TERROR, HORROR & TRAGEDY COMPARED FROM A PHILOSOPHICAL-ANTHROPOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW

Are the categories of the clean & unclean related to morality & why do many of us fall in love with the wrong kind of person?

!!!Read: 

“But I’ve heard something relevant to this, and I believe it. Leontius, the son of Aglaian, was going up from the Piraeus along the outside of the North Wall when he some corpses lying at the executioner’s feet he had an appetite to look at them, but at the same time he was disgusted and turned away. For a time he struggled with himself and covered his face, but, finally, overpowered by the appetite, he pushed his eyes wide open and rushed towards the corpses, saying, “look for yourselves, you evil wretches take your fill of the beautiful sight!”.”. (Plato, Republic IV, 439-440a, translated by G.M.A. Grube & Reverent C.D.C. Reeve). 

Read again and again!!!

Executive summary

(5-8-2019, Amsterdam). Part I is about the art to think fast by learning to read texts slower. This can be done by:

·        Ask a lot of questions to a text.

·        This may allow you to appropriate the theme of the text to your own life because the dead text becomes alive and interesting.

·        ‘Hear’ what are interesting texts to read before you start reading by searching reads that fit the interests you already have in your life

Something (or somebody) is interesting if you are not indifferent to the result. That it is going to rain tomorrow is not of much interest for me for it will not change my perspective on life. I will react differently in life (by putting on a raincoat for example), but not change on the perspective on life will the weather report bring me. What can interest me is the answer on the question whether humans are talking pieces of living warm flesh, talking medium rare steaks, or that humans are more than flesh. That answer will not just make me act differently in life, but can give me a different perspective on life as a whole. In the question of what a human is I as a human am involved in that question and not an outsider to that question neither indifferent to the answer.  

Part II is an example of reading a passage in Plato’s dialogue ‘The republic’ very slow. Corpses of criminals are executed outside the city walls of Athens. Criminals are outlaws and the city is the domain of law and must be executed not outside the law, but outside the city. To have the corpses of criminals inside the city will contaminate good people with evil as the flu can contaminate health people. (The more good you are the less evil can contaminate you to become evil yourself). 

Leontius walks outside the walls and sees these dirty corpses of evil man and has an appetite, a lust, for seeing those corpses and at the same time is disgusted when seeing the corpses. My reading does not state that the emotional feeling of disgust is a disgust in seeing something dirty that ruins the appetite as if having a nice diner that is ruined by the evocation of the ‘image’ of excrement in talking about excrement during diner. He is by analogy disgusted by the fact that he has an appetite to eat excrements.

My slow reading proposes that the emotional disgust Leontius is feeling is a moral feeling. He is disgusted by his lust in wanting to see dirty dead corpses, excrements of life itself. He is disgusted by the fact that his monstrous unlimited lust is stronger than his bounding morality as a man. (You have to realise that what is unbounded limitless has the connotation of lawless chaos for the Greeks). Leontius is emotionally (‘lion’) disgusted that the monster (‘lust’) is stronger than the man (‘reason’ as the effect of the divine in men. Plato compares lust, emotion and reason with the monster, the lion and man). Leontius is disgusted about his appetite. Human reason tells his lion heart that it should be morally disgusted. Disgust is an emotion as a reflection by reason on immediate lust. (Disgust is a reasonable intelligent emotion as all emotions are I would state). 

An old definition of the holy in how it is experiences as something that evokes both fear and fascination can be a key in understanding Leontius. The experience of Leontius has the formal structure of outgoing extravert opening lust that gets bounded while the experience of the holy (in terms of the ‘tremendum et fascinans’) has a formal structure of introvert ‘enclosing’ fear that is overcome by an extravert fascination. Despite the differences in formal structure the ‘tremendum-fear’ aspect can correspondent with the ‘disgust’ and the fascination aspect with the appetite.

Leontius initially covered his face to cover his appetite because in lusting to see the corpses of evil criminals he fears to become an evil criminal himself. His disgust is the moral disgust that he has as a good person as a disgust of seemingly wanting to be an evil criminal. However it is stated that Leontius disgust is not the right assessment of the situation and expresses some ignorance. His disgust is the disgust in his heart, in his body. It is the living body that is bounded by morality in order that living bodies do not become monsters. It is Leontius his spirit, that belong to the domain of the divine (as in higher nature), that is seemingly lusting to see the evil criminal corpses. The divine is not bounded by (reasonable human) morality. The struggle between lust and disgust is a struggle between spirit and living body. Know that spirit gives dead clay life and makes it into a living body so the spirit must win from the dead clay.

