Fatherhood: A Lone Start of Narcissistic Hedonism or a Constellation of Meaningful Suffering? An Axiomatological Analysis
Within the framework of Axiomatology, fatherhood is best understood as a vertical axis bridging two critical dimensions: the embodied presence of the physical father and the transcendent normative order to which he aligns. This duality positions the father not merely as a biological figure but as a living conduit of moral absolutes and structured values. In this sense, every son (and daughter) is shaped by two paternal forces: the concrete, personal influence of the physical father and the ideal, value-laden figure the father embodies.
This article examines how these two paternal dimensions influence the developing child, particularly the son, through an Axiomatological reinterpretation of Alfred North Whitehead’s concepts of presentational immediacy and causal efficacy. We explore how these two modes of experience capture, respectively, the immediate symbolic presence of the father and the long-range formative power of his behavior. Furthermore, we argue that the father's alignment with a higher normative order not only shapes the son’s psychological trajectory but also forges his existential resilience—especially through the crucible of meaningful suffering. It is through the father’s example of such suffering, when anchored in a structured moral framework, that the child gains the capacity to endure, to orient vertically, and to develop the character necessary for navigating life’s adversities.
The Concept of Two Fathers
The motif of “two fathers” is not confined to myth or ancient theology—it recurs persistently in modern popular culture. From Harry Potter to Superman to Star Wars, we repeatedly encounter heroes shaped by two paternal figures: an earthly father (or surrogate) and a heavenly or transcendent one. While these figures are not always explicitly labeled as such, their functional roles are unmistakable—one embodies the cultural context and immediate relational framework (the “earthly” or biological father), while the other represents an idealized or cosmic source of guidance and power (the “heavenly father,” or ideal).
In the Axiomatological framework, this duality is not pathological but potentially beneficial—if there is vertical alignment between the two. The earthly father must not contradict or compete with the heavenly father but should function as a behavioral mediator of the higher values the heavenly father represents. Within this structure, the earthly father operates as a culturally embedded rule-setter, whose moral authority is not self-derived but delegated. The source of true agency, vision, and internal strength—the metaphysical foundation of the self—resides in the heavenly archetype of the father.
The Myth of Heracles: Axiomatological Structure of Dual Fatherhood
This structure is clearly illustrated in the myth of Heracles. While Amphitryon serves as his earthly father, it is Zeus, the divine father, who endows Heracles with his strength and symbolic destiny. Amphitryon is not irrelevant; rather, his role is to situate the divine gift within a human frame of discipline, duty, and cultural context. When the earthly and heavenly paternal figures are aligned, the child inherits both rootedness and transcendence—an essential condition for heroic formation.
In this sense, the myth of Heracles provides a powerful archetypal template for understanding the Axiomatological structure of fatherhood—specifically, the dynamic interplay between the source of existential force (the heavenly father) and the structuring of that force through culture (the earthly father). This polarity between vertical power and horizontal guidance forms the basis for the son's development as both a unique individual and a member of a moral community. However, as we will see, this is a perfect example for illustrating the mechanics of the structure, but an imperfect one when it comes to moral guidance.
The Heavenly Father – Zeus: Strength, Destiny
Zeus, king of the gods, impregnates Alcmene while disguised as her husband Amphitryon, resulting in the birth of Heracles. This recurring mythological pattern—divine conception through an earthly spouse—encodes the logic of the two fathers. From an Axiomatological perspective, Zeus represents the transcendent origin of power, destiny, and heroic potential—a path to glory. He is not a nurturer or educator; rather, he functions as the metaphysical source of superhuman force. Heracles’ strength, endurance, and capacity to confront monstrosity do not arise from human upbringing but from this divine inheritance.
Yet Zeus does not provide aim or restraint. Here we encounter a fascinating phenomenon—one that many thinkers, including Nietzsche, have observed and developed: the apparent moral disjunction between Ancient Greek and Christian value systems. At first glance, one might conclude that the Greeks revered power, glory, and self-assertion, while Christianity introduced meekness, submission, and humility. But this opposition is misleading. As we argue in this article, true alignment is achieved only through the tandem of the two fathers—within the realm of moral absolutes that the earthly father cannot generate on his own.
The myth of Heracles thus serves as an excellent illustration of the mechanics of fatherhood—but with a Nietzschean twist. Or perhaps more accurately, Nietzsche fell a bit too deeply in love with the Greeks. For all its grandeur, the Heraclean model lacks moral absolutes: the heavenly father offers raw power, but without moral orientation. Or rather, the absolutes embedded in Zeus’s role are themselves self-centered and amoral.
The power Zeus imparts is directionless—potent, but potentially destructive. In Axiomatological terms, the heavenly father constitutes the vertical axis: the line of transcendence, the link to the Absolute, the injection of divine possibility into human flesh. But this is not a pedagogical presence; it is an ontological imprint. It marks the child as chosen or destined, while leaving the burden of moral realization to earthly formation.
The Earthly Father – Amphitryon: Guidance, Culture, Limitation
Amphitryon, while not Heracles' biological father, raises him with care and discipline. His role is not ancillary; it is indispensable. As a noble general, Amphitryon embodies tradition, lawful order, and civic responsibility. In Axiomatological terms, he represents the horizontal axis—the boundary conditions of culture, the limits within which strength must be governed to avoid destruction.
