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THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR METAPHYSICS STUDIES IN METAPHYSICS, VOLUME I
PERSON AND NATURE
Edited by
GEORGE F. McLEAN
UNIVERSITY PRESS OF AMERICA
INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR METAPHYSICS
EDITORIAL BOARD
H.D. Lewis, President, ISM; University of London
S. Sengupta, Vice President, ISM; Visva-Bharati
G.F. McLean, Secretary, ISM; The Catholic University of America
W.N. Clarke, Board of Directors, ISM; Fordham University
THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR METAPHYSICS
PRESIDENT
Margaret Chatterjee, India
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Masao Abe, Japan
Evandro Agazzi, Italy
Chung-yuan Chang, Hawaii
W. Norris Clarke, USA
Nicholas Lobkowicz, Germany
Mihailo Markovic, Yugoslavia
Mohammed Maruf, Pakistan
Andre Mercier, Switzerland
Ev. Moutsopoulos, Greece
Joseph Nyasani, Kenya
Tarcisio Padilha, Brazil
W.H. Walsh, U.K.
HONORARY PRESIDENTS
H.D. Lewis, U.K.
Ivor Leclerc, U.S.A.
HONORARY VICE PRESIDENT
Santosh Sengupta, India
SECRETARY-TREASURER
George F. McLean
Washington, D.C. 20064
Tel.: 202/635-5636
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword: H.D. Lewis v-vi
Introduction: George F. McLean vii-viii
Table of Contents ix-x
Prologue: Surajit Sinha xi-xii
PART I: SCIENCE AND NATURE
1. Science and Metaphysics Before Nature
by Evandro Agazzi 3-13
2. Does Science Coincide With Our Knowledge
About Nature?
by André Mercier 15-23
3. Science and Nature
by Errol E. Harris 25-38
PART II: PROGRESS AND NATURE
4. Progress and Nature
by Margaret Chatterjee 41-47
5. Nature as Object and as Environment:
The Pragmatic Outlook
by John E. Smith 49-56
6. Man, Technological Praxis and Nature
in Dialectical Synthesis
by Janusz Kuczynski 57-75
7. Nature and Human Praxis in Karl Marx
by Andrew N. Woznicki 77-86
8. Praxis and Nature
by Satindranath Chakravarti 87-96
PART III: PERSON AND NATURE
9. Nature and Freedom
by Kalidas Bhattacharyya 99-126
10. A Touch of Animism
by S.C. Thakur 127-137
11. The Nature of Man as Tao
by Chang Chung-yuan 139-147
12. Heidegger: The Man-Nature Problem
by Thomas A. Fay 151-159
PART IV: TRANSCENDENCE AND NATURE
13. Man and Nature in Christianity and Bhuddhism
by Masao Abe 161-167
14. A Characteristic of Indian Philosophies
and Its Interpretations
by K. K. Banerjee 169-175
15. Nature, Real and Unreal
by T.M.P. Mahadevan 177-183
16. Spiritual Experience and
Metaphysical Interpretation
by W. Norris Clarke, S.J. 185-193
17. Causality and Creativity
by Eliot Deutsch 195-210
18. Aesthetic Meaning of Nature:
An Indian Approach
by Bishnupada Bhattacharya 211-226
Epilogue: Santosh Sengupta 227-232
Index 233-235
INTRODUCTION
GEORGE F. MCLEAN
This study by the International Society for Metaphysics of the relation between
man and nature is the first of three such investigations coordinated around the
person and directed to its relation to nature, to society and to God. All are
intended to draw upon the classical metaphysics of East and West and to extend
that wisdom to man's life in this century. The particular task of this volume is,
therefore, to search out the dimensions of an understanding of the physical
universe sufficient to enable man to live fully and creatively in these times.
The first three quarters of this century has seen a number of major attitudes
towards nature. One of these has emphasized man's ability to transform nature; it
is typified by the central place of the notion of human progress in the
philosophies of praxis and of pragmatism. A second has been the periodically
recurrent awareness of the limitations of physical resources and of the fragile
character of their economic structuring. Finally, an aesthetic attitude towards
nature has been expressed in concern for ecology and conservation.
These attitudes, which in the past have occupied the attention of philosophers
serially, today vie simultaneously for attention. Developing nations face the need
rapidly to achieve material progress, often in the face of shortages and while
carrying forward the basis of their classical self-understanding. Other nations
face the problem of conserving resources in the face of progressively more
ambiguous economic and industrial creations. Both converge in the need today for
the development of metaphysical insight which will enable man to direct progress,
face the limitations of the physical world and achieve a more adequate fulfillment
of himself in nature.