The lust Leontius is experiencing is a divine lust to see. Not to see dead evil criminal corpses, but to see divine Justice that the Divine punished evil and restored order. The monster is not a monster and is more than man for the monster turns out to be divine. (The spirit turned towards the divine (by the divine) experiences itself as soul). The monster turns out to be an angel. Divine lust appeared as ordinary immoral lust. Divine lust in the ‘spirit’ of Plato I call ‘eros’.

By analogy with the story of Abraham who had to sacrifice his son this attempt is an attempt to murder from a moral perspective, but if you see with holy eyes it is a sacrifice. I propose, just on the basis of the small passage on Leontius appetite and disgust without any other further reading that Leontius his eyes are becoming holy in that he sees holy Justice of the fact that evil criminals get punished.

Holy eyes can also see if the punishment is just and what the right punishment is for evil acts. When the eyes become to see less they are less capable to distinguish between acts and actor by identifying acts with the actor. In our times in a ubiquitous state in which everything is inside evil criminals cannot be punished outside because there is no outside so the punishment shifts into a rehabilitation a reintegration of criminals into society. Criminals cannot be seen as evil (for otherwise the state loses its faceless face) and their acts are seen as coincidental effects of society that society must fix. Man has become like a machine and needs to be fixed.

(To appropriate the feeling of Leontius think of how disgust is felt as a disgust that you are ashamed that you feel not guilty, with a holy guilt beyond morality, enough not to even be worthy to be in the moral domain. Think of sex or certain sexual acts that you might feel is disgusting).  

 (10-8-2019, Amsterdam). Part III is about defining the difference between the genres of a (Greek) tragedy, horror & terror. Terror & horror stand over and against tragedy because in a great tragedy the outer tragic circumstances are caused by the inner ‘soul’ of the main character (singular). There is a relation between your world and how you are qua who you are (what is expressed in India by the ‘formula’ ‘tat tvam asi’ meaning ‘thou art that’, ‘thou art thy world’). In horror and terror the horrific & ‘terroristic’ outer circumstances of outer life overcome the main character or main characters (plural) as a coincidence and there is no inner relation with the inner life of the main character or characters.

Once an evil (whether from a ‘supernatural’ monster as in horror of a higher nature or whether from a natural ‘monster’ an evil psychopathic human) has been defeated in horror and terror the main characters have not been able to transform their personalities. They have not gained any ‘life changing’ divine insight (‘catharsis’) in which one understands what the reason was why the tragedy had to occur. That catharises cleans the (ensouled) spirit of the main character. Catharsis cleans the inner life and therefor cleans the outer life and that tragedy can never happen again for the main character. In horror and terror there is no catharsis (at the end of the story).

Aristotle (384–322 BC) defined tragedy ‘psychologically’ from within the emotion of ‘pity’ & ‘fear’. The public in empathising/identifying themselves with a character felt pity for the morally good person who experiences tragedy, injustice, evil and that made them fear for their own lives. The tragedy in a tragedy is about a good person who experiences evil (so long the moment of catharsis is not experienced). Aristotle connects the emotion disgust with an evil person who experiences good, that is rewarded with good (so long the evil person is not brought to justice). Disgust as an emotion evoked by injustice can be a clue to defining the genres of horror and terror although the Greeks knew nothing about these genres. A disgust for the injustice of (temporary victory of) evil (that the main character does not see (or the main characters do not see) as temporarily if the horror or terror are really intense).

Noel Carroll a philosopher on horror tries to define horror ‘in the spirit’ of Aristotle also from a psychological perspective (and at the same time defines it from an ontological perspective) and uses the word disgust as the emotion of horror, or ‘art-horror’ as he calls is. It is a disgust for an evil unclean monster. That supernatural monster is unclean according to Carroll because it is an impure mixture of natural scientific concepts. For Carroll the supernatural as a higher nature that is more immanent than (the lower) nature does not exist and must be ‘made up’ from contradicting categories, (scientific) concepts, of nature as for example ‘life’ and ‘death’ that together are combined in a supernatural zombie, a dead persons who is alive. (See: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/zombies-work-%C3%BCber-untermensch-test-more-james-roolvink/). This disgust is of the impure mixture of categories and fear we have for the monster is due the fact that the monster is evil. The fear is not a fear of the impossible for the impossible is impossible. The fear in horror is intensified due the fact that the illusionary non-existing monster is supernatural and can totally overpower humans. (The fact that a monster is unreal for Carroll makes it impossible for him to solve the fiction paradox: why do we like watching fiction when it is all illusions. One must also conclude that in cultures where people do believe in supernatural monsters or perceive them, as in the time of the Greeks, horror as a genre cannot exist. See how you can solve this paradox: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/horrific-monster-from-theological-divine-perspective-james-roolvink/).

