Suppose that the term ‘God’ and all such cognates represent an intellectual labor, such as the articulation of a form, genericity, or some other correlate of intellect. If something like that is correct, then it seems that while ‘God’ designates a one as such, nevertheless, this one as such does not consist in, but precedes this designation.

What then is it that makes an Ineffable; a one as such, into a ‘God’?

One proposal can be that it is because she totalizes all things in a unique way. That is, there is a respect to her in which she is that by participation in which each thing is individuated as the unity that it is. At this stratum of her, in other words, she is participated.

The interesting thing here is that because this totalization is exceptionless, nothing is excluded, but because this totalization is accomplished uniquely, the size or content — the very look — of that totality becomes indexed or relativized. Existence itself is defined in the terms of her totalizing character, so that there is literally no-thing outside her totality. Yet, this is true for each God. This is not to say that there are different versions of reality–of the same thing. It is not like each God forms a complete universe, and they all float around in some even bigger ‘container’. They are not collated, not coordinate. Such a view would require each God to be outside the others’ totality, thereby destroying its status as truly total. Rather, each is whole, entire, and completely exhaustive.

Gods then vary in something like the way the sizes of infinite sets vary. If one God totalizes all things in their ideality, and another in their facticity, then, in one mortal way of putting it, their totalities will contain different things, though nothing at all is left out of either.

It does not matter for one’s divinity how comparatively large or encompassing her totality is, so long as it is from her that it is ultimately suspended, rather than any other. That, on this view, is what makes an Ineffable to be a God: that none is supreme over her. Her series is complete, as it were, entirely self-contained.

This may seem hard to wrap your head around, and I have been laboring to find an illuminating analogy. I’d like to discuss one tentative possibility here: phenomenality.

Some weeks ago, my children and I were watching a Netflix documentary or mini-series that discussed at one point how the universe was formed. We were shown simulated visuals of things like star formation and spatial expansion, and so forth. Bright orbs encircled by spinning debris, that sort of thing.

On another occasion, we were watching a similar type of show that discussed the formation and evolution of life on this planet, not only long before humans came into the picture, but even now, as it occurs at every moment outside the boundaries of our awareness. Here, we were shown such things as aerial footage of pods of dolphins leaping in and out of water.

In both cases, something struck me, and has stayed with me: nothing looks like this unless it is seen through our eyes. My point is not that there could be no phenomenal properties without datives of manifestation, but, more specifically, that our visual apparatus defines this very way of appearing. It simply does not exist outside that context. Without us, nothing looks like this. Nothing looks at all.

Part of what it even is for the sun to look as depicted in these documentaries is being seen by human eyes. Similarly, all the goings on throughout the world and universe that are happening right now, though without our awareness, do not look as they are depicted unless they are being seen through human eyes — there is no blue water with delphinic figures splashing in and out of.

So, we have it that any such sensory depiction is not how reality looks outside the context of human phenomenology. But this might be taken to imply a distinction between primary and secondary qualities, and this distinction is severely confused: it is to say there is a way that things appear when they are not appearing. The proper way to think about this matter, I would submit, is that the exemplification nexus of human experience totalizes everything…humanly.

If something like this is the case, then it is, strictly speaking, true that there is nothing outside our experience. Yet, this in no way means there are no other datives of manifestation. It is one thing to say that ours is a totalized experience, and quite another to say it subsists in a larger ‘container’ of which it is the only resident.

Perhaps this muddies the waters. I hope it goes some way toward greater clarity, though.

Maybe next time we can contemplate a subject that has been on my mind lately: the metaphysical significance of ‘anonymity’, or ‘anonymity’ as a structuring principle.