In order to bring a broad range of metaphysical capabilities to bear upon this
understanding of man's relation to nature, this series of papers was prepared and
discussed intensively at the second meeting of the International Society for
Metaphysics held at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, West Bengal. The papers reflect
the various modes of stating the problem, elaborate carefully the multiple levels
of contributions to its resolution and search out the ways in which these converge
or are mutually illuminative.
Part I takes the first step by considering one of man's major projects for
appreciating nature, namely, science. The papers of E. Agazzi and A. Mercier, by
noting the extension of the meaning of the physical universe beyond that
articulated by the sciences, both identify the distinctive task of metaphysics and
relate it positively to science. E. Harris notes the implication of the
development of science for man's metaphysical conception of the universe and of
his place within it.
In the present century, this role has most generally been seen, not theoretically,
but practically. Hence, Part II traces the contribution of this practical
awareness. The papers of M. Chatterjee and J. Smith analyze and evaluate the
foundation and implications of the pragmatic attitude. Those of J. Kuczynski, A.
Woznicki and S. Charkravarti constitute a parallel study of the implications of
the Marxian analysis of praxis for understanding man's relation to nature.
A major recent concern, however, has been that the reality of the person has been
seriously ignored in the increasing focus upon the transformation of the physical
universe. Indeed, there may be reason to ask whether that universe itself can be
understood adequately except in relation to person, knowledge and will. It is this
question in its many modes of person and nature, East and West, that is studied in
Part III by the papers of K. Bhattacharyya, S. Thakur, C. Chung-yuan and T. Fay.
Finally, in Park IV the search for the meaning of nature and of man's life therein
is carried to its ultimate metaphysical root. The articles of M. Abe, K.K.
Banerjee, T.M.P. Mahadevan and W.N. Clarke search out this meaning and the nature
of its discovery in the absolute and/or transcendent. In this light nature can be
seen afresh as is reflected in the articles of E. Deutsch and B. Bhattacharya.
Professors H.D. Lewis, Surajit C. Sinha and Santosh Sengupta, all of whom aided in
initiating the study, have graciously embellished it with a Foreword, Prologue and
Epilogue, respectively. To them and to the authors of the papers whose wisdom and
scholarship this volume reflects, as well as to B. Kennedy and A.M. McLean for
their work in preparing the manuscript, the International Society for Metaphysics
expresses sincere thanks.
PROLOGUE
SURAJIT SINHA
On this campus one of the greatest minds in human history was engaged in creative
experiments towards defining the ultimate goals of human existence. Rabindranath
Tagore's life-long pursuit was to seek and establish harmony with nature in the
thoughts and action. It is indeed a fitting tribute to his guiding spirit that the
theme of this conference is "Man and Nature."
An anthropologist, accustomed to observe human behavior in a mundane and matter-
of-fact manner, has a feeling of diffidence in confronting philosophers. As
members of a super-discipline, they monitor the theoretical concepts and methods
of other specialized disciplines at a high level of abstraction. Nonetheless,
philosophers do seek a feed-back from the concrete problems of various disciplines
and specialists in the various fields do seek clarification of their ideas from
philosophers. I would like, therefore, to suggest some problems relating to the
concepts of man and nature in the evolutionary experience of the Homo Sapiens.
Ethnographers the world over have attempted to record the customs of people
belonging to a wide spectrum of levels and patterns. These include the primitive,
isolated, self-sufficient hunters and gatherers, and also the highly
industrialized urban-based modern societies. There is general agreement in an
ideally constructed model of an `archaic primitive world view' in which the
concept of man, nature and supernature deeply interpenetrate. The three categories
are woven together in a unified moral order. In such a state of mind man
intimately cares for nature and vice-versa.
Further, in such a state, the relationship between man and man is fully social. It
is essentially undifferentiated, egalitarian and non-hierarchical. In contrast to
the prevailing stereotypes about the primitive hunter living in perpetual
scarcity, more recent thinking about the archaic primitive's conception of nature
is essentially one of bounty. Marshal Sahlins has described the archaic primitive
as representing "the original affluent society." At this level there is obviously
little scope for developing abstract concepts clearly defining the boundaries of
"man," "nature" and "supernature." Nature is not regarded as a differentiated
object of art or beauty.
When attention is directed to modern industrialized society, the primitive
linkages between man, nature and supernature are found to be sharply broken. Man
has much lesser direct sympathy and knowledge for non-human items in nature and in
the supernatural sphere, but he also has less immediate kin-like feeling with
other human beings. As a result he has to mediate with men, nature and the
supernatural through conscious constructs. These worlds of man, nature and
supernature become sources for constant intellection by the literati and
specialists. In all these developments we have to assume that there is a co-
relation between the subjective world of man and the objective reality of the
social situation and its material infrastructure.
