Sophia and Polemos

Sophia‘s Fall

Sophia dances and swings to the music spinning her circles, as she stumbles over Polemos.
Sophia: Ow, what are you doing here?

Polemos: And you?
Sophia: I'm dancing.
Polemos: This is not doing. It’s being.
Sophia: Why should I do something?
Polemos: Don’t you see the peopleⁱ suffer!
Sophia: Do they or are they?
Polemos: What do you mean?
Sophia: Do people suffer or are people suffering?
Polemos: I do not understand.
Sophia: Give me an example for their suffering.
Polemos: Just now, I was in Zurich on September 9, 1848. Brothers have hit each other on their heads until destruction.

Sophia: Yes, isn’t this what people always do?
Polemos: True, but afterwards they sat together again all at one table tolerating each other.
Sophia: That's nice. Where is the problem?
Polemos: That almost didn’t turn out well. In Paris, it was much worse. Half of Europe is still half-mad by its memory. If they don’t learn how to keep within boundaries, then, one day, they will destroy themselves.
Sophia: So what? Then something will be created.
Polemos: Sophia!
Sophia: I do not understand your dismay. If they didn’t argue, they would simply cease to be. What do you prefer not to be born or not to pass?
Polemos: To be!
Sophia: Like a sound without body?
Polemos: What do you mean?
Sophia: Energy is eternal, immortal, uncreated. But what people love is the mass, energy that comes to be "some-thing". But mass is defined, it does not just flow. It has resistance and borders on. People cannot just "be". They can only be human. The "being-in-itself" is nothing specific. Do you see that river? It is not a river, because it carries water. But because i t is limited by a bank. Without the borders, it would not be a river, in the best case, just water. If there was no water flowing within the limits of the shore, we still could speak of a dried out river and a dry river bed. We do this because we know that there was a river that formed the bed. The mass of water fighting its way through the mass of the land has created the furrow, which is now its memory. If the water had flowed across the landscape, without friction, then we would not remember it, there would be no river and it had never existed.
Polemos: But the Swiss?
Sophia: They're like a river bed, dried out, over which the wind sweeps and smoothest its furrows. Soon no-oneⁱⁱ will remember them.
Polemos: But they have achieved great things.
Sophia: Great?
Polemos: Yes, peace! A peaceful union of completely different ideas, pluralism, neutrality, the victory of reason over passion.
Sophia: Polemos, please, let me dance again!

With this statement of outrage, Sophia turns around and spins her loops.

Reason

Polemos rushes into the room and throws the dancing Sophia down. She screams out loud. This time, she is seriously injured and has to sit down. Her ankle is sprained.

Sophia: Do you have to rush like this? Look what you've done? What is there so urgent?
Polemos: The people.
Sophia: They, again! Is there nothing else in our creation, which you can worry about?
Polemos: Yes, but the people, they are special.
Sophia. Ah. (Sophia exhales this "Ah" pathetically out and rolls her eyes.)
Polemos: Don’t be so indifferent. Human beings are unique.

Sophia frowns thoughtfully.

Sophia: Well, with my foot, I cannot dance for a while anyway. Let us sit together. What makes people think to be so special?
Polemos: They are ethical, they know good and evil.
Sophia: Yes, yes, this nonsense - which they owe you. I even warned them; to eat from this fruit would make eternal life unattainable.

Polemos laughs out loud.

Polemos: Ha, you see, it's not my fault. If mankind never had learnt about the prohibition, they would never have been tempted to trespass it.
Sophia: What fault? I've never banned anything. I've just given them the knowledge that the distinction between good and evil will convert eternity unattainable. I showed them my wisdom, but they could do anything with it. I did not make the laws, they are forever. I am the eternal law.
Polemos: You mean, if people get aware of themselves, know their own will, they may desire the good? Then they will want what is good?
Sophia: Polemos, please. I think we talk past each other.
Polemos: We almost always do.

Sophia sighs and rubs her sprained ankle.

