~Sorin Cerin: „The Coaxialism“

The Coaxialism,book review:
This book represents an audacious contribution to contemporary philosophy. Not a mere synthesis, the volume brings to the fore a original vision concerning the truth (and the illusion), the absolut and the life, into the philosophical conversation of humanity. “What else are we, but a mad dream of an angel, taken up with himself, lost somewhere within the hierarcy of numerology?” (p.5), asks the author, triggering a captivating odyssey, with an opening towards the philosophy of conscience, contextualism and mind philosophy, that is relevant for the critique of the reprezentationalism and postmodernism. Coaxialism is structured in 11 chapters. They may be interpreted in triads. Therefore, the first three chapters could stand as an introduction to the thematic realm of coaxiology. The first chapter is concerned with “The purpose, the hirarchy, the birth of numerology and of the Primordial Factor ONE”, the second chapter treats “The Instinct, the Matrix, the Order and Disorder, the Dogma”, and the third chapter “The State of the fact, the Opened Knowledge and the Closed Knowledge, the Coaxialism and the Coaxiology”. Then, the next triad would be constituted by the interpretation of three aspects related to human exemplarity, via the chapters entitled “The Print and the Karmic Print, the Geniality”, “Love or the individual Conscience of the Human Being” and “Consciousness or the knowledge in Coaxiology”. And, the last triad, say, of a semantical and hermeneutical nature, approaches “Reflections on philosophy, the Alien within the Being, the Dimension of Life”, “The Semantical Coaxiology” and “The Semantical Truth, the Semantical Knowledge, the Semantical Mirror and the Reason of Creation”. The tenth chapter, named “Semantical Ontology, Neoontology, and Coaxiology, the Semantical Structuring of Our Matrix”, capitalizes on the ideas from the preceeding philosophical architecture. Eventually, the last chapter offers specific mathematical moddels of the ideas and concepts that are exposed within the book, along with the relationships among them. In a Schopenhauerian, Nietzschean and Wittgensteinian architectonics of the philosophical ideas, the author states the principles of what he labels as the “coaxialism”: 1. The only true philosophy is the one accepting that Man does neither know the Truth, and implicitly, nor philosophy, 2. Man shall never neither know the Absolute Truth nor the Absolute Knowledge, for his entire existence is based on the Illusion of Life, 3. Any philosophical system or philosopher pretending that he or she speaks the Truth is a liar, 4. The Coaxialism is, by excellence, a philosophy that does NOT pretend that it speaks the Truth, yet accepting certain applications sustaining the reference of the Illusion of Life to the Truth, 5. The Essence of the Truth consists in its reflection in the Elements appeared before it, as there are the elements of the Opened Knowledge deriving from the Current Situation, 6. The Coaxialism accepts the operations with the opposites of the opposites of the Existence, with or without a compulsory reference to such opposites, determining the coaxiology, 7. Each Antithetical has, to the Infinity, another Antithetical, which is identical to it, 8. The farther is an Antithetical situated, that is the more opposites are intercalated (between itself and its Antithetical), the more accentuated the similarities, and the less opposites are intercalated between the two Elements, the more accentuated the dissimilarities, 9. As well as we can conceive Universes without a corresponding substrate into the Existence, we can conceive Knowledge without a corresponding substrate into the essence, that is, without a subject, 10. The Factor is going to be always the opposite of the infinity to which it would relate as a finite quantity, the same way as the Knowledge relates to the lack of knowledge, and Life, to Death. Within a Coaxial perspective, the Factor shall be an equivalent to God, the Unique Creator, and yet Aleatory in relationship with its worlds 11. Within the Worlds of each Creator, unique and Aleatory Factor are to be reflected all the other Creators, all the unique and Aleatory Factors, as numbers, starting from ONE, that is the Primordial Factor, all the way to the Infinite minus ONE Factors of Creation, all Unique and Aleatory. (p.5-7) Certainly, someone may ask how is such a unitary cuantics going to be sustained? But to rise seriously such a question would mean to miss the point that here we have mathematical metaphors, suggestive models, and not a calculus leading to the Metaphysical Truth (which would at the same time contradict the very coaxiological principles). The bounty of capital letters and underlining in the text speak volumes