Disgust and fear are repelling and Carroll also want to include an attractive element that is analogous to Aristotle’s ‘catharsis’. If Carroll succeeds he to find an analogue he has formally the same structure as Aristotle in defining a genre. Curiosity, a will-to-know (reason), is that attracting element why we keep watching horror movies or keep reading horror stories. It is a curiosity to know the plot. (For Stephen King that plot must end in a victory of the good guys).

Terror from natural human monsters does not necessarily has to follow a plot. (The movie Machete (2010) hardly has any plot, but terror can be without any plot). Carroll calls terror ‘terror’ to evade the problem. The fact that everyone except Carroll calls terror ‘natural horror’ (over and against supernatural ‘horror’ or simply ‘horror’). Needs an explanation. What is the attractive element here? No plot and no good end? In seeing dead corpses there is not plot, but Leontius has a will-to-know. I claim that in meaningless terror you really want to see the opposite, namely the divine that bestows meaning to everything. Wanting to experience meaning is what attracts us in terror. (In a documentary on terror/torture some meaning is already given via a moral context of the makers of the documentary. Both terror and a documentary on terror/torture can be both of the perspective of the victim and perpetrator although in terror in most cases the perspective of the victim is taken probably because we as morally good people find it easier to identify ourselves with the victims. We would be morally disgusted as good people when we have to identify ourselves with perpetrator).

To conclude in defining these genres in describing the essence of their ontologies tragedy is religious and is about the holy, the divine, the absolute, the transcendent beyond moral good and evil (as adjectives of intentions of subjects). Horror is religious and is about a morality and a struggle between a good natural person or persons and a supernatural evil of a higher nature than (lower) nature). Terror is nihilistic and in the evil perpetrator only affirms (lower) nature and that morality does not exist. Thus: holy, morality, nihilism. Nihilism stands over and against morality and the holy because they are religious. In morality one has an impersonal relation to an impersonal divine and in the holy one has a personal relation to the One God who appears as a Person to you.

Terror (‘natural’) is the contrary of tragedy, but in terror we do come across a category of the clean which belongs to the categories of tragedy (‘transcendent holy’) so in being more of a contradiction to tragedy than horror is terror is at the same time closer to tragedy than horror from a (false) conceptual dualistic binary perspective that states that knowing is knowing via contraries as if dirty unclean and evil stealing is more close to the sacrifice (as a ‘stealing’ of one self) than a payment for gift in order to give is closer to a sacrifice. (Want to know more? See: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/intermezzo-gift-einstein-debt-credit-quantum-james-roolvink/ (and/or https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/time-politics-james-roolvink/ and https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/absolute-change-imagination-versus-objective-imagine-james-roolvink/ )).

Reading guide: what to read if your are interested in…?

Go to Part II for the meaning of this citation & do not read the interludes the first read, neither the preface and Part I.

The interludes are especially important for those who are interested in anthropology and morality & theology (as the building blocks of philosophy that philosophy has to guard and be gateways to). Part II without the interludes is for those interested mainly in philosophy. Part III is interesting for those interested in literature, theatre and movies.

For all those ‘fields’ what is written here is never been written in those fields and is original insights based on thinking and more than sixteen years of what one could call ‘anthropological field work’.

Preface

(28-7-2019, Amsterdam). This article can be interesting for anthropologists, theologians, philosophers, moralists and those who are interested in literature, theatre and movies.

For business the ‘take away’ can be that cultures other than the postmodern western culture are really different which must be taken into account round themes as ‘diversity/inclusion’ or in doing business with other cultures. Including diverse cultures into one company does not mean those cultures, or minorities within the same culture, have to be identical to the prevailing culture to be included. Therefor a value as ‘respect’ for another as he or she is in himself or herself (not taking into account for the moment the false thought that gender is a social construction) is necessity in a company that embraces diversity.

