the subjective materialisms of Marx, Nietzsche & Žižek versus the objective idealisms of Schelling, Peirce & Royce

or why John Milbank is right

One can relate the universal & its particulars as nonbeing to being or absolute to relative being. The latter yields a comedic ontology (e.g. Cusanus), the former - a tragic one.

A subjective materialism, a thoroughgoing naturalism, would be the most tragic.

An objective materialism, even as a comedic ontology, would beg the question, "comedic for whom?" & devolve into an absolutely deterministic pantheism.

A subjective idealism, another comedic ontology, otherwise self-subverts into a radical solipsism.

Thus it is that an objective idealism represents the comedic ontology par excellence.

The competing ontologies that present, then, as sword's edge poised, interpretively, with everything at stake, existentially, remain the subjective materialisms of Marx, Nietzsche & Žižek versus the objective idealisms of Schelling, Peirce & Royce - the latter for whom no "annulment of annulment" ever finally obtains.

For objective idealists, when identities & differences unite in mutually constituted I's & Thou's, they relate as - not being to nonbeing, but - the Universal to particulars with, respectively, Absolute & relative perfections, which all variously manifest with none ever obliterated, for all express - without ever being dissolved by - the One.

This whole topic is reminiscent of the dynamics of Zen koans, which have always seemed to me to reflect some of the irreducibly triadic structures of Peirce's pragmatic semiotic realism. For we are dealing with - not only conceptual, but - fully embodied antinomies, where annulment refers also to existential operations of physis, nomos & logos.

Those existential operations implicate, at least, a phenomenal emergence, which may or not further suggest any necessarily supervenient ontic realities, i.e. over & above what are otherwise undeniably interactive coinherences.

This old article, below, remains a great read. I’m not equipped to present Milbank’s oeuvre without an inordinate risk of caricaturizing it. But I increasingly have discovered what seem to be strong - and not accidental - convergences in our approaches.

Paul Jaussen reviews Žižek and Milbank’s THE MONSTROSITY OF CHRIST.