Amphitryon's influence ensures that Heracles’ inherited force does not express itself in purely chaotic forms. He teaches control, behavioral regulation, and cultural adaptation. However, even with such guidance, divine interference—most notably from Hera—can override human socialization. This is seen tragically when Heracles, driven mad by Lyssa, murders his own wife and children, mistaking them for enemies. The event demonstrates the fragility of containment when raw, unrestricted vertical power—untempered by moral absolutes—overwhelms the restraining force of horizontal formation. It is a vivid illustration of what happens when existential force lacks ethical orientation: strength becomes destructiveness, and destiny can collapse into madness.
Without Amphitryon’s structure, Heracles would likely have become monstrous rather than heroic. But even with such structure, the risk remains—unless the earthly father is not only a guide but also a true interpreter of the heavenly axis. The key idea here is that alignment requires the father to subordinate himself to something higher—an absolute moral order—so that his behavior becomes a living example for the son. This alignment must not only channel power, force, and a sense of purpose; it must also impose restraint and convey normative absolutes that govern how that power is to be used. Otherwise, the very power intended to elevate will instead destroy the earthly father—and, through him, the son's trajectory and future.
The Cross of Identity: Vertical and Horizontal Integration
From an Axiomatological standpoint, the earthly father has two essential roles: first, to align himself with the higher ideal (to act in accordance with divine value systems), and second, to limit the domain of permissible action by teaching boundaries, responsibility, and ethical restraint. These functions correspond to the horizontal axis of the son’s identity formation. As stated however, there have to be limitations for the father himself as well, and there is little close to zero chance that the father would himself be a good source for those.
When we superimpose the vertical axis of divine strength (the heavenly father) and the horizontal axis of cultural limitation (the earthly father), we arrive at a symbolic structure—the cross. The child, and particularly the son, is formed at this intersection. He is drawn upward toward the Absolute while being held in place by the laws of the finite world. His character is shaped by the tension between inherited force and disciplined action, between potential and responsibility. The cross, then, is not merely a theological symbol but also a psychological diagram of fatherhood’s dual structure within the Axiomatological model.
Within this interpretation, one can recognize the structural similarity to Christianity—an echo that is not accidental. At the center of the vertical and horizontal axes resides suffering. Though this may initially seem violent or limiting, it is, in truth, the opposite: heartfelt and liberating. The father offers—and, though it may sound harsh, ultimately sacrifices—his son to the world. The crucial question is how soon each person learns their role. For with the wrong example and insufficient limitation, even a well-intentioned father may fail to transmit the values that enable his son to survive—and resurrect. In such cases, the son does not embody strength through structure but instead destroys himself and those around him, often amplifying the very chaos the father sought to prevent.
In this sense, the myth of Heracles serves as a perfect example of the mechanics and strength of the dual-father concept, but it lacks the element of sacrifice that would give it sustainability and constraint. Meekness does not contradict glory or power—it simply imposes stricter control upon it. In this regard—and although I love Nietzsche, as many know I always have—the core of Christianity must not be reduced to a slave morality. If the emphasis is placed on the control and regulation of power (as it is in Axiomatology), rather than its rejection or dissolution, Christianity can be understood not as a denial but as a refinement, even an elevation, of Ancient Greek heroism.
Alignment of the Two Fathers: A Necessity, Not a Luxury
It is not power that corrupts, but unstructured potential. From an Axiomatological perspective, the mere possibility of greatness—when left unbounded by normativity—readily degenerates into destructive action. The alignment of the two paternal dimensions—the divine source and the cultural transmitter—is therefore not a desirable bonus but an existential necessity. When the heavenly and earthly fathers are in harmony, they establish a productive tension: one provides the source of force, the other its containment and direction, both aligning with the same moral absolutes.
In the myth of Heracles, this dynamic is explicit. Zeus grants the hero his superhuman strength and marks him with destiny, but it is Amphitryon who creates the human conditions under which this power can be refined, socialized, and used for the benefit of others. Without Zeus, there is no sacred calling. Without Amphitryon, that calling cannot find expression within civilization. The one bestows potential, the other enables actualization. Thus indeed we can notice a lot of positive Heracles is able to accomplish. What such power alignement lack, however, is the strenght of mind and the defence in the situations where calamity or unstability raises and there is a propencity for the “maddness” to thake over. That is why Heracles is not a Christ and serves is place in the history both as an example and as a warning, not just as an example like the Christ, who won the temptations because he also possessed the “power of suffering”.
Alignment and absolutes as a crucial condition for healthy fatherhood
Thus, alignment reflects a universal metaphysical pattern. The psyche—or soul—requires both an inner transcendent source, what we may call the spiritual father, and an external normative guide—the social father. One offers the ontological spark (essence), the other provides the teleological path (purpose). This bifocal structure of paternal influence forms the foundation of coherent identity, especially in sons. The Axiomatological ideal is the convergence of these two axes—vertical and horizontal—without which the developmental process remains unstable, and the father's example becomes inconsistent and non-conceptualizable for the son.
