Some might wonder whether the neutralistic conception of the supreme being is not relatively empty when compared with traditional conceptions of a 'Supreme Being' who is claimed to be all-good, all-powerful and 'Love Himself', for instance. Naturally, such people are confused. The reason may, first of all, be that they are not capable of distinguishing neutrality from noncatenality. A noncatenal thing may be empty when compared with a thing which is catenal, but a neutrally catenal thing is not emptier than an unneutrally catenal thing. Thus symmetry is not in any way 'emptier' than asymmetry. And if it cannot be guaranteed that the supreme being is catenal in every respect, we may symbolically assume that it is catenal in a particular respect for those things which, or those who, are catenal themselves in that respect.

But, perhaps, the people who would prefer something like an all-good and all-powerful Cosmocrator do not so much mean that the all-ananic possesses fewer predicates, but rather that those it possesses do not have the 'fulness' of such predicates like goodness and powerfulness. Presumably, fulness is then nothing else than unneutrality or even extremity. So far as goodness is concerned: this term is used in different senses, and if good is purely normative, the all-ananic being is also an all-good being, for it is then ananicity which is good or a form of goodness. However, if good means beneficent, the all-ananic is as little beneficent as it is powerful (albeit not maleficent or weak either).

Why does the supreme being not have 'full' predicates such as beneficence and powerfulness? The answer is simply that the supreme being has only catenated predicates which are supreme, or that the supreme being as a symbol represents supremeness. That is: ananicity, and not nanaicity or other corrective-instrumental values. Hence, what the neutralist refuses, is to jumble up the ultimate and the instrumental, or the perfective and the corrective, and to create one mixed supreme-inferior being. It is the ultimate or perfective which belongs to the supreme, not the instrumental or corrective, however 'full' it may appear to be.

Those familiar with the monotheist 'problem of evil' know that we have every reason to believe that one and the same being could never be omnipotent, omniscient and all-good (in the sense of beneficent) at the same time. But even if we forgot, for the sake of argument, our veridicalistic convictions for a moment, would, then, the real existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good being (or 'Being') make any particular form of monotheist godthink any more plausible? To see whether it would, we should look at the so-called 'great-making characteristics' such a being is supposed to have, namely omnipotence, omniscience and being all-good (or wholly beneficent or wholly just).

The first characteristic, omnipotence, may be 'great-making', but it is just not a perfective, let alone an ultimate, value. If it is believed to be one, then a most fiendish, extremist doxastic value. The belief in power or omnipotence as something ultimate in itself is perverse in that it takes means for ends, or corrective-instrumental values for perfective ones. Power may be useful to serve the supreme, it is not supreme in itself.

Omniscience (or knowledge in general) cannot be conceived of as a perfective value either --as has already been demonstrated in the Book of Instruments (I.7.3.3). If omniscience and omnipotence are to make any sense at all (even on the extremist account), they must be instrumental values. But instrumental with regard to which perfective value or values defined in purely denotative or factual terms?

If the good in all-good is purely evaluative or normative (like, or almost like, just), then it is entirely devoid of any (factual) denotation. A notion such as being all-good or just in no way touches upon the question of which kind of being or acting would be good, just or superior. In short, even the belief in a really existing omnipotent, omniscient and all-good being would have no (respectable) ultimate or perfective value whatsoever. The 'fulness' of such a being is either the foolish result of the insane belief that extremist values like the-most-power would be ultimate, or of the inane belief that values such as goodness or justice per se --not to mention "love"-- would have normative substance in themselves.

Even when the supreme is believed to be all-good in the substantive sense of beneficent, the condition that also beneficence in itself cannot be a perfective value remains. And besides that, such an all-beneficent supreme being --Love perhaps?-- would only symbolize utilitarianism, if no ultimate or perfective value other than beneficence or utility (or love?) could be assigned to it at the same time.

We conclude that if the ananic supreme being is 'empty' in any sense, then only so because it does not have the 'fulness' of supernatural and theodemonical conceptions. Once more the core of the normative turns out to lie on a higher plane than that of the extremist and/or inane belief in one being that would be omnipotent and omniscient and all-good at the same time and forever. This certainly does not mean, however, that we are not at all interested in beneficent beings that are powerful and knowledgeable as well --on the contrary. Nonetheless, their beneficence is not what makes them supreme; their beneficence is what makes them nanaic.

FOR THE SAKE OF THE SUPREMELY NORMATIVE
 
It is not for love of a man that a man is dear
but for the sake of the normative.
It is not for love of a woman that a woman is dear
but for the sake of the normative.
It is not for love of a child that a child is dear
but for the sake of the normative.
It is not for love of a parent that a parent is dear
but for the sake of the normative.
It is not for love of wealth that wealth is dear
but for the sake of the normative.
It is not for love of power that power is dear
but for the sake of the normative.
It is not for love of happiness that happiness is dear
but for the sake of the normative.
It is not for love of love that love is dear
but for the sake of the normative.
Ultimately it is neither for love of itself,
nor for love of a god, that anything is dear.
The ultimate it is which should always be borne in mind
for the sake of the normative.
Only thus can mortal beings realize what they wish for,
and what is dear as well.
Not because it is loved
but for the sake of the supremely normative.

[This canonical prose poem was inspired by a passage in a
philosophic-religious conversation which reportedly took
place more than two-and-a-half thousand years earlier.]