Why, following a precise anthropological study of human aesthetics, should naturalism prevail over the spiritual form? Let us pause to consider this spiritual form. Just as I would qualify positivism as a deficient form in the totality of philosophy, so there exists a form that is exclusively spiritual, that is to say 'abstract' and of a purely mental quality. And hence I must declare, once and for all, that I cannot accept a spiritual notion that refers spirituality directly to material things and establishes an indivisible unity with them. From a purely anthropological perspective one must conclude that this kind of spiritual notion of indivisibility is as irresponsible as blind positivism. And just as much as positivism is considered a grounding for anti-philosophical 'brute materialism', the philsophical policy that the spirit is everywhere equal to material things does not promote spiritual people. Instead what you get is a coagulate of irrationalism, super-naturalism and psychic policy in support of regressive animal-empowerment.
It may assist in the prevention of further confusion to note that contemporary spiritual collectivism devotes itself to two conflicting notions. First, the inseperability of spirit and matter would be a gross misconstruction in the abssence of a religious God. Second, the universality of change in the universe would be a gross misconstruction without mind-matter dualism. Spinozoa himself had imagined the first axiom, however with specific theological reservations, and called it pantheism. But regarding the second notion, and grounded as a logical consequence of the first, he believed that nature qua the universe was immutable and thus could not undergo any fundamental or constant changes. Evolution however presuposes a series of transformations towards more advanced structures, in nature's language, life develops, grows, maintains continuous metamorphosis. Change on the other hand is a proverbial superstision today with no real commonality to evolutionary facts or theological principles. Once again, it is an anthropological problem we are faced with — change — with respect to evolution, is not one of nature's plans. Nature strives for heightened complexity, the advancement of life into more integrated, complex life, and, unless an evolutionary extinction is permitted there are no laws governing devolution or regressive 'change'. This change, considered in its progressive stages, seems to be complicated by all the various elements that belong specifically and inevitably to it.
That monstrous suffering, and that anguished look of melancholy, are the most obvious symptoms of that very fatality in which one can detect a necessity that is clearly anthropological. The characteristics noted with regard to the present phase of the world emphasize the cultural-historical difference between the primitive and the civillized human dynamo, and simillar characteristics are verified in all previous cultural and economic periods arround the world where such dynamics existed. To offer but one parallel: in the history of Greek statuary one can establish with chronological exactness the progress of the gradual dissolving of the element of melancholia, so dimly affirmed throughout the entire archaic period (the closed phase), until one arrives at a balancing-out of that lamentable quality; from the xoanon, monoform and hermetic, to the first freeing of a limb from the body, to progressive movement, and where expression is concerned, to the earliest statue that smiles, precluding classicism — and which attains the fulfillment of its organic and spiritual impulse. It is obvious to the historian to see this melancholic tonality of existence marked throughout the aesthetic milleux of antiquity. But we must also note that there is a similitude to be found between the spiritually detached inertness of the classical statue with the numerous mythical characterizations it displays in society, particularly those expressive nuances that represent the psychological dynamics in today's people.
The title of Walter Benjamin's book 'Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' say's it best. So for us it is no suprise, to think in terms of reproduced form — that the mechanical processess of the world have expanded solidification of human appearances. Wether one imagines this petrified look to be a consequence of the liberation of brute force or a Medusian folly of repression (in Freud's interpretation of the myth), the emotional nullity it exhibits as symbolic power exposes its true essence to be that of a schematism; a systematic plotting, planning, modelling, in short, a 'scheming' against us.
Natural wisdom, what I often call absolute reason after Hegel, is forcibly evicted from the body by its unruly animal power and this disembodiement of the human spirit from its corporeal form renders him an atomistic and souless creature. Thus does he become a conduit of the most vacuous assertions, an empty vessel — his head is filled only with nilpotent assumptions — the failed prepredications of an alienated (secular) monkey with all its groundless positings. Indeed, the specie has determined its own secular history with such vacuity of mind that it must deduce from itself the foundational origins of its logic, building in its place [chaotic] disorderly chains made of presupositions and theoretical holes where various truths had to be reinterpreted or overlooked. Examples of such secular felonny could fill entire textbooks so I will not bother to recall them all here.
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