Why Coinherence?

Though publishing very sporadically, I have written since 2022 on the Substack "Oudeís," or "Nobody," under the nom de plume of Xenoleona, the "Lioness of the Other." Both names had personal significance to me and felt consistent with my philosophy and worldview at the time. So why change them? By the end of this post, I hope the answer will be obvious.

Oudeís referenced the confrontation of Odysseus and Polyphemus from my favorite of the classical myths as a child, the Odyssey (as I've grown older, though not necessarily any wiser, my affections have shifted to Orpheus and Eurydice). It was also a direct Greek equivalent to the magical motto of a Magister Templi who has crossed the Abyss and come out the other side, which I found to be a cheeky joke for someone who had a near-death experience on an operating table. Xenoleona was a way to honor Xenophon of Athens, whose dog names in the Kynegetikos I hold in deep affection, and the Trojan warrior Demoleon, whose mother was a priestess of Athena.

Despite all of this, I feel a change is necessary, for the simple reason that if I had to express my philosophy, religion, politics, what-have-you in a single word, that word would be "coinherence." Such a deceptively simple word is the answer to over two decades of searching for a concise way to describe my perspective! So what is coinherence?

Coinherence is a non-subordinative interdependence and interconnectedness which allows the mutual indwelling of souls while maintaining their uniqueness. Principally, it is the eternally generative interpenetration of the three Persons of the Holy Trinity, which models the ideal society: an egalitarian association centered on agapic love. Each Person of the Trinity is entirely mutually indwelling yet maintains distinct qualities, defined by relations yet not reducible to them. Jesus Christ is the model for humans who wish to implement coinherence in their own lives. The significance of coinherence is that it offers a way of navigating the world centered on a web of relationships with other persons, with ecosystems, and ultimately with God: what Fr. Raimon Panikkar called the cosmotheandric intuition, the inseparability of world, humanity, and the divine, all flowing from a foundation of kenotic love.

Coinherence is built around giving freely and without coercion and is therefore premised on an irreducibility that does not dissolve. Everyone has a haecceity, a unique thisness that makes that particular person that particular person, as opposed to any other. Individuation is an eternally spirating process which begins at conception and never ends. It does not end even in death; we continue into greater and greater glory as we achieve further union with the infiniteness of God. This process does not dissolve us into an undifferentiated mass. We are kept, our specific mind, body, and soul, and perfected. We are totally united, and totally unique. This is the dream that has stirred my soul since I was a child, and it is the first thing I want a reader to see.

To answer the question in the title: names are thesis statements. "Nobody" is not a thesis I want to co-sign anymore, but "coinherence" is. This project will be a clean break from the social personalism of yore, and the inauguration of a new era: a coinherent personalism.