Respect does not mean you have to agree with someone, but that you respect that that person has a right to speak. In many cases it can show respect to explicate the differences and not veil indifference by being silent about fundamental differences. A difference is fundamental in the sense that there are no universal values shared by all cultures that can function as criteria to validate cultures. (An attempt to find universal values, principles, to have a dialogue with someone (of another culture or your own) who has fundamental different values than you have is given here: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/possibility-sales-dialogue-james-roolvink/. The ‘C’ in ‘UC’ (Unified Communications) is preceded by the ‘C’ of ‘culture’). 

Furthermore in realising the complexity of the ‘transition’, or border, between morality and the domain of the holy that we find in the ‘concept’ of the clean/pure as a quality of the good that the good may or may not have we can realise that discussions in Artificial intelligence surrounding ‘moral code writing’ can be cultural biased by postmodern western culture. It may give yet another argument why computers cannot think because the complexity is not quantitative, but qualitative.

By no means this implies a nihilistic cultural relativism, cultural subjectivism, as if all cultures are without value and meaning. On the contrary, as those know who taught to discipline themselves to read my articles, for I speak of ‘cultural objectivism’ meaning that there are a multiplicity of intersubjective cultures that ‘capture’, as a fisherman and his net catch fish, something of the absolute, out of which all cultures arise, that sustains all cultures and transcendents all cultures. There is a multiplicity of objectivities that are really objective as a fisherman can really catch a certain kind of fish and another fisherman other kind of fish, but those different kind of fish are really fish. The principles that make a fish a fish may be called ‘absolute objectivities’ or transcendent (‘platonic’) ideas (as subjective perspective on the One, the Absolute). 

When we speak of different cultures we also take ancient cultures into account. In discussing ancient cultures, like that of the Greek, most politically/morally correct people do not get offended by the difference, if that difference is seen as difference, relative to ‘our’ postmodern western culture because the ‘ancient’ is interpreted as ‘subjective’, ‘primitive’, ‘pseudo-scientific’, ‘pseudo-objective’. However many contemporary cultures are ‘ancient’ and especially those cultures that are ‘religious’.

Is it respectful to call contemporary cultures primitive? Is it respectful if you show integrity, really believe yourself the other is primitive? No, because all dialogue is cut off if you see the other as primitive and makes you blind for the others form of objectivity and the kind of rationality that is implied in that kind of objectivity.

It is interesting to remark from a historical perspective that the moral value of ‘integrity’ as a formal value without any content (‘I am integer qua being a criminal’) got more and more emphasis in western cultures when other values were on the decline. In a nihilist context integrity is the last value to overcome from that very same nihilist context. Integrity as a formal value stands over and against a value as ‘being passionate’ (as a moral value of ‘knights’ that was also connected to ‘honour’). Both integrity and being passionate seem values that relate to themselves before they allow you to relate to other values, but being passionate is really only possible of you are passionate about something, that is other than yourself, that inspires you to be passionate. 

One may say all cultures have in common that they are moral, yet many cultures appear to each other as immoral. This article makes a subtle difference between logical-ethics (in terms of a prohibition) in which acts are judged and morality (in terms of a commandment) in which the actor is judged. That difference is implied in the work of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and is the basis to speak about the difference as difference to show there is a difference between morality and religion, as the domain of the holy, the divine, and its first stage or level that is expressed by the concepts ‘clean/pure’ and ‘unclean/impure’.

PART I. The art of reading: read slower, think faster

(13-7-2019, Amsterdam). These cited words have conquered over 2000 years. They were written by Plato (428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC). You would expect they contain some ‘eternity’ to resist the fading away into oblivion. Rather than being fascinated by the resistance of these words to be thrown in the graves of forgetfulness it is better to ask what these words mean and to participate into that what these words contain.

Appropriate the theme

How (can we access the meaning of these words)? First believe the words have meaning, and are not primitive gibberish. Than appropriate the theme to your own life and time. To appropriate the theme is making what is abstract and theoretical for you very practical and tangible. Theory in practice is more theoretical than just theory. Theory is for practice what water is for a dry ground that it makes fertile to life and makes alive.  

Ever looked at a disaster, a car accident for example? Ever looked at a disaster with fascination? Can you look at a disaster without fascination? Ever fell in love with the wrong type of guy or woman? We are confronted with opposing feelings between on the one hand something that is repulsive and on the other hand something that attracts us.

