As a historian, Spengler is very much concerned with power, and so he should be. It is the stuff of history – human history, that is. Having power is a fact. Not having power is also a fact. But how could I prefer one over the other, or call one “life” and the other a “defect”, without a prior value, and without all that values entail for rational creatures – concepts, thoughts, systems, and so on?
Later in his book, Spengler partially corrects himself by juxtaposing actuality and truth in one of his most telling passages:
But when Jesus was taken before Pilate, then the world of facts and the world of truths were face to face in immediate and implacable hostility. It is a scene appallingly distinct and overwhelming in its symbolism, such as the world’s history had never heard before and has never since looked at. . . . In the famous question of the Roman Procurator: “What is truth?” – the one word that is race-pure in the whole Greek Testament – lies the entire meaning of history, the exclusive validity of the deed, the prestige of the State and war and blood, the all-powerfulness of success and the pride of eminent fitness. Not indeed the mouth, but the silent feeling of Jesus answers this question by that other which is decisive in all things of religion – What is actuality? For Pilate actuality was all; for him nothing.
. . . No faith yet has altered the world, and no fact can ever rebut a faith. There is no bridge between directional Time and timeless Eternity, between the course of history and the existence of a divine world-order, in the structure of which the word “providence” or “dispensation” denotes the form of causality. This is the final meaning of the moment in which Jesus and Pilate confronted one another. . . .
. . . Religion is, first and last, metaphysic, other-worldliness (Jenseitigkeit), awareness in a world of which the evidence of the senses merely lights the foreground. It is life in and with the supersensible. And where the capacity for this awareness, or even the capacity for believing in its existence, is wanting, real religion is at an end. “My kingdom is not of this world,” and only he who can look into the depths that this flash illumines can comprehend the voices that come out of them. . . .3
Despite placing “truth” and “actuality” face to face and having them question each other as equals, Spengler has not advanced “actuality” in the slightest. He is, after all, one of the “men of theory” whom he disparages in the first quotation, who only think and never lead. And if “truth” is not his goal, then why bother to write at all? He seems to regard “truth” as something so angelically delicate that it cannot coexist with facts.
Men of truth, however, contend with “actuality” not as an opponent but as yet another disclosure of the Divine, where Light reveals its reach in every shade of colour and every shadow, no matter how intense. They work upon the wellsprings of men’s actions, which are the values and concepts that form their goals and delineate their hopes and fears. What motivates the rebellious adolescent artist, if not the dreams of what she could be? What spurs the young entrepreneur, if not the lure of ambition? What incentive does the scheming politician have to run for office, if not the hope of power and praise? What drives the aging star to keep on playing, if not pride, the solace of feeling he still ‘has it’? And what impels the elderly retiree to retell her achievements to all passersby, if not the thought that this was the real value and meaning of her life? What actually lives in all these people, if not “life in and with the supersensible”?
In all these snapshots from real lives, we see the power, not of facts, but faith – faith in the future, faith in the rewards of success, faith in the stories we tell ourselves, faith in the system, or faith in our legacy. Facts are shards of ‘just a moment ago’ that we use to fill a frame, but faith is that frame, and all the frames that enclose it in ever-larger dimensions of endless affirmation.
Actuality has, therefore, no world of its own. But it is not “nothing” . . . only because, as I have said again and again in this book, it is permeated with the Infinite. The truth saves facts from being only facts.* And so there can be no parity between them, just as there is no parity between Jesus and Pilate.
* Throughout this book, I contend that facts are not value-free, but rather that our concepts and values inform them and enable us to identify them as facts. The reverse of that needs to be confirmed as well, namely that values are not fact-free. Values are always ‘about’ something; that something belongs to a world receptive to our grasp of it, like a tool in the hand.
Values and facts are clearly different domains, but they are constantly coming together as natural complements. We could liken their relationship to that between mind and matter, or spirit and body, or what I first discussed in Chapter 7, namely command (amr) and creation (khalq). Our values cannot dictate to us what the facts are, nor are there value-free facts that could tell us what our morals or faith should be.
Let not the unbelievers’ goings-on around the country fool you – / Trifling pleasures, then their home is Hell, and what an evil place to rest it is! (Q3:196-197)
لاَ يَغُرَّنَّكَ تَقَلُّبُ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا فِي الْبِلاَدِ
مَتَاعٌ قَلِيلٌ ثُمَّ مَأْوَاهُمْ جَهَنَّمُ وَبِئْسَ الْمِهَادُ
That, too, is actuality, and no less real for our not having realized it yet.
Religion, in the Qur’an, is not “other-worldly”. That is because facts and truth are inseparable, both in the here-and-now we think we know and in the Everafter we think we do not know (and we are wrong on both counts). This is why those who believe and do good deeds is the constant refrain of the Qur’an; we see it about as often as we read of those who believe alone. The prophets and messengers were not “men of theory” in Spengler’s sense of the word; they were not busy writing books and spinning concepts, but rather going out into the markets and the thoroughfares, meeting their countrymen face to face, and speaking of what was closest to their hearts – their hopes, fears, and ultimate destinies. In dealing with spiritual beings, nothing could be more practical than that.
For when you invade a country or introduce a new technology, you activate new chains of events, but you do not alter the underlying natures of the people you have conned or conquered. Humans are deeper than that. It is those underlying natures – their fitrah – that determine not only what they believe but in what frame they will place your government or gadget.
If religious faith fails to move the mass of mankind nowadays, that is because other forms of faith – in progress, or science, or the environment, or personal gain (whatever the latest creed happens to be) – have taken hold of their hearts and put down roots that no amount of heavenly rain can wash away. The intransigence of humanity in all ages is not a sign that faith is useless or has no impact, but rather that it functions too well, works profoundly, and has effects that are hard to reverse.
If these “Ideas” of mine do not ‘work’, I regard that simply as a sign that the field is crowded and hearts (not least my own) are hardened by the constant bombardment of contrary messages, surrounded by frames that are more appealing because they are more familiar and have had longer to operate. The world is full of faiths that are manifesting their power in every aspect of our lives.
That, one could say, is yet another fact. By itself, it has minimal value. So I will continue to write.
3 Spengler, vol. 2, pp. 216-217 passim.
The GOD You Already Know 