Sophia: Yes, almost always. You see, I must give you right. Humanity is unique. They believe that there is a difference between good and evil. It is not their particular shape or their special ability that distinguishes them. It is their particular problem; to see the world not as it is, but to think in categories.
Polemos: Very good. Then you agree with me that only human beings are rational?
Sophia: No. But is that relevant to the question?
Polemos: Well, you mean, due to people’s distinction between good and evil, evil has become a problem?
Sophia: Exactly.
Polemos: Then, we should just explain to them that good and evil do not exist. That it’s all an illusion.
Sophia: You want to dissuade people from thinking? Good and evil are real. Have not you been so outraged by the battle campaigns of virile young men? I drink their blood.
Polemos: Sophia, please, spare me with your stinking archaic! It hurts in my ears.
Sophia: Excuse me. I am the origin.
Polemos: I know, but could we leave this aside for a while and convers in civilized manner?
Sophia: Civilized? (She laughs to herself, and wrinkles her forehead.) What do you mean by civilized?
Polemos: The search for the good, the beautiful. The good for the people.
Sophia: Ah, well. What is good for the people? To live forever? Without pain, without interference? In peace as I am?
Polemos: Yes! (His face lights up.)
Sophia: Then they would cease to be human, give up living. Life is in the world. The world is peace. The world is life. I'm “no thing”, I'm just being.
Polemos: Then it is life that makes humans unique? And peace, the pursuit of the good what distinguishes them from others?
Sophia: They are different from us through their existence. Only what existsⁱⁱⁱ, dies, lives. We do not die. But, it does not distinguish them from other existences in the world.
Polemos: And peace?
Sophia: Peace is not the striving for the good. Do you remember? When people started naming the world, they created this distinction between good and evil. They were not content to be related to the world, they wanted to take control, just as if they were not in the world, as if they could break away from it and look from outside. Only when they were no longer in the world, they could view the world as the Other^iv. They were no longer the world but detached from it. Then they began to give names to the world and its creatures, to set immutable limits, to de-fine. They began to demarcate space and time, to chop everything into pieces and count the parts, compare, and order them into equal and unequal. That's categorical thinking. Only a being alienated from oneself, which dissolves oneself from the world, is able to do so.

Polemos sits up and boasted.

Polemos: They owe this to me! I showed them how they can rule the world, how they can be like you.
Sophia: Like^v me? They are always me; they just don’t know. Why did you do this?

Sophia looks distraught at Polemos.

Polemos: I wanted to be like you. So gentle and carefree dancing in front of me.
Sophia: You are already.
Polemos: Yes, but bumping all the time into you.
Sophia: Or, me into you?
Polemos: I've never seen it that way, before.
Sophia: Do you now, why people live in dispute? Their arguing is their reason.
Polemos: But reason is good. It allows anticipating the future and avoid evil. Reason gives people the opportunity to live in peace.
Sophia: They do live in peace.
Polemos: I mean maybe they achieve to prevent destroying themselves.
Sophia: To destroy themselves?
Polemos: To destroy.
Sophia: Destruction, from “not being”?
Polemos: Exactly.
Sophia: There is no “not being”, everything at all times in all-ways, is.
Polemos: I mean, stop being Man, that there would be no more people at some point, no birds, no trees, no rivers.
Sophia: And they want to prevent that by making use of reason? It is in the nature of human beings to be finite and not eternal. Existing, “being-as-such”^vi is always de-fined, limited, unique and void^vii. We both know that humanity will come to an end. And we also know when.
Polemos: Sophia, do you not see how much the people suffer? They fear their end.
Sophia: Indeed, I have warned them!
Polemos: Do you want to leave the human race just to their demise?
Sophia: Not just like that. Their end is included in their beginning. There is no beginning without a passing away. And being human is finite. What difference does it make if people die at the end of their lives or perish together with the whole humanity? If they are so reasonable, they already should know that this world has an end.
Polemos: Yes, but in such a large-scale period that it is not relevant for humans.
Sophia: What then is relevant to humans?
Polemos: They want to believe that their life has meaning and that something is left behind when they die.
Sophia: What a crock! Of course there is something that remains. Didn’t we agree that energy and mass are an entity? They cannot be destroyed.
Polemos: Yes, but people want something that is left of them, something that makes sense.
Sophia: Don’t I make any sense?

Sophia gets up angrily. Her foot is apparently better.

Polemos: Yes, but people want to ...
Sophia interrupts Polemos: People want very often, it seems.

With those words, she turns around and sashays on her lap. Polemos dances, too.

Meaning

For a while, Sophia and Polemos do not cross each other’s loops. Then, suddenly, they repel against each other in a reverse rotation.

Sophia and Polemos simultaneously: Ouch!
Sophia: Now, I've run into you.
Polemos: If you say so. I prefer to think that I've pushed you around.

Sophia smiles.