That is not the whole story. That we feel repulsion is ethical and the fact that something attracts us seems to be a feeling we ethically should not feel. The fact that we feel attracted to looking at an accident, to the wrong kind of partner, to corpses in cars after an accident in real life or television seems to be a transgression of what is morally acceptable.

Read before you start to read

Mankind is losing the ability to read. ‘Big data’ is for most people ten pages (or am I being too positive?). Although the ability to read seems like a muscle that needs to be trained it does not mean you need to read large quantities of words to be a good reader. It neither means the opposite, namely reading short snippets on Twitter and other social media. You need to read quality, words that contain eternity, for quality contains more than an infinite amount of mere quantity. The art of reading starts before you start reading and is being able to choose what you read. Before you start reading you must ‘hear’ what is good to read.

What is good to read? That what interest you. What is interesting? That what gives you a place in between (‘inter’) beings (‘esse’) in order that you get touched by the essences of the beings, that are not (beings, yet exist). Again what is interesting? That to what you are not indifferent, meaning that the answer can change your life. What is interesting is risky because depending on the outcome of your discoveries in the land of essences can transform your life and oblige you to have a good look at your style of life and change it, maybe at the cost of losing friends. Interesting is a theme, a subject, that interests you, were you can write about and formulate many questions, and by which you can appropriate that what you are going to read. The essence of reading is writing.

PART II. Dead corporeal corpses

The location and identity of the criminal corpses

The corpses lay outside the North Wall. The corpses lay outside the city (‘polis’). These corpses lay outside the polis, outside the law, because these are the corpses of criminals. We know the corpses are of criminals because they lay at the feet of the executioner. If unlawful people are buried inside the polis, the city, inside the law they would pollute the city and its morally good people. I am sure good people were not buried outside the North Wall. They may not have been buried inside the city wall of the living either, but outside the city and I guess at the South Wall.

Was Leontius making his way from the ‘bare’ land to the polis and did he, form his perspective accidently see those corpses, although for the gods nothing is an accident, or did he especially came to see this ‘spectacle’? 

Reading slow is asking many questions to be able to receive many answers.

Disgust and appetite to see the corpses is analogous to the tremendum et fascinans of the divine

Leontius covers his face and does not run away. Not running could be an indication his appetite to see these corpses of criminals would win from his disgust seeing these corpses of criminals. Experience of the divine or holy can be defined ‘psychologically’, from the perspective of the subject that experiences the divine, in terms of that which makes you tremble (‘tremendum’) of fear and at the same it fascinates you (‘fascinans’) and the fascination will overpower your fear.

The analogy between Leontius ‘appetite’ and his ‘disgust’ with fascination and fear presents itself easily, naturally, almost automatically. That analogy indicates Leontius will to see only appears to be unethical from a moral point of view in which only good and evil are taken into account and because the holy, the divine, is not good is interpreted logically as evil for evil is not good. Yet the divine is not good because it is more than good and evil is not good because it is less than good, it is evil.

Due the fact that Leontius is not initiated into the divine his feelings are ruled by morality, ethics. He covers his face because he believes that the will to see these corpses is immoral, is evil. He covers his face also to cover his eyes, to cover his sight, to cover his will to still his will to see. That Leontius covers his face is to cover his personality for he is afraid that his whole face, his whole personality, will be contaminated with what he is seeing: unclean dead evil. 

Interlude on how what you see forms the one that sees

One must know that in ancient times the soul was the form of spirit that appeared in the and for the body as life-force and that the body formed the life-force or better that the spirit was formed in its divine struggle to form the body (and in Plato’s case by being directly formed by transcendent ideas as perspectives of spirits on the idea of the ideas, the idea of the Good, beyond life and spirit) rather than be formed by the body. That what you see (and everything, whether life or spirit, is formed by the ideas) forms you(r spirit and thus your body. Ideas (plural) come about when holy spirits, angels, highest spirits, who are less one than the One is one have a one-sided perspective on the one. These ideas as perspective are in the holy spirits or of the holy spirits who are ‘nothing’ more than these perspective and think the idea they have of the One perfectly. Humans as the highest of the lower spirits can have a perspective on many of these holy perspectives of the angels but with less intensity and less one-sidedness).