One of the perennial problems of anthropology has been to speculate and theorize
on the mode of transformation from the undifferentiated primitive world view to
the highly differentiated abstract modern concept of the world. It is observed
that while the ideal primitive is ideally non-alienated, the ideal modern man must
face tremendous pressures of alienation from his fellow beings, from nature and
also from a viable socially shared construct of cosmology. One of the pursuits of
modern man has been, by re-discovering the primitive, to regain the unalienated
self. Such efforts have been made in the fields of art and literature, as well as
in some innovations in social institutions. They always leave one, however, with
the feeling that certain archaic states of mind are irretrievably lost. A very
interesting problem for anthropologists, and perhaps for philosophers as well,
would be to construct the transformation rules for tracing both the development
from the primitive to the modern world view and for movement in the reverse
direction.
Concretely, Indian civilization would appear to have been able to retain the
primitive world view at a high level of conscious formulation, as well as in
folkways of the rural peasantry. It is not for nothing that Sir Herbert Risley
described Hinduism as "animism transformed by metaphysics." In terms of more
recent anthropological jargon we would label such a transformation as
orthogenetic, as distinct from "heterogenetic" or "secondary" transformation in
the modern world by which the linkages with the primitive core are lost.
The above mode of studying the problem may have relevance to the present problem
of the relation of man and nature. It suggests some of the ways people at
different levels of society define, consciously and sometimes not so consciously,
the position of man in the cosmic order. Most of all, however, I should like to
recommend the example of the great man who lived in this village and unfailingly
held the torch for the highest ideals of man with very meager material resources.
Visva-Bharati
Santiniketan
CHAPTER I
SCIENCE AND METAPHYSICS BEFORE NATURE
EVANDRO AGAZZI
One of the most widely accepted commonplaces of `western culture' is that science
is the only proper instrument with which to `know' nature. An equally widely
accepted idea is that science has acquired this exclusive right to speak about
nature by progressively expelling metaphysics from the field. This is confirmed by
the fact that, whenever a statement is qualified by scientists as `metaphysical'
it invariably means that such a statement must be rejected as naive, incorrect and
misleading.
THE EXCLUSION OF METAPHYSICS
This raises the important question of whether science alone is responsible for
such an attitude, or whether philosophy itself has something to do with this
underestimation of metaphysics. Clearly, the most effective reasons for the crisis
of the reliability of metaphysics lie within philosophy. In fact, one of the most
characteristic features of contemporary western philosophy is that it has more or
less explicitly given up every pretense of `knowing', leaving the entire area of
knowledge to science. This does not mean that contemporary philosophy has ceased
to consider itself as a `rational' activity, or that its performances show less
intellectual strength, ingenuity and rigor than those of earlier philosophies. It
means simply that the aims of this rational investigation are oriented towards
different goals, as, for example, human actions, the existential analysis of man's
situation in life, or the phenomenological description of different kinds of human
activities or conditions, including investigations concerning language and
inquiries about the structure of science. The intellectual attitude shared by all
these philosophical positions might be qualified as `analytic', inasmuch as the
task of rational inquiry is conceived to be that of `analyzing', describing,
decomposing or bringing to evidence what is in a way empirically given or
detectable in the different fields. In this analysis one must not `add' anything
which could come from our reason and thus appear as a possible intrusion upon the
genuine structure of reality. In this sense, it could be maintained that
contemporary philosophy shows a general mistrust towards any `synthetic' use of
our reason, i.e., towards its work of building up something by its own powers
without the permanent assistance of empirical control.
If such be the most general feature of philosophy in our days, it is no wonder
that metaphysics appears now to be less esteemed than at most any other point in
its long history, for metaphysics is structurally based upon such a synthetic use
of pure reason. It is essential that it be allowed to surpass experience and
proceed to constructions founded upon the `mediation of experience'. From what has
been said, philosophy would appear to bear the major responsibility for the
decrease in the estimation of the power of reason which led to the rejection of
metaphysics. On the other hand, this fact cannot be explained in a satisfactory
manner without calling upon science; in fact, metaphysics was held for such a long
series of centuries to be the core of every philosophical system that one cannot
reasonably believe that philosophers have changed their mind on this crucial point
simply because of an internal evolution of their discipline. In reality, they were
induced to modify their conception of what philosophical knowledge ought to be by
the impression made upon western culture by the enormous success of scientific
knowledge.
This impression was so great that it radically changed the `paradigm' of knowledge
itself. Certainly, Kant was correct in qualifying as a `Copernican revolution' his
famous substitution of the subject for the object as the barycenter of the theory
of knowledge. A still more profound revolution, however, was implied when he
proposed that the main task to be fulfilled by his Critique of Pure Reason was to
investigate whether metaphysics `as a science' was possible. The very fact of
asking this question indicates that science--more precisely natural science as it
was exemplified by Newtonian mechanics--had already become the model or paradigm
of the knowledge on the basis of which the theoretical claims of metaphysics were
to be judged. If this was already true with Kant, it has increasingly emerged as
the standard viewpoint of the majority of philosophers during the past century,
and more particularly in this century.