Nowhere is this logic more profoundly enacted than in the life of Jesus Christ. In Christian theology, Jesus is born of God the Father—the metaphysical Absolute—but is raised under the care of Joseph, an earthly father who instructs him in the traditions of Jewish law and embodies the virtues of humility, restraint, and fidelity. Joseph does not bestow divine power; rather, he safeguards it. He is the cultural container through which the divine essence matures into a world-saving mission. The vertical is not denied but translated through the horizontal. This Christological pattern reinforces the mythic logic: true greatness requires both inner divinity and outer discipline. It is not self-sufficient—it is guarded into being. As discussed, this power comes with moral absolutes, which aid far more than they hinder in regulating divine force.
In this sense, the alignment of the two fathers is not merely beneficial—it is constitutive of fatherhood itself. When this alignment fails, the very notion of fatherhood as a moral and developmental institution collapses—reduced either to brute authority or to hollow symbolism.
The stakes of paternal failure are severe. There are few gray areas in fatherhood. As Tolstoy famously wrote in Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” From an Axiomatological standpoint, this may be reframed: all effective fathers are alike, but each failing father fails in his own way. The structure of success is narrow and ordered—anchored in vertical–horizontal alignment. The structure of failure is chaotic, diverse, and difficult to correct retroactively.
Therefore, the ideal concept of the dual fathers marks a civilizational leap—from the Zeus–Heracles construct to the God the Father–Christ model—because the latter contains not only the force but also the moral absolutes necessary to govern it. This becomes especially crucial in decisive moments of existential trial, which will be discussed later in this article.
Causal Efficacy and Fatherhood
In understanding how human beings experience reality and form identity, it is useful—following Alfred North Whitehead’s process metaphysics—to distinguish between two fundamental modes of perception: presentational immediacy and causal efficacy. These two experiential dimensions can also be fruitfully applied to the Axiomatological structure of fatherhood, helping to explain how a father influences the destiny and development of his child, especially his son.
Presentational Immediacy refers to the immediate sensory apprehension of the world—what is seen, heard, or otherwise perceived in the here-and-now with clarity and form. Whitehead connects this to visual perception and to Kant’s a priori intuition of space; it is the mode through which phenomena are grasped in their outline, their “shapes” in space, without reference to their origin or embeddedness in time. In this sense, presentational immediacy provides the snapshot—it shows us what is, but not how it became so.
pplied to fatherhood, presentational immediacy corresponds to shared presence: the father who is physically and emotionally present, interacting directly with his child. It includes moments when the father teaches principles, shares meals, or provides visible guidance. It is the act of “being there”—face to face, engaged in mutual presence. The traditional image of a father speaking to his son about the principles of life exemplifies this mode: a direct, bounded, and immediate transmission of values, conveyed orally and anchored in a specific moment in time.
Causal Efficacy, by contrast, refers to the pre-reflective influence of the past on present experience. It is not what we see, but what we feel—the weight of previous events, the body’s accumulated memory, the emotional residue of lived time. It is not concerned with surface clarity but with depth, continuity, and inner force. In this mode, we do not observe form—we undergo meaning.
In the context of fatherhood, causal efficacy emerges not in what the father says in a moment of instruction, but in how he lives—especially when the child is not watching. It is encoded in the father’s behavioral patterns, moral consistency, emotional presence (or absence), and how he navigates crisis, pain, and responsibility. The child absorbs this not as theory but as background atmosphere, slowly internalizing the father's orientation to life as a model of being-in-the-world. It is the father’s character, not his lectures, that ultimately sculpts the child’s own structure of values.
While both modes are necessary, Axiomatology emphasizes that causal efficacy carries greater weight in shaping destiny. Presentational immediacy can offer momentary clarity, but it is causal efficacy that defines the developmental trajectory—it builds the character that endures when no one is watching. A son does not become who he is merely through instruction, but through the silent gravity of his father’s ethical consistency. In this sense, causal efficacy is the hidden architecture of inheritance: the slow, often unconscious download of how one ought to be. Its strength is undeniable, and for that reason, it will always surpass the fleeting effects of isolated moments. This is due to its participatory and accumulative nature—causal efficacy stretches over time, shaping the atmosphere in which values are not just taught but absorbed. All moments of presentational immediacy—when not posed or artificially modified—are in fact the logical and often inevitable expressions of the deeper causal efficacy flowing from the past.
To fail in fatherhood, then, is not only to be absent from the moment—but to fail to live in such a way that one's being becomes a source of orientation. And to succeed is not to perfect all conversations, but to ensure that the father's lived reality is itself a coherent, value-aligned story capable of being transmitted even in silence.
Presentational Immediacy vs. Causal Efficacy in Practical Fatherhood
Self control
In real-life parenting, the tension between presentational immediacy and causal efficacy becomes starkly visible. A father may instruct his son on the virtues of self-control, focus, and attentiveness—perhaps doing so with sincerity and eloquence during shared, intentional moments. These are instances of presentational immediacy: situated, immediate, and framed within explicit moral communication.
Yet, if that same father is known to drink excessively, engage in casual sexual relationships, or repeatedly encounter legal trouble, then the deeper influence—causal efficacy—undermines everything said aloud. The dissonance between word and being does not merely create confusion; it enacts a partial destruction of the vertical alignment with the “heavenly father.”
