A Marxist and a Sufi walks into a bar
> We shall show them Our signs upon the horizons and within themselves till it becomes clear to them that it is the truth.
Whether there is any way out of idealism, and the answer: not within thought.1 We cannot but think in this way—thus speak, write—hence the apophatic monism of Parmenides’ idealism. This was the slip whereby we fell, after which Plato fragmented the whole; then further fallen all the way to Hegel. We see here the heights of idealism, thence one only sinks below; or perhaps—world inverted, a way out?2
The way inverted is that of the mother. This is the birth and death of things, their coming into being and falling away: “All is perishing but His face.” The way of the father is our return, that we prostrate ourselves in a perfect remembrance; else we find ourselves forgetful, handmade idols blind us—only in oblivion do we remember.
Marx and Muhammad offer opposite movements: one enters illusion to show how it is woven; else the way we untie ourselves. Those that seek in thought are fools and martyrs, God only knows. The task ever is an end to thought, that the philosopher thus loves death; so says the dancer: “Die before you die.”3
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols: “… we find ourselves in the midst of a rude fetishism when we call to mind the basic presuppositions of the metaphysics of language—which is to say, of reason. It is this which sees everywhere deed and doer; this which believes in will as cause in general; this which believes in the ‘ego,’ in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and which projects its belief in the ego-substance on to all things—only thus does it create the concept ‘thing.’ … Being is everywhere thought in, foisted on, as cause; it is only from the conception ‘ego’ that there follows, derivatively, the concept ‘being.’”
This is no true escape, however, rather tells the true method of our imprisonment. The philosopher cannot escape; ever compelled returns, seeking outward turns to bring back words. This either duty or a sad attempt to make up wasted time.
Bukharin, Philosophical Arabesques: “The rational kernel of all this mysticism, however, consists in the yearning of despiritualized capitalist humanity for nature. Shut up in a stone coffin, the urban neurasthenic, deprived of sun, forests, waters, and air, overwhelmed by the din of machines, transformed into a screw in a gigantic mechanism, yearns for a ray of sun, for light, for greenery, for the purling of a brook.”