Sophia: Still worried about humanity?
Polemos: Have we agreed that people are unique because they have ethical reason?
Sophia: Ethical reason? How much you love abstraction! No. That does not make them unique.
Polemos: Well, it is their suffering that makes them unique?
Sophia: Is it?
Polemos: Human beings are the only beings who try to divide the world into categories, in order to understand relationships and to predict the impact of their deeds in the future, to bring about the good and avoid evil.
Sophia: Polemos, you are too fast. Even if other beings could create categories, too - a point that is not under discussion here – so, the only persons who apply these categories to the world and divide it into good and bad, are human. This makes them suffering less at the moment, because they can set their suffering into a broader context. But they suffer more, at the long run, because they mourn the loss of their immortality. To be human is profoundly being mortal. To what extent will the ability to predict events reduce that suffering is not clear to me.
Polemos: Well, if people know what is good, they may avoid evil.
Sophia: How? What is it, evil?
Polemos: Death.
Sophia: How to avoid death by reason?
Polemos: By giving life a transcendental meaning.
Sophia: Transcendental? Don’t you have a proper language?
Polemos: Well, meaning that remains of a man, after her death. A sense by which the eternal in man can shine through.
Sophia: There is nothing eternal in the human condition. The eternal, that could shine through, there, is not humane.
Polemos: Yes, but man wants to have a meaning.
Sophia: Everything created has a meaning. Meaning is expressed through creation.
Polemos: Man wants to have significance beyond oneself, not go lost.
Sophia: Everything that is found will go lost again.
Polemos: No! (Polemos horrified screams.) Human beings need to be connected to the Eternal.
Sophia: And that they want to achieve by separating the connection first?
Polemos: They need to recognize the good in order to achieve the good.
Sophia: And what is good for humans?
Polemos: Eternal life.
Sophia: But human existence is not eternal.
Polemos: That’s why people want to fit themselves into an eternal context, see themselves as part of an infinite whole.
Sophia: The infinity has no parts. The whole thing is entire, because it is undivided.
Polemos: That is obvious. But mankind is afraid of disappearing.
Sophia: Are they afraid of appearing, too? Is man not equally afraid of life^viii as of death?
Polemos: I think so.
Sophia: What could reason be good for then?
Polemos: Through it, humans can foresee their death and divide their time properly, plan their lives and work for the good.

Sophia paints her nails, clearly bored, and dreaming ahead.

Sophia: How can a person predict death by reason?
Polemos: Not the exact date, but they may become prepared to die so that they will consider their lives and make sense out of it.
Sophia: I do not understand. Did you not say that mankind suffers because they know that they will die? How should this knowledge, now, comfort them, at the same time? Man makes sense, as much as “any-thing”. Why should they require giving meaning for their lives?
Polemos: Through the search for meaning people try to contact with you.
Sophia: Oh, there you have it. The people are always connected with me. Through me they are connected with everything. It is their reason that makes them believe that they are not in this universe, as if they were outside.
Polemos: So, do you think it does not matter what people do? They will die anyway, their world will be destroyed anyway, and they will cease to be.
Sophia: They will die, their world will pass away but they will not cease to be. They will cease to be human. Then they will be like me. It is not indifferent what they do. They are what they do. Their actions express their humanity. Their relentless pursuit of uniqueness, their struggle for distinctiveness of the world, their fight with me, this is what makes the people human and unique. They and only they question me. They and only they give me names. Through them I may be mortal myself, I can be a "something".

Sophia's eyes begin to shine in these words.

Polemos: You love the human beings! (He is very surprised.)
Sophia: Love? Can we leave this issue aside?
Polemos: Good. So you mean that it is their separation from you, which distinguishes them. This separation is caused by their reason? And now mankind is suffering from this separation, in its finitude and tries to reconnect with you in order to be immortal?
Sophia: Humans do not understand that meaning lies only in finiteness.
Polemos: Hm, but it is still not clear to me how people can know what is right or wrong.
Sophia: Not the knowledge of right or wrong gives meaning to the people, it is their reason that divides meaning into right and wrong.

With these words, Sophia disappears and leaves Polemos alone. He spins circles on the spot.

Responsibility

Polemos is circling around, when Sophia appears on the horizon. Polemos wants to escape her, but inevitably encounters with Sophia. Sophia laughs and falls.

Sophia: We cannot change our course. It is an eternal flow, remember?
Polemos: Wouldn’t it be good to avoid such a collision? It still hurts.
Sophia: But, have you seen what comes out of it!

Sophia points with her index finger to the deep sea in the Indian Ocean.