What remains, in such cases, is often a hollow echo of the Greek model of fatherhood: power, glory, and strength may still be present, creating the illusion of alignment. But without moral absolutes and self-imposed limitations, this form collapses under its own weight. It is an incomplete archetype—impressive, perhaps, but ultimately failing the deeper function of fatherhood: the transmission of moral structure through embodied restraint.
The trajectory of action, especially if it lacks a Jacobian turning point—like Jacob’s encounter with the ladder to heaven, followed by confession, repentance, and adornment over decades—will speak louder than any words. In such cases, the son will either see the father as a warning, if he measures him against an ideal (which is ultimately better for the son), or, failing that, he will adopt the father as a model and fall the same way. Without transformation and moral orientation, causal efficacy becomes a legacy of distortion rather than formation.
This is not speculation but a fundamental truth of psychological development: children always absorb the story of their parent’s life, whether it is spoken or not. Causal efficacy—how the father lives when he is not seen, how he acts when he is unguarded—trumps verbal moralizing with near-total certainty. The child receives a narrative of being, not just verbal instructions. This transmission is implicit, affective, and rooted in the pattern-recognition systems of emotional memory and value formation.
Honesty
Consider a father who preaches the importance of honesty but is on record—perhaps in a moment of weakness—saying, “Yes. I’m a liar. I’m a liar.” The son may not grasp the full context, but he will internalize the existential contradiction. When verbal instruction and revealed character diverge, the issue is not merely that the message is lost—it is that trust in the father as a source of truth collapses. The father ceases to function as a reliable epistemic anchor and, more importantly, fails as a moral model.
When it comes to lying, breaking promises, or failing to stand behind one's word, this is a failure both in the Greek sense—where logos was to align with ethos—and in the Christian sense, where truth is not merely a virtue, but a divine imperative. “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour,” the ninth commandment, forbids not only false testimony but deception in all its forms. Among all moral absolutes, this may be the most crucial: for without truth, no structure—neither moral nor relational—can stand.
But even this is not the most destructive way to violate integrity or demolish one's reputation as a father. The worst form of lying is lying against the Holy Spirit. Luke 12:10 states: “And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.” This refers not to accidental falsehood, but to deliberate deceit—lying with full knowledge that one is lying. For example, when a man is asked about an act he committed or witnessed and knows with certainty the truth of the matter, but still chooses to speak falsehood—this is not opinion, nor vague recollection, but conscious blasphemy. Such acts carve a permanent warning into the memory of his children. They do not merely define him as a man—they mark him as a father who chose self-preservation over truth, even when truth was sacred. That is how a father becomes a warning, not an example—an embodied cautionary tale, rather than a source of moral orientation.
Also, the situational aspect—like presentational immediacy—is never isolated; it is always embedded in a broader framework of causal efficacy. The father's admission of being a liar is perceived by the son not as an isolated utterance, but as the culmination of a moral failure that stretches deep into the past. There may have been numerous preceding situations in which the father lacked the internal strength to confront those who took advantage of him—or simply lacked the mental fortitude and vertical alignment with any higher authority that could ground the moral absolute: Do not lie, no matter the cost.
Depending on the father’s age and moral history, the possibility of lying—and eventually declaring that identity under pressure—may stretch back even further, to his father. In this way, generational breakdowns of alignment become legible in moments of apparent spontaneity.
The more foundational the moral value being contradicted—truthfulness, fidelity, responsibility—the greater the collapse in the child’s perception of paternal authority. Truth-telling, in particular, is not a negotiable trait in the architecture of fatherhood. If the child comes to see the father’s life as dishonest through the lens of causal efficacy, no amount of explicit moral instruction can compensate. The father’s identity as a bearer of principles disintegrates in the child’s eyes.
Responsibility
A similar failure unfolds when a father advises his son to treat women with respect and to view sexual intimacy as a sacred or at least deeply personal act—but then proceeds to have sex with a near-stranger after only a few encounters, further deflecting responsibility by saying, “I told her to wait, but she came forward.” In such a scenario, causal efficacy reveals an ethic of deflection, irresponsibility, and desire-led behavior. Any verbal narrative about restraint or moral masculinity becomes not merely ineffective but hypocritical.
The reason causal efficacy carries such disproportionate weight is that moments—especially brief ones—can be performed. A father can say the right words, act the right part, and posture as a moral guide in the presence of his child. But the child senses when this does not match the deeper rhythm of the father’s life. The discrepancy generates not just disappointment, but disorientation: the very structure of trust begins to decay.
Paradoxically, a father may do more damage by attempting to teach moral principles he does not embody than by remaining silent. Why? Because the child will not only conclude that the father “doesn’t walk his talk,” but will also form a far more corrosive judgment: that his words are not to be trusted. In such cases, the father is not merely inconsistent—he is dishonest. And dishonesty at the level of moral instruction signals not just weakness, but betrayal.