of the American experience of the author, emphasising as well, with a certain irony, the endeavour to capture meaning, the thirst for absolute, for perfection, for the Truth and for the pure idea, central to all philosophies. Thus, given the following quote, I can at once offer exemplification for the above observation and clarify a column-idea of this intriguing work: “The Coaxiology is a philosophy capable of determining in depth the importance of the Factor (…) – which is also a number, I have to note, among other aspects it provided. It is produced by the Essence of an Element of the Matrix Status Quo, or by the Instinct. (…) The Factor is going to be the demiurge who, via his own capacity of consciousness should include in himself always new and newer Elements of the Closed Knowledge, also assessing, though, without knowing them into detail, Elements of the Opened Knowledge. (…) Man is such a Factor despite the fact that he is situated hierarchically much lower in comparison to the Great Creators.” (p.51-2) The author explains the coaxial (and eventually, structuralist) manner to investigate the world, as a paradoxical mix of good and evil, divine and demonic, humane and rational, a mix giving birth to the Illusion of Life and being sustained, grace of a feed-back, precisely by this Illusion of Life. (P.53 sq.) “Don’t you know that only in the lakes with muddy bottom the water-lily blossom?” was asking, the 20th century Romanian philosopher, Lucian Blaga, rhetorically, and already “coaxial”. The philosophical poetry of Mihai Eminescu is consecrated to the illusion of life. It reflects, as an illustration, in the poem “Floare albastr?” (“Blue Flower”, a Romantic motive, and yet, a coaxial motive, that appears within the German literature, at Novalis, or at Leopardi) the paradoxical marriage of the infinite with the wishes. This is a metaphor for the paradoxical marriage between the philosophical Knowledge, aiming at the absolute and the terrestrial Knowledge, through love, afflicting human’s heart, as a creative factor, stimulated by affection. As well as in his literature, Sorin Cerin accomplishes to express himself capitalizing at once the universal philosophy and on the great Romanian philosophical successes. For example, as she turns the pages of the book, the reader may have glimpses of Schopenhauer’s philosophy – let us recall that the human being, as a knowing subject, knows himself as a subject, endowed with a will and that he annot become pure subject of knowledge unless his will vanishes, in order to eliminate the reference to what one can wish in relationship with the knowledge, since the representation is maimed by desire ( The World as Will and Representation). The book sends to Nietzsche’s philosophy – see for instance the idea that “The apparent world is the only True one; the ‘real’ world is sheer lie”, from The Twilight of the Idols, ch. 3, aphorism 2. A more sensitive reader would find analogies with the philosophy of Emil Cioran, in The Trouble with Being Born. Coaxialism may recall Wittgenstein II in that philosophy represents the (re)organisation of what we have always known, while language is to be considered an “activity”, a “game” framed into certain “forms of life”, a summation of different phenomena, maybe related to one another, but in very different manners. As for the “Truth” one may associate the following suggestive line from the Philosophical Investigations, Oxford, 1953, 9, § 68: the strength of the thread does not rely in the fact that each fibre goes from end to end but in the overlapping of many fibres. At the same time, the idea of a creative factor “struggling” with the world to draw forth only partial and paradoxical Truths has from the very beginning strong echoes with the philosophy of mystery, as it appears within the work of Lucian Blaga. A similar analogy may be made with the figure of the “ironist” (proposed by Richard Rorty), at her turn, “struggling” with the world, in order to educate herself into the various vocabularies (read “parallel cultural realities”). The comparison with Blaga does not stop here, the researcher connoisseur identifying avenues of investigation towards the “Luciferic” versus “Paradisiac” Knowledge dichotomy, in analogy with the closed – opened Knowledge, with the Matrix, with the creative factor, etc. The work is also remarkable given its distinct literary qualities, the intriguing specific philosophical language developed in close relationship to the literary print, a distinguishing note for an interesting philosophical debut.”

Henrieta Anisoara Serban PhD, Researcher, Institute of Political Science and International Relations of the Romanian Academy Address ( office) 1-3 Iuliu Maniu Bdv. Sector 6, B.O.16-281 Bucharest, Romania Tel/Fax 0040213169661
SORIN CERIN