Transcendental pride and Luciferism: On being bearers of light and powers of darkness
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Transcendental pride and Luciferism: On being bearers of light and powers of darkness James G. Hart1
© Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract The ancient theme of the metaphysical-theological extremes of being-human is revisited by asking about the condition for the readiness to engage in the form of violence which is nuclear war. Sartre’s analysis of the extreme form of anger which crosses a threshold resulting in a self-legitimating righteous indignation which admits of no superior mollifying standpoint is appropriated to account for the complacency with the institution of nuclear weapons. The god-like anti-God characteristics of extreme rage are put on ice but ready to be thawed quickly in the threequarter of a century old disposition to destroy the world in which all life that we know is lived. The parallels with the myth of Lucifer invite themselves. This raises the question of what there is in being-human which is the condition for the possibility of such Luciferian impulses. Features of being human explicated by Husserlian transcendental phenomenology serve as lures to the unique form of pride that here is called Luciferian. Here it is argued that these features can also be lures to a sense of pride, analogous to the ancient magnanimitas, as developed by Aquinas. Keywords Transcendental phenomenology · Luciferism · Pride · Husserl · Sartre · Aquinas
1 Introduction: The condition for the possibility of the agent of world‑destruction The figure of “Lucifer” is rooted in the Abrahamic traditions. In Isaiah 14: 12–15 there is a passage regarding a Canaanite king who fell from power. The word “Lucifer,” which stems from the Vulgate Latin Bible translation, takes distinctive form in the various European languages, by combining lux, “light,” and fer, from ferre, “to bear,” thus “Light-Bearer” or “Morning Star” or “Day Star”: “How you have fallen * James G. Hart [email protected] 1
Department of Religious Studies, College of Arts and Sciences, Indiana University, Sycamore Hall 230, Bloomington, IN 47405‑7005, USA
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from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low!” A passage in the Vulgate version of Jeremiah 2:20 which refers to Israel’s rebelliousness was taken up by later tradition, e.g., in St. Thomas Aquinas (S.T. II–II, q. 162, art. 1, corpus), to signify the exemplarily sinful pride found in Lucifer, who eventually was seen to be the chief Archangel, reads: “Thou has broken My yoke, thou has burst My bands, and thou has said: I will not serve (non serviam).” (The Revised Standard Version reads: “For long ago you broke your yoke and burst your bonds; and you said, ‘I will not serve.’”) The early Christian theologians took these passages to refer to “Satan,” who was created an “archangel” and who appeared as the tempting serpent of Genesis and eventually Satan, the Accuser (Job) and Tempter (Genesis), and in the New Testament: the Father of lies, prince of devils and demons, the arch-enemy of God and humankind. The deep
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