It is, in a sense, a small miracle how often fathers fail to realize how easily children can see through empty words. When a father, within the dual tandem of the earthly and the heavenly, is entirely unable to fulfill his role, two principal paths remain: either to risk everything and turn back—much like Jacob, who repented and served for twenty years before he was ready to wrestle with God and receive a new name—or to step aside. In the latter case, the father must consciously point the son toward the “other Father”—the higher principle he himself failed to embody. Sometimes, the greatest act of love from a broken man is to step away—not out of cowardice, but out of humility. Still, such a step should always remain the very last resort.
Though it is often said that a child without a father should seek out a father figure, the deeper truth is this: such a search should follow, not precede, an alignment with the heavenly Father. For no earthly substitute can fulfill the role of origin, structure, and ultimate direction unless it first echoes the Absolute.
Fathers who have failed—especially through dishonesty—become warnings to future sons and daughters.
Regardless of the narratives they offer during moments of presentational immediacy, their lives speak louder than their words. At the core, they do not represent wisdom or love—they represent a cautionary tale: the story of a man who was willing to sacrifice his son for his own hedonistic pleasures, but not his pleasures for the sake of his son.
Causal Efficacy Builds a Destiny
The reason causal efficacy carries such profound weight in fatherhood is not merely psychological—it is ontological. From an Axiomatological perspective, causal efficacy is what enables the formation of destiny in the life of the child. It is not the selected, rehearsed moments of instruction— presentational immediacy—that define the son’s trajectory. Rather, it is the continuous, often unseen behavioral alignment of the father with a higher value structure that gradually scripts the conditions for the child’s teleological unfolding.
If the father lives in accordance with a vertically aligned normative hierarchy—embodying consistency, responsibility, restraint, and transcendence—then a pathway emerges that the son may one day recognize as his own. Over time, that pathway can become what we might call destiny. In this sense, the father does not impose a predetermined fate but generates a field of orientation in which the son’s highest potential becomes livable. This is one of the most radical and hopeful implications of the Axiomatological model: that a father can, through behavior alone, transmit destiny. And if that behavior includes the capacity for sacrifice, it also implants the deep internal certainty that the son “will always make it, no matter what happens.”
A weak attempt to outsource fatherhood
This sharply contrasts with ideologies that negate paternal influence. In contemporary discourse, many men—aware of their own failures or social narratives that delegitimize paternal authority—withdraw from the role of rule-setter altogether. They retreat from the possibility of shaping the moral and ontological framework of their sons. But this abdication has consequences, especially when viewed through the lens of the “two fathers” model: without the cultural presence of the earthly father (the horizontal axis), the heavenly ideal loses embodiment; and without alignment to the vertical, the earthly father becomes either authoritarian or irrelevant.
The social science data reinforces this claim. Numerous studies have shown that boys raised by single fathers are significantly less likely—by a factor of nearly two—to be incarcerated than those raised by single mothers. This is not to diminish maternal importance, but to underline a specific function: the father as moral calibrator and enforcer of boundaries plays a crucial role in shaping the son's life trajectory. The causal efficacy of paternal behavior is not just felt—it structures reality. What may appear anecdotal or symbolic is deeply functional and statistically verifiable.
Presentational Immediacy as Reading the Constellations from the Stars of Causal Efficacy
When one gazes at the starry sky at night, no real constellations are objectively present—only scattered points of light. It is our imagination that draws the lines between stars, projecting familiar shapes and cosmic order onto what would otherwise appear as chaos. Yet this explanation is incomplete. As Jung observed:
“The starry vault of heaven is in truth the open book of cosmic projection, in which are reflected the mythologems—i.e., the archetypes. In this vision, man discovers his own ideas in the heavens and experiences their numinous effect as though they came from outside.”
(Memories, Dreams, Reflections)
The most accurate interpretation, then, is a synthesis: we project meaning onto the stars, and then that meaning reflects back, gradually shaping perception across generations. What one generation first imagines, the next is more likely to recognize—because the archetypal symbols have been seeded into the collective consciousness. This symbolic process is deeply tied to fatherhood.
If there are no moral highlights—no demonstrations of faith, meaningful suffering, or sacrifice—then the sky remains blank. There is no causal efficacy; no real events in the father’s life that can anchor symbolic meaning for the son. The father, in that case, lives like a solitary star: he appears, shines briefly for himself, and vanishes. Nothing is left behind. No symbolic markers remain to guide the son in drawing constellations—no meaningful events to “connect the dots.”
Presentational immediacy, such as conversations between father and son, are like shared moments of looking up at the stars. But if the father has lived only for himself—like a hedonistic sugar-daddy—then the sky is empty. There is nothing to point to. No moral events. No formative suffering. Just scattered fragments. The son looks upward and finds nothing to inherit. An empty sky is not neutral—it is a warning. It signifies an empty vessel, a father who has failed to pass anything on.
Ressentiment as the Destruction of Vertical Alignment
When we imagine the vertical moral structure through which a physical father may align himself with the heavenly archetype—the divine or absolute father—certain moments in the son’s life become structurally decisive. These are not the tranquil intervals of joy or routine success. Rather, they are threshold moments, when the father confronts immense tragedy, moral catastrophe, or existential hardship. These are the junctures where alignment is tested and revealed. In the Axiomatological framework, these crises are value-forging events—moments where the father's response can either affirm or shatter the vertical axis for the son.