Polemos nods: I understand. Nevertheless, precisely this was the cause of the quarrel, which I heard in Zurich. The people with their divergent ideas clashed. Would it not have been good for them to have a clear, objective answer to settle their disputes?
Sophia: Would it be better if the universe was a flat disc instead of a ball^ix? Parallel circles on a disk never overlap. However, we push each other constantly. The eternal circle does not create and destroy anything. There is nothing that is. Only flow. Would you prefer this?
Polemos: Of course not! (He looks at Sophia as if she was a stupid child.) But if there was a point from which everything could come from?
Sophia: So it would never return. Then there would be no world, just an infinity of beings sent out to be lost in the boundless space^x.
Polemos: But a rule, a law would make it easier to settle disputes.
Sophia: There's a law! I am the Law. Everything that is born will die.
Polemos: But how should people act?
Sophia: Humanly?
Polemos: What does it mean to be humane?
Sophia: You've explained it before long and widely; reasonable and ethical, longing after the good.
Polemos: But you said that good only exists because humans differentiate it as distinct.
Sophia: Exactly.
Polemos: But they do not distinguish it in the same way.
Sophia: Are you sure? What was that like for your people in Zurich?
Polemos: They sought liberty as their highest good. But the French search for freedom ended in slavery. This had shaken them. Therefore, they doubted these ideas and sought other possibilities.
Sophia: Freedom! I thought they wanted peace?

Sophia is very sweaty and sits down.

Liberty

Polemos: Human beings want to live by their own rules, not enslaved by the laws of nature, gods or other humans.
Sophia: I see. (Sophia looks thoughtfully to herself.)
Polemos: Their rationality makes them free. Through it, they recognize their uniqueness and their distinctness from the world.
Sophia: That's correct. But they cannot want peace and freedom. Peace is in the world, freedom is out of the world^xi.
Polemos: Then, only war remains to mankind?
Sophia: Are we waging war against us?
Polemos: Well, we bump together constantly.
Sophia: But it also gives us a moment to pause and lead idle talks about humanity.
Polemos: That is correct. Without collision, we would eternally circle in parallels and never meet. Nothing would come out of it, no time, no space, no “Uni-verse”^xii.
Sophia: Why should it be different for humans. At the end, they, too, have come out of us.
Polemos: You mean, rationality makes people free from the world. Their free acting creates the sense of good and evil. Then, poking through their interaction with other people, they will pause and move on to require answers. This is how through freedom they ultimately become “respons-ible”?
Sophia: Yes, exactly.
Polemos: Then is suffering part of being human?
Sophia: You cannot prevent suffering. But their suffering compels them to give answers; to the culprits of their suffering, to their victims, to themselves and to us. By responding the call of suffering they come into contact with us and give us a face.
Polemos: Then we should be thankful indeed to humanity.
Sophia: And we are.
Polemos: But if they cease, now, their world ends?
Sophia: Then we will re-create^xiii.

With these words Sophia gets up, bows before Polemos floats away in a dance.

i It is not the same to say “people”, “humanity”, human beings”, “man”, “mankind”. So far, I have not analysed the differences in here and use them more or less instinctively.

ii No-body or no-one, no man. This is one of the seldom coincidences between English and German semantics, while in German “niemand” is “not a man”, the English uses “not a body”. In Russian, on the other side “никто, никого, не нибудь”, could be used for other-than-human persons (vs. no man/niemand) or for bodiless beings (vs. nobody). No-one is the most universal in this world and addresses the idea of “identity” and “unity” of an existence. In order to find the right translation, it requires to know what/who is capable of memory.

iii The English word „to exist“ comes from Latin „sistere“, to stand, persist, appear emerge[ CITATION Oxf111 \l 2055 ]. It expresses very directly its relation to the phenomenology of distinct entities in the world related to a concrete space-time phenomena.

iv For the whole philosophy of „Otherness“ refer to Emmanuel Levinas and Pedro Laín Entralgo.

v „Like“ has a very compromising semantics here. It comes from the old German word “Liche” and means “to have the shape or form of”. In modern use the word makes assimilation. Both translations are wrong. The word is used in failure of a better translation. It touches the Christian idea of theosis, interpreted as “unio cum Cristo”, the transcendence as “God in man” defended by John Locke and the European Enlightment movement. It is also very much present in the Mahayana Buddhism.

vi See Heideggers definition of „Sein-an-sich“

vii The original German word „nichtig“ becomes a completely new dimension when translated into English. It makes believe, that existence is equivalent to the mathematical 0 as long, as it is not in a relationship.

viii This refers to the complete discourse between Levinas and Heidegger.

ix This refers not to an empiric statement about the Universe as being a ball, but to a symbol for the geometry of the logic of the metaphysic proposed here.

x It is not clear, if we should speak of a space, if there are no borders… perhaps we could speak of khora here.

xi This idea emerges from a play with words in the Russian translation.

xii „Uni-verse“ in English and „All“ in German, emphasize both the totality and unity of beings, while English in addition mentions the movement or rotation.

xiii In the original German text it is „we will probably recreate them“. But from the monadic point of view, in this play, it is not possible to repeat creation. Further, from the geometry of this metaphysic it is not “probable” but “certain” that creation is an on-going process.