Page 117 - Eclipse of God

90 Chapter 6

bios, then the world of things could no longer serve man as a
model and pattern. It itself must be confronted by an inviola-
ble, archetypal world of pure Forms.
But the design leads on as if of necessity even to Plato’s
construction of this higher world, whose highest summit is the
idea of the Good or God. The eternal Ethos itself, the ground of
being of that universal human function that sets the yes against
the no and pushes to a decision, becomes the highest “form” of
the Absolute. It is the “Good and the Should- Be” that binds and
holds together all being. With a clarity of thought never before
attained, man is given here the task of realizing the uncondi-
tionality of Right through his person. The objective “imitation”
of Ideas by things becomes transformed in and through the
subjectivity into the spiritual act of becoming just. This pos-
iting of the ethical function as transcendental becomes pos-
sible through one of the most daring of man’s thoughts. It is
that the Good “towers above being in dignity and power” as
the “primal cause of all that is just and beautiful.” The Good
brings each individual thing into being not simply that it may
exist but that it may perfectly become that which it is meant
to be. The distinction between the affirmed and the negated
that leads to the conquest of the no by the yes stands above
being still undifferentiated as such. In its innermost depths,
one nears the mystery of God, for not Being, but only Perfect
Being, may be called God. “If one does not cease,” says Plato,
“until one has reached the Good itself through knowledge it-
self, then one reaches the end of the knowable.” But where
does one recognize the Good? To this question Plato gives us
no specific answer, but we remain close to him if we say that
the Good is recognized there where it reveals itself to the indi-
vidual who decides with his whole being to become that which
he is meant to be. And in fact, whether it takes place in the soul
or in the world, nothing is so mysterious as the appearance of