“Happy times” teach nothing
From the standpoint of developmental psychology and existential analysis, a father’s behavior during periods of ease and prosperity holds limited formative weight. When life flows smoothly, there is little existential friction to resist, and thus, little of substance to model. Joy, in this context, is not a moral achievement but a transient epiphenomenon—a byproductof the temporary absence of suffering. Such moments may be sweet, but they are morally and pedagogically hollow. They are more like fleeting interludes than structural milestones.
In essence, happiness is the absence of moral and physical suffering—a brief reprieve from the tension inherent in existence. It resembles mice playing while the cat is away, with the awareness that the cat will inevitably return. Built into these “happy times” is already a trace of their end—a sadness masked as nostalgia, a quiet grief projected into the future. This aligns with Heidegger’s Being-towards-death: we are never simply within the moment; we are always ahead of ourselves, anticipating the end of what is. “Being-towards-death is the anticipation of a potentiality-of-being of that entity whose kind of being is anticipation itself,” Heidegger writes in Being and Time. Even in joy, Dasein feels the horizon of loss.
Anna Gavalda captures this beautifully in L’Échappée belle:
“What we were experiencing there—and we were all four of us aware of it—was a kind of bonus. A reprieve, a parenthesis, a moment of grace. A few hours stolen from other people...”
This “few hours stolen” marks the inherent finitude of joy. In truly happy moments, there is already sadness—not just the fear of their loss, but an ontological certainty that they cannot last. The more attuned one becomes to the nature of life, the more clearly one senses this. The child, too, begins to sense that joy is not the norm, and when suffering returns—as it always does—the child turns to the father not for happiness, but for guidance through tragedy.
This is where the father's role becomes most consequential.
Crisis and Vertical Transmission
What matters is not how a father performs during celebrations, but how he responds when injustice strikes, when betrayal occurs, when health collapses, when relationships fail, when despair presses in. These are the existential liturgies of real life. They are the events through which the son learns whether the father has integrated a value hierarchy strong enough to remain upright when everything else collapses. And if he has, then the son receives not just comfort, but direction.
Conversely, when the father responds to such trials not with strength but with ressentiment—with bitterness, projection, or ideological blame—he communicates something far more dangerous. Ressentiment, in the Nietzschean sense, is not merely anger. It is the moral reversal that occurs when one refuses to suffer nobly and instead vilifies what is higher, blaming others or the world for one’s internal collapse. It is the psychological substitution of victimhood for responsibility. In such moments, vertical alignment is not just lost—it is inverted. The father becomes a figure of anti-guidance, and the son inherits not strength, but metaphysical disorientation.
To suffer well in front of one’s child is to do more than survive hardship—it is to embody a metaphysical structure that renders hardship meaningful. This is where true fatherhood is taught, and where real character is transferred. If the son witnesses his father maintaining alignment through suffering—resisting the temptation to collapse into bitterness or moral relativism—a seed is planted: the idea that suffering can be carried, not merely avoided or externalized. In such moments, the father ceases to be merely a man; he becomes an archetype of transmission, an existential guide who offers not consolation, but orientation.
Thus, the ultimate goal of a father is to become a living symbol—one that contains everything. Just as Victor Hugo once captured all his doubts about the fate of his novel in a single-character letter, “?”, and received the publisher’s response in equal brevity, “!”, the father must strive to become that exclamation mark in his son's life: the embodied answer to all unspoken questions. Or perhaps even more—a living symbol of the Cross itself, bearing meaning through suffering and offering direction not by instruction, but by embodiment. In this sense, the classic phrase — 'Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times' — popularized by G. Michael Hopf, is not wrong. However, to make it practical, we need to understand it in more detail, as the mechanics behind it are both generational and individual.
Resistance of Ressentiment Teaches Sons
The most formative lessons a son can receive from his father are not taught in times of ease, but revealed in moments of existential crisis. True hardships—those involving tragedy, injustice, or profound collapse—serve as nodes of transmission, points where the moral architecture of the father is exposed and where the child, often silently, takes note. These events include illness, sudden death, betrayal, economic ruin, or psychological collapse. What unites them is that they present circumstances in which the father is brought to the brink of helplessness, where no external support, no ideological outsourcing, and no comforting illusion can mediate his pain. In these moments, the father must stand alone—and in doing so, he reveals either strength or fracture.
Central to these situations is the emergence of ressentiment—a psychological and moral response to suffering that, as Nietzsche describes in On the Genealogy of Morals, arises when one feels powerless to retaliate against perceived injustice or harm. Ressentiment is not simply anger or sorrow—it is a deeper metaphysical reversal. It is the transformation of pain into blame, and blame into moral hatred. It is rooted in the unfulfilled desire to “settle the debt” of one’s suffering.
Nietzsche articulates the etymological and psychological structure of this condition with precision:
“In German we have the word ‘Schuld’ (guilt), which has the same origin as ‘Schulden’ (debts).” — Zur Genealogie der Moral, Second Essay, §4.
This etymology captures the essential psychological structure: the wrongdoer has caused harm and thus owes something. But in the world of moral and legal constraints—or when tragedy is impersonal, as in the case of illness or accident—there is no legitimate way to collect. The pain remains, and it festers. Ressentiment appears when no justifiable act of retribution is possible. This is the father's moral test.