When Plato writes that the soul is immortal he means that the soul is an eternal idea, but knows that an idea is more dead than dead and is nothing without an impersonal spirit that can open the idea for itself in order that the idea becomes something for itself as a spirit or rather the idea forms spirit because the idea mediated spirit to itself in order that spirit/consciousness can become self-conscious. Plato should not be interpreted as someone who did not take spirit into account. In the passage cited ‘spirit’ is implied. In his apprentice Aristotle this becomes explicated for in his definition the soul, ‘psuche’, is both an impersonal life-force and a personal agent with intentions.

However both Plato and Aristotle did not solve the riddle of body-soul-spirit, but gave us both the ingredients and direction, the right intuitions, to solve the riddle. 

The end of the interlude

Transgression of a moral community and with a moral community

His appetite overpowers his disgust means that his appetite overcomes his morality. Being outside of morality is being outside the community for morality makes a community into a community. Law constitutes a people. (The ten commandments made the Jews really become a people).

The ensouled spirit of Leontius may be overpowered, but his mortal body is not. The leopard crosses the finish line first with his head and only after his head has crossed the finish his tail can finish. The tail the body the spirit the head. The body of Leontius must be convinced. Without convincing the body that the appetite is something of the divine, for only the divine can overpower, not by force, but by seducing you to really want something yourself, the body, your normal rational-logical-understanding will believe that the will to see is evil.

Those interpreters of Plato who themselves cannot distinguish between morality/moral law and the religious domain of the divine law are forced to believe that this will to see is evil and subjective will to will ones will. They are forced to believe that Leontius is a necrophile.    

“…look for yourselves, you evil wretches…” says Leontius. Why? Is it because Leontius wants witnesses and associates to make is seemingly particular subjective will objective and universal, that is a will that is recognized to be just (by others from the same community)? Leontius makes others onlooking witnesses that participate in the sight of those corpses. Leontius assembles an intersubjective community of subjects to make is own seeing be recognized by that community in order to make his body just in seeing those dead bodies. His community, culture, must make his seeing objective(ly just).

Is that community a moral community bounded by law or will Leontius pollute the ‘blind’ bystanders in initiating them into seeing? Why are the bystanders themselves not overpowered by the corpses? Who are those bystanders? How far were they standing from the corpses? Were they standing on the wall or behind the wall? Are they you, the reader?

A community of evil wretches

“…you evil wretches…”, the to be initiated bystanders are evil wretches. Evil that sees evil is not polluted by evil. The clean is that what is not mixed and the unclean is what is mixed. The unclean mixed pollutes the pure unmixed clean. Pure evil is ‘clean’ in the sense that it is not an impure mixture. It seems you must become evil to see the evil criminal corpses and see the sight of something that is immoral evil. If you are good and see evil or if you are alive and see death, dead corpses, categories are mixed and the good and the living become unclean, impure.

Is the disgust something of the moral domain defined by the opposite good-evil or of the richer domain of the religious, the holy, the divine defined by three opposites, namely clean-unclean, consecrated-‘unconsecrated’ and numinous-mundane? You have a moral obligation to be good and that means to be clean and not be mixed, not be impure. The corpses are dirty, ‘excrements’ of the city and having lust for dirt as a good clean person makes that good person dirty, unclean. The uncleanness hides the good for the good person making the good person stained and open for evil. Having lust for dirty things can be out of ignorance or out of evil will. Being unclean also has a sickening physical effect (via evil spirits) in religion.

Interlude on the difference between the clean, the scared and the holy  

The holy as better, more good, than the good does not make a good person who sees something holy impure, but makes the good person even more good, more pure unmixed good. Being clean is not being morally more good than good for the goodness of a clean person is not stained by uncleanliness therefor a good and clean person can experience the holy when a numinous sign, the numen, is given how that good and clean person should make a sacred place in which his body can be sacred and receive holy power and not be destroyed.

Logically it seems to be possible that a certain unclean person is more good than a clean good person. That goodness is ‘calculated’ by good acts and implies an actor as an ‘I’ that wants to be good to get rewarded. Cleanness is actually about doing good for the sake of doing good and implies ‘innocence’ as the absence of the ‘I (want…)’. In reality to be clean is to be more good than good. One could also say that the clean refers to the actor who acts not for himself or herself, but for the good and that the good is about the outer moral law of the actor acting good. The makes the clean the effect of acting out of an inner moral law.

This Venn-diagram shows some of the relation between the holy, the numen, the sacred and the clean. This Venn-diagram may help you to define these ‘concepts’ without any relation to each other, but purely, in themselves.

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