a semi-manic negative theology for no one

The infinite is the negation of the finite. It is nothing positive or hidden, nothing more than the finite gathered into a unity and annihilated as the source of or the authority upon the self's value and dignity. Oversimplifying to get the point across, the self is structured by or is the "incarnation" of a Cause. This cause is its avatar on the world stage, its public self, or what it separates from its one thousand idiosyncrasies as its righteous essence. This cause is the self's worth or substantial being in its own eyes. Religion is still just politics to the degree that this cause is a finite or particular protagonist on the world stage, opposed to other finite and particular causes. It is implicitly or explicitly the imposition of duty toward and reverence for the particularity of its avatar, which is to say its own idiosyncratic specifications of the good and the authoritative. It crudely expresses itself as violence and more gently expresses itself as persuasive speech, which can arguably be described as rhetoric since the authority of a particular notion of the rational is itself a matter of debate. A non-political or infinite religion (which happily negates its attachment to these very terms) self-consciously relinquishes its identification with a determinate or particular avatar in opposition to an also determinate and particular avatar. It identifies instead with the negation of identity itself. It comprehends the clash of finite avatars or identifications as a unity, which is to say that it recognizes a general structure therein and thereby makes what was apparently necessary (the choice between finite oppositions and its attendant embrace of a principle absurdly within and yet above the world-encompassing I) merely optional. Negation is only possible once these chaotic particulars are grasped as a unity. To negate one particular in isolation is merely to affirm its opposite.

The work is achieved both conceptually and emotionally. The "I" to be clarified is necessarily developed within a particular community. It must identify with the local "gods" or principles of its parents and its community to successfully become an adult. This is how it is tamed so that higher notions of autonomy become realistic. But achieving a higher notion of autonomy is one and the same with the negation or destruction of these investments that constitute its "spiritual" self. The idea is that we die into freedom, or that the slave within us dies screaming within a consuming fire also known as God. In this context, God is the implicit idea of freedom, a restless negativity that destabilizes and corrodes fixed or finite notions of the authoritative and the good. The negativity is desire for that obscure object, self-realization in terms of direct access to the authoritative and the good, which can be described as the desire to become the "God-man" or Christ (the end therefore of the law). This desire is "sin" to the self in its more alienated stages, so that the object is experienced in terms of a proximity to a God that remains other. But God is death to everything finite. The laughter of God annihilates "finite" solemnities, the endless chatter about sin and righteousness, dreams of providence and a final judgment. The god of the nation or of the particular faith is a false or finite god, or politics by another name --the immersion of the ego in a group ego. The living God is a bonfire of vanities, including the vanity of the word "God" and the contingent tradition that teaches us to use a particular word and system of images. The medium is burnt up in the consummation. The ladder is thrown away as a merely idiosyncratic or non-essential path to that which is the sustained negation of particular content. The realized "I" stands beyond all tradition and opposition of the finite to the finite. In less grandiose terms we have a living individual and his thousand idiosyncracies, eating, shitting, working a job, finding his cause in the maintenance of his ideal freedom (his fantasy or aim, let's say) from 'finite' or 'positive' or particular causes. His ideal identity is infinite. Like anyone, he works within the finite, engages in finite projects, votes perhaps for the lesser evil. But he does not sacrifice his ideal identity to anything particular. It stands (the 'I' stands) without foundation, dialectically or progressively self-generated, self-realized, self-justified.


COMMENTARY BY A FICTIONAL ALTER-EGO

The God that is "on our side" is the dead or the false God. The "living" God is the God that is always killing our limited fantasies of who we are. But these fantasies only seem limited to us after God (the itch for Freedom) has killed them. These fantasies ARE us in all of our wonderful self-loving glory before God blasts them with holy and terrible fire. When I was a teenager who still believed in God in a crude way, I would times think "Fuck God! Fuck God! Fuck God!" and I DIDN'T WANT to think this. It was a compulsive voice in my head. That to me is the perfect example of the "living" God burning down the false God. The part of me that wanted to be free resented and assaulted the bogey-man punisher God that I currently believed in ---the one they stuffed in my head as a child.

So basically all of this is conceptual art. It's religion that doesn't have to take itself too seriously. It's not opposed to the world. So we watch Louis C.K. or Another Period and we are not offended. We don't have to stick our nose up at the world. It's not a political realization. It doesn't cancel reality or perform miracles. It's just the supreme or final ego-ideal of total freedom and self-posession. The stoic might become petty occasionally. The skeptic might be duped. The self-proclaimed infinite personality might act like a little bitch. But it strives to be self-proclaimed infinite personality and returns to this as its point of honor. It can play with "finite" personalities artistically, since it doesn't find them threatening. It can neutralize acid with base. It is all personalities and no personality. It is "Shakespeare." In theory it or "He" kneels before no Thing, is "astonished at nothing" and sees the vanity or emptiness of the endless melodramatic posturing of those who carry the Secret or the bogus "positive" infinite which is just a Thing that fits within or is an object FOR the "transcendental I." Everything fits WITHIN the "concept system " or the "conceptual mechanism." So there can be no positive infinite. That's just the conceptual mechanism worshipping a mere part or idea WITHIN its own machinery. That's why the "I" was always "God" and was the only possible or consistent God.