About idols
The idol is a reflection. In Greek, from where we get the English word, we say that “I am staring at my idol in the mirror” («βλέπω το είδωλο μου στον καθρέπτη»). The idol is a representation: it consists in indirectness.
When we think of something as a false idol, we are either referring to an inaccurate representation or to an untrue subject.
The former case can happen if, say, I purport to show a selfie of me which turns out to be a picture of one of my dogs. The idol is false insofar as it does not represent Protesilaos. But as a representation it is true in its indirectness and it is also true in accurately representing my dog. More generally, it is accurately describing something even if it is not that which is supposed to be represented. For example, an abstract painting of me may not be accurate the way a photograph is, though it can be accurate in expressing a feeling in a manner that the photograph cannot. Or it can even be accurate in showing what expression can be made manifest.
The latter case of the untrue subject is more nuanced. Suppose I show you a sketch of philosophyman whom I consider the one true philosopher. You may argue that philosophyman is sheer fantasy or some fallen angel or, anyhow, not the one true philosopher. If “untrue subject” means that there is no person who is philosophyman, then we are focusing on one specific interpretation of the representation. Philosophyman may not be referring to a person, however: it can be an abstraction, such as a set of qualities that are found in all philosophers hitherto. Philosophers think things through and so, philosophyman must be the most intense thinker. To think things through, one must be patient. Philosophyman is thus the most patient. If philosophers are indeed thinking things through and are patient, then philosophyman is an accurate representation of the philosopher as such, though not of any one person in particular. And if this is inaccurate, then we are back to the previous point.
The only way for the subject of a representation to be considered untrue is for that very subject to be impossible. Though what does it even mean to have a representation of that which is impossible? If it is impossible, there is nothing that can be predicated on it, as it does not occur. If it does occur, then it is possible qua occurrence. For example, I cannot say “nothingness is beautiful” because the very conception of “nothingness” is already reified in my mind as “somethingness”, which then acquires the quality “beautiful”. I hold, then, that strictly speaking anything that can be represented cannot be false in the sense of being impossible.
How about the representation of an imaginary being then? Suppose we have a blue dragon on the mountains of Cyprus that types on the keyboard with telekinesis. Such a being does not exist in my area, I promise. Yet in describing this dragon, I have already rendered it as a representation of a thought. It already is a figure of the thinkable and, ipso facto, it always was in the potential of the thinkable. You can picture it in your head now, using your imagination and you can add your own qualities to it. The being is not real, in the sense that we cannot go out there and meet it, but it also is real, actually and potentially, in the sense that it exists and can exist as thought.
Now blue dragons may seem far-fetched, so let me use a practical example. A program I imagined is not real in the sense that I cannot go find it somewhere out there. Before implementing it, it is a thought or series of thoughts, if you will. These thoughts are real: they did happen. Furthermore, these thoughts can create material consequences through their application. Through the program I connect the thoughts in my head to material consequences, realised through the computer.
In broader terms, every plan that is carried out from idea to application is a program, already in the literal sense of that which is “pre-written” (πρόγραμμα, προ (prior), γράμμα (letter or that which is written)). The house I built existed before I built it, though not as materials pieced together but as a clear plan of all the disparate pieces coalescing around an organising principle, which gives us an organism by the way.
At the time before the program is implemented, we can say that it is not real in the sense that there is no instantiation of it beside what is in one’s mind. Here, “real” is understood as matter. Though, again, it would be real in the sense of being a mental presence and thus of having the potential to become or otherwise contribute to something other than the idea itself.
There is no untrue subject thus far.
False idols are then understood as an alias for false gods: people are worshipping something that is not true. This, however, requires a definitive notion of truth. For example, I may think that money is a false god and, by extension, people who worship money are doing something wrong because money is not the highest value in the world. “False idol”, here, does not make money unreal nor the worship of it and all derivative patterns of behaviour: those are happening. The appeal to “false” then is not literal. It is a shorthand way of formulating an exhortation such as “there are higher values, and there is the value which is the highest of all, so worshipping the lower value as the only one that matters disqualifies other values and thus makes people not think of them, which in turn conditions their behaviour in a manner that causes longer-term problems”.
I could keep elaborating on this exhortation, though what I wrote is already enough to demonstrate that the phrase “false idol” is itself an idol, for it too consists in indirectness. We have a short phrase which we employ instead of the much more verbose statement. The compact form thus symbolises the expanded form. Idols are symbols and symbols are idols. We can use the words interchangeably, unless we focus narrowly on the meaning of “reflection in the mirror”, as I noted above (though even that is pictorial, else symbolic).
Consider again the reflection in the mirror. A reflection of me is a symbol of me in the sense that it is a facet of the entire world that I am: it does not have feelings, for instance, which means that it does not have my multifacetedness. If I show you a selfie of myself, I am showing you an idol which points to the actual person but which nevertheless has a life of its own. The idol is its own presence. When you check the picture of someone you have never met, the idol still engenders in you a reaction: you might for example find the person attractive and you might further imagine that this person is polite as well as funny. We then notice how idols are as real as a punch in the face: they too can produce material consequences.
That which produces an effect is real at least insofar as it exhibits the capacity to form part of the cosmic structure by which cause leads to effect, effect leads to cause. The idol of me is of the world as much as I am. The difference between us is one of degree: I am more complex.
Now think again about money as a false idol. We realise that it too, qua idol, is as real as you and me. Dismissing it as “false” is a figure of speech, for we cannot affect its state, as aforementioned.
Which brings us to the exhortation against the false idol; an exhortation which itself employs an idol, else a symbol. The exhortation rests on the notion of an absolute value and, thus, of a ranking among values. For there to be a ranking, there has to be something that is common to all values which we can discern. The relationship between the lower values and the absolute value must then be one of reflection, else representation, else one facet versus multifacetedness. All the selfies of me and all the words used to describe me are symbols of me, yet neither individually nor collectively do they exhaust me and nor do they amount to me as such. The same for values: the lower values are idols of the absolute value insofar as they consist in indirectness.
Can we have directness? Can it be absolute? Can we even have it for the banal case of a personal relation? Do you know anyone fully? Do you even know yourself fully? To know one person fully means to know not only its actuality but also its potentiality. If I know myself fully, then I must know what each of my constituents is and to also know it fully. I have to have full knowledge of every cell and of every process within it and between them. And so on. Factoring in the potential, I must know it fully, since if I learn something new about myself through experience, then I necessarily did not know myself fully. This potential extends to all of my constituents in isolation and in their interplay.
If I know myself fully, I am still not dealing with directness, as there is knowledge about something. To be direct, the knowledge of the thing would be the thing. As such, the potential me would be the actual me. The future me would be the present me. You understand this is no longer a human being.
The absolute value, which we may describe as ineffable, essence as such, supreme God, or whatever we choose, can only be known through a representation. The reason is that to know the absolute absolutely we too have to have knowledge of its potential. In other words, we have to be omniscient. Though knowledge which is absolute must coincide with presence which is absolute, for it cannot be about something else or outside or, anyhow, indirect. Thus omniscience is ubiquity. And absolute ubiquity demands that there is no cause for it, as that is indirectness, so it always is. There is no before it, no after it, no outside of it, no it and something else.
To not belabour the point I am making, here is the gist: those who fight you on the premise that they are against your false idols do not realise that idols is all we have in a state of indirectness.