In this way there emerged a philosophical attitude which may be outlined as
follows. Science has provided the only example of a sound knowledge. It has been
able to do so, not only without any need of transcending or mediating experience,
but by explicitly forbidding such a mediation. It follows that philosophy, too,
may hope to become a sound discourse only by discarding this mediation and, hence,
by recognizing as illusory every metaphysics which adopts the mediation of
experience as its crucial instrument.
SCIENCE AND THE MEDIATION OF EXPERIENCE
What must now be investigated briefly is whether such reasoning is actually
correct. This can be done by asking first whether the sciences really do avoid
every mediation of experience. On this point, much has been done during the last
decades. Contemporary philosophy of science has left far behind the basic tenets
which characterized the conception of science defended by E. Mach towards the end
of the past century and was advocated by logical empiricists during the first
decades of our century. They claimed that in science the content of genuine
knowledge is confined to empirical statements. Theoretical constructs do not state
any knowledge in the proper sense because they simply result from `tautological'
transformations of the empirical statements and as such cannot add any new
information of their own. At best, by means of suitable logical analysis, they can
be `reduced' to empirical statements. Their task, therefore, is simply pragmatic;
it amounts to offering the possibility of an `economic' organization of empirical
truths for the sake of their better employment in making predictions, realizing
applications, etc. In principle they could be dropped without any loss of
knowledge; hence, they could be eliminated from pure science as such.
Historical developments in the inquiry concerning the structure of science,
however, have shown how illusory were such viewpoints. Without entering here into
details, it is sufficient to stress the two main results concerning empirical
sciences, namely, the essential indispensability of the theoretical components and
the impossibility of clearly distinguishing the empirical from the theoretical
impossibility.
Why did the elimination of the theoretical side prove impossible? It is not just a
matter of fact, but has a deeper philosophical reason. If science were simply a
pragmatic enterprise undoubtedly it could dispense with theory construction,
because empirical evidence suffices for handling things. The fact that theory
could not be eliminated from science is evidence that science has another task to
fulfill, namely, `understanding' reality. By `understand' is meant something more
than purely `ascertain', for which pure experience might perhaps be sufficient.
Certainly, as a starting point the process of understanding requires that
evidential data be `ascertained'. But it then proceeds by introducing further
statements or hypotheses by means of which it is possible to 'give a reason' for
what was already `evident'. This structure of rational understanding shows that in
order to reach its goal empirical evidence is not sufficient and that nonempirical
elements must be employed.
This implies the following consequences: (i) science necessarily contains
nonempirical concepts and statements; (ii) to reach these science needs some
mediation of experience; (iii) this is due to the fact that, even in the case of
science, the immediate does not appear as the original; and (iv) the process for
reaching the understanding of the immediate employs two principles: experience and
logos, which is a creative and synthetic use of pure reason.
The four requirements just mentioned can easily be recognized as the cornerstone
for the construction of a metaphysics. It can be concluded, therefore, that no
objection against metaphysics can be derived from a methodological analysis of
science.
This conclusion may sound a bit too optimistic and hasty; an objection of the
following type seems natural. It is true that science cannot help employing a
mediation of experience, but the all-important point is to remain constantly
within a `faithful mediation'; this means not venturing beyond any possible
control of what is said during the course of this mediation. Science has always
felt this duty of remaining faithful to experience as its categorical imperative.
This can be seen from the fact that even the most abstract and theoretical
statements must be connected with other fully empirical statements by logical and
mathematical links which, though complicated, are always open to investigation.
This is the deepest sense of the `principle of verification'; it cannot be
circumvented, even when one is aware of the shortcomings which affected this
principle in the first stages of its too pretentious formulation.
Metaphysics, on the contrary, has unfortunately forgotten this fundamental
obligation, allowing itself every type of freedom in mediating experience. This is
the main reason for its failure in the attempt to produce acceptable knowledge.
This objection appears at first to be quite strong, but further analysis will
enable one to accept the truth it contains, without it constituting a difficulty
against metaphysics. The way out of the impasse is offered by the fact that we are
not concerned here with a problem of `faithful mediation' proper, but rather with
a question of selecting a specific thematic domain, framework of questioning, or
viewpoint for inquiry, etc. A full explanation of all this would need a rather
detailed analysis of the structure of scientific objectivity. The present author
has developed that elsewhere, but the most relevant points of this analysis can be
restated succinctly.
SCIENCE AND METAPHYSