) I suggest that the entirety of this present conversation slash debate slash three-ring circus, and the core of the oppositions that are performed here, can be reduced to how this question is viewed.
So let me attempt a contextualization, as part of the summary, by noting that when Dubious denies the reality of the metaphysical, and likens it to luxuriant imagination and wishful thinking (he has developed various ways of expressing the same idea) what he does, and this of course is the important result of the primary action, is to lift anchor within any fundamental categories. If I am not mistaken this 'lifting of the anchor' corresponds to Richard Weaver's description of the undermining of the concept of *universals*.
Says Weaver: "Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals."
Now the interesting thing for those who have bothered to pay attention to the developments in this thread -- but perhaps this is only ultimately of interest to me? -- is to discuss Immanuel Can's Christian Evangelical position as a manifestation of an attempt to hold to, to recognize, to value and to live in accord with transcendental values. Naturally, he would not see Jesus Christ as a
symbol for a transcendental, but follows the Evangelical story-line of
extreme personification of what is ultimately a God that is beyond all possible representation, God that is absolutely abstract, into what is described in the Sanskrit language as
Ishwara: a personal and relativized
image of God. What is conceived in the imagination so that it can be
seen.
Now I hope that you will bear with me here. There are conceptual ways to describe what is being done here when God is reduced and channeled into a specific form. And my view is that Vedantic language is useful. There is an idea in Vedanta expressed by the word
darshana. It means 'view' or 'point-of-view' and the word derives from
drish which connotes
seeing. As we all recognize
seeing is a word with a range of meaning. One 'sees' when one understands. One
sees objects and surfaces and thus distinguishes what is there to see. One also
sees into things or sees beyond the surface presentation. I assume that people will recognize where I am going with this?
What we are asked to see must, and does, extend beyond the mere surface. If we only see the surface we are not seeing completely. This implies of course that
seeing is a unique and complex faculty.
I want to turn to one of the axiomatic phrases -- declarations -- that sit there at the base of the Christian conception. It may have a correspondence in Hebrew thought but it is much more a Greek thought (filled with Greek concepts). It is "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God". That idea right there is not other than an open window to 'the notion of the metaphysical'. It is an opening as well to the possibility of considering both universals and transcendentals in the Weaveronian sense.
And yet when the image, the picture, the representation, that
darshana if you will, of Jesus Christ is presented to many of us, it is presented in a disgusting, reduced, vulgarized, politicized, mind- and intellect-manipulating form that is, essentially, the only form that Immanuel Can can present
to be seen. This is why I describe Immanuel as being 'engaged in evil'. I am not saying this to be dramatic. Immanuel, I say, has a devilish spirit in him and his
Ishwara cannot be something divine and elevating. I could continue to embellish this description and it would not be unimportant to do so.
So what does this mean? It does not mean that any special attention need be given to the man Immanuel Can. Immanuel Can manifests a god-concept that has become extremely perverted. In truth this demonic
imago captures many people. (Please note that I use 'demonic' here with poetic license.) And if I am right about what I say then I also suggest (and here I follow the sense within Christian metaphors) the demonic spirit has to be confronted, exorcized, and banished.
Now what this means, in my way of seeing, is that we are dealing with a corrupted symbol. A symbol that has been grabbed, employed, twisted, and as I say debased and perverted.
Who is doing this? To answer that question you actually have to examine
where it takes place. It takes place within a 'lower conceptual order'. It takes place within a contaminated (or un-regenerated) psyche and psychology. And I have no choice but to refer to mass-man or if you wish Everyman. A lower common denominator.
But let's turn back to
darshana: what is there to be seen; what is possible to see. Every picture of a religious order is really a Symbolic representation of what I refer to as 'the metaphysical'. So too are those 'universals' that Weaver refers to. But no picture can actually represent what is non-representable! Yes, we need a picture and a concept to be able to even entertain an Idea, but if we confuse the picture for the Idea we commit, effectively, a sacrilege.
On this thread there are many who come forward in battle array to confront the Demon Immanuel. This sounds like an unfair characterization doesn't it? A mean-spirited attack typical of these fora. But it is not in any sense intended to be such. If we are not serious about getting to the real cores of real issues and real concerns, what the heck is the purpose of all this? This is serious business. And I am speaking to the wide cultural horizon. Indeed my ultimate consideration is about what is going on around us, out there, today. We have to be willing to put aside the personal, and personal whimpering, to see the Ideas at play in their exposed forms.
So what I have to say is that, yes, and by all means, these demonic usages of divine images (and the metaphysical ideas that stand behind them) must be
seen through. But what complexifies the issue is that
seeing through does not mean failing to see or, shall I say, the negation of the responsibility
to see more completely, more thoroughly, more expansively, and more truly.
Now I turn back to Dubious and his *problem* -- the negation of metaphysics and his description of it as reduction to over-heated romantic imagination. I cannot resolve this problem here. In fact, and since you-plural present me with a range of 'problems' (Immanuel, Iambiguous, Promethean, Belinda, Harry, Harbal, LaceWing, etc, etc.), each 'position' expressed and presented
has to be resolved.
Thus: you-plural are all, in different ways, manifestations of the core problem! I do not think it could be any other way when the issue is thought through. To have become unanchored and unmoored from those Universals and that (allow me to say) Eternal Metaphysics does indeed lead, step by step, motion by motion, imperceptibly or obviously, to dissolution of a proper and encompassing stance within this world. It just goes & on & on and it, itself, cannot reverse course because it has no idea-lever grounded in those Universals and that Metaphysics referred to.
Trippy, eh?
Yep, that's it. Well done.
"EEEEEEEmanuel Kant..." ♬♪
"EEEEEEEmanuel Kant..." ♬♪ 
