Ouden as Supertranscendental

Advanced Lafferty.

I have a fairly complicated Thomist reading of how Ouden and the various allegorical set pieces work in Past Master (1968). At bottom, it comes down to the argument that Ouden cannot be a character because he is complete privation, which does not exist as res (a pleonasm, that). There is, however, a fascinating way one could work Ouden into the Thomist tradition and give him a kind of being. It would be by calling him what late scholasticism referred to as supertranscendental. This is an interesting concept, so I thought I’d post a timeline on the development of the idea and connect it to Ouden.

How would this work with Ouden?

Being: Philosophy begins by studying what is (real, existing things).

Being & Non-Being: The scope expands to include incorporeal concepts and even non-existent objects (things that can be talked about but don't exist).

The Thinkable (Transcendental): The concept of "being" expands to include not just the actual and the possible, but also the impossible (e.g., a round square) and fictions. This is what philosophers begin to call "transcendental."

The Utterly Apprehensible (Supertranscendental): In the 17th century, the final step is taken. "Supertranscendental" becomes the term for the absolute, all-encompassing category of anything that can be an object of thought, or as Sylvester Mauro puts it, "what is not nothing." It includes the real, the fictional, the possible, the impossible, the imaginable, and the unimaginable. It is the ultimate container for any and every concept.

In Past Master, Ouden (from the Greek οὐδέν, meaning "nothing") is more than the philosophical category of "nothingness."

Personified Nothingness: Ouden is the monster Ouden, and Ouden means nothingness. The Programmed Persons treat him as the deification of Nothing.

Active, Not Passive: Lafferty calls him a "vortex." This makes him volitional and predatory. He tells Thomas More, "I eat you up. I devour your substance." His goal is "Peace in annihilation."

Inside Out Ontology: Ouden says, "Do I not envelop all the universes? Consider them as turned inside out. Now everything is on the inside of my nothingness." For many readers, this will go beyond equating "nothing" within "something"; taken at face value, "everything" is a minor phenomenon occurring within an active, all-encompassing Nothing. In my reading, this is a con job by the Programmed Persons (devils), but let’s go with it.