In such moments, causal efficacy becomes paramount. The father cannot hide behind performative righteousness. The son observes not what the father says, but how he bears the unbearable. Whether the harm stems from natural evil—a senseless tragedy such as the death of a child—or moral evil—betrayal, cruelty, or injustice—the father's response encodes itself into the son’s developing conception of what it means to live with pain. These are sacred thresholds in the Axiomatological model: moments when the father becomes either a teacher of transcendence or a conduit of bitterness.
Unchecked ressentiment in the father reverses vertical alignment with the ideal. It converts him from a bearer of value into a victim who demands repayment—whether from the world or from those closest to him. In doing so, he unconsciously offloads his unresolved suffering onto his children, forcing them to carry a guilt that was never theirs. Often, this transmission is subtle: cynical speech, emotional absence, cold detachment, misplaced rage. But its effects are corrosive. The son inherits not strength but confusion; not orientation, but distortion.
Thus, in principle, there are only two ways to encounter ressentiment: either to externalize it—perpetuating evil by projecting pain onto others—or to integrate it through meaningful suffering, thereby transforming it into moral orientation. Only the latter preserves the father’s role as a transmitter of structure, sacrifice, and ultimate direction.
Failure to stop Evil - Externalisation of Suffering in Ressentiment
In the aftermath of deep injury—whether through betrayal, financial loss, or emotional abandonment—a father faces a fundamental choice: to internalize the pain and metabolize it within a value structure, or to externalize it and pass it on. The externalization of suffering, though psychologically understandable, often results in moral failure. It represents a shortcut: a method of escaping the burden of unjust suffering by displacing it onto a new target.
This process usually unfolds under the logic of rationalized revenge. The individual who has been wronged justifies unethical behavior as a form of compensation. For example, a father who has been financially defrauded may feel entitled to evade his own financial responsibilities, believing that the injustice he suffered exempts him from moral duty. In the realm of romantic collapse, a man who has been abandoned or betrayed may plunge into a new relationship hastily, entering it in a state of wilful blindness, needing companionship not as a sacred bond but as analgesic—an opiate to suppress the deeper pain.
What is especially destructive, from the Axiomatological standpoint, is the cyclical nature of this reaction. The externalization of ressentiment does not end suffering—it merely perpetuates it. The person becomes another link in the causal chain of moral injury, unwittingly re-enacting the very evil that was once inflicted upon them. Instead of resolving the wound, they transmit it.
This may relieve the pressure in the short term. From an evolutionary or behavioral standpoint, it is an understandable form of self-protection. But in moral terms, it is a failure to integrate suffering. The pain is not transformed, only redistributed. The father avoids inner work by creating outer consequences. He becomes the cause of another's suffering to avoid fully experiencing his own.
And what of the son?
The son who observes this behavior internalizes a different kind of inheritance: the belief that pain should not be borne, but redirected. He learns that injustice is answered not with integration, but retaliation. That value violations are not repaired, but mimicked. In short, he learns to be reactionary. He is not shown how to face evil and hold the line; he is shown how to pass it forward, rebranded as justice or self-preservation.
This is where vertical alignment breaks decisively. The father becomes a false model—not because he suffers, but because he refuses to carry it. He escapes the purgative process of suffering-through, and in doing so, severs the son’s access to authentic formation. The father’s actions become a mirror of chaos rather than a symbol of structure.
From the Axiomatological perspective, this failure is not just personal. It is metaphysical. Externalizing ressentiment dissolves the father’s capacity to serve as a transmitter of cosmic order through value-bearing behavior. It fractures the moral continuity between generations, replacing it with an endless deferral of pain that no one ultimately owns—but everyone suffers from.
Suffering Through the Internalized Ressentiment
To internalize ressentiment is to resist the impulse to externalize pain through retaliation or projection. It means choosing to carry the injury rather than propagate it. But such a choice comes at a high existential cost: it demands that one suffer through the pain, absorb the injustice, and somehow resolve the psychic tension without violating moral structure. This is where the deepest test of moral character arises—and where both philosophical and theological models have struggled to offer adequate answers.
Nietzsche, in his Genealogy of Morals, mounts a scathing and justified critique of Christianity precisely at this point. He identifies a profound paradox in the Church’s soteriological architecture: guilt is ostensibly resolved through the sacrificial act of God Himself, who becomes both creditor and debtor by offering His son as payment. This theological maneuver, Nietzsche argues, creates not a true resolution of guilt but an infinite debt. The individual is “redeemed,” but only by being eternally indebted to a divine figure who has paid the price on their behalf.
According to Nietzsche, this machinery locks the believer into a structure where guilt cannot be authentically integrated—only displaced upward, into the figure of the crucified God. It neutralizes ressentiment not by transforming it, but by outsourcing it to a metaphysical scapegoat. The result is not liberation, but moral entrapment—one that can be manipulated, monetized, and institutionalized by ecclesiastical power structures. This critique remains not only valid but urgently relevant to any serious ethical system that seeks to treat suffering as formative rather than escapable.
In this sense, I do agree with Nietzsche. But I must add—as I have repeatedly done in debates with various thinkers—a few words in defense of the core nature of the faith.
It is true that Christianity has often been used in this way, and that slave morality has historically manifested—not primarily out of love for the less privileged, but rather from hatred of the noble, whom it deemed evil. However, this must be recognized for what it is: an interpretation of the faith filtered through institutional systems, not the essence of the faith itself. Just as science or physics should not be blamed for the wars waged with its technologies, Christianity should not be reduced to slave morality merely because of how it has been co-opted by external layers of power. The metaphysical and moral core of Christianity—particularly in its insistence on structured suffering, inner transformation, and sacrificial love—transcends the institutional abuses Nietzsche rightly condemned.
Thus, the Axiomatological path offers an alternative: to internalize suffering without offloading it—neither horizontally onto others, nor vertically onto theological abstraction. The only viable response, from this perspective, is meaningful suffering. That is, suffering which does not merely endure but transmutes. This process mirrors what Nietzsche calls sublimation: the transformation of pain, guilt, and instinctual drive into something creative, productive, and redemptive—something that serves life, rather than corrodes it.
To suffer meaningfully is not to deny pain, nor to sanctify it, but to harvest it—to convert it into a moral substance that can be given forward without causing harm. It is the internal equivalent of resisting ressentiment by alchemizing evil into order. This does not mean repressing emotion or rationalizing injury. It means undergoing the full depth of pain, allowing it to shape the self, and forging from it something that strengthens the moral structure of both self and others.
This path is difficult—but it is the only path that preserves vertical alignment with the higher moral order, the “heavenly father” in Axiomatological terms. It is the only way to ensure that the suffering does not become another link in the causal chain of evil. In carrying the pain with integrity, the father becomes a living symbol for the son—not merely of endurance, but of transformation. He becomes not just a man who was hurt, but a man who refused to hurt others because he was hurt. That is the essence of moral strength.
And it is that silent strength, forged in the crucible of sublimated suffering, that builds the invisible foundation for the son’s destiny.
Conclusion: Fatherhood as a Linked Chain of Resolutions to Hard Times
Fatherhood that truly forms the son is not a series of comforting moments or instructive talks. It is an uphill battle—a stumbling ascent, willingly undertaken through pain, hardship, and moral trial. It is the quiet act of dragging the heaviest cross one can bear—not in public triumph, but in private integrity. It is, in many ways, a sad image. But it is also profoundly liberating. For it shows that the essence of fatherhood lies not in performance but in perseverance—not in the ease of giving, but in the refusal to betray value when everything else is falling apart.
A son is not formed in the scattered moments of live interaction, nor in the polished fragments of presentational immediacy. Those moments may feel significant, but they are not decisive. Fathers who only see their sons occasionally should not despair. What matters more—infinitely more—is what the father is when no one is watching. His causal efficacy—his behavior in the worst of times, his response to injury, betrayal, loss, and tragedy—this is what sculpts the moral architecture of the son.
When a father resists the temptation to pass on pain, when he contains evil rather than amplifying it, when he suffers without turning to bitterness or self-justification—he maintains alignment with the higher order. He becomes the earthly representative of the “heavenly father,” a living symbol of value fidelity under pressure. These are the hidden transmissions—the non-verbal inheritances—that forge true character and enduring self-confidence in the son (and, as always, also in the daughter, though in this context the focus remains primarily on the son).
Such moments become metaphysical anchors: junctions where suffering stops, where the vertical axis is reaffirmed, and where the father, by not outsourcing his pain, becomes a link in a sacred chain of resolution. This, paradoxically, is what makes the son strong—not protection from evil, but the witnessing of a moral refusal to become its conduit. It is strength not through domination, but through containment. Not through vengeance, but through meaning. In this way, the son inherits everything from the father—on all levels of analysis. Much like the boy in The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein—first taking the apples, then the branches, and finally the trunk—the son draws from the father’s essence.
One might attempt to romanticize parenthood as a collection of happy moments shared, but such a vision is not merely a lie—it is an absurdity. That illusion is rotten at its core and typical of narcissistic fathers who prioritize their own gratification over their son’s future. They wish to live well, but do so at the expense of their child. In such cases, other men must rise to play the role the father abandoned, and sons must come to understand this bitter truth. This kind of fatherhood is a cruel joke—first on the son, and then, inevitably, on the father himself. It is the opposite of sacrifice, the opposite of true love.
Yes, with true love, the father loses everything. Like the tree in Silverstein’s tale, he ends up a stump. That is how love for the son manifests—through total sacrifice. One might say that ending up a stump is equivalent to loss or death, but they would be more wrong than they can imagine. It means immortality—carried in the hearts, minds, souls, and lives of others, passed down through the bloodline of the son. It is, once again, a resurrection—only this time through the next generation. To become a stump is never optimal—but neither is the life of hedonistic detachment, the kind of existence lived by the careless father who leaves his son to the world and becomes a distant sugar-daddy. The choice is always born from the vertical connection to something higher. If that connection exists, the father knows what to do. If it does not, nothing will help. In the exact same way that the nuclear family is the cornerstone of Western society, the vertical alignment of the father that facilitates meaningful suffering is the essence of fatherhood.
This is the highest calling of fatherhood in the Axiomatological sense: to suffer well, so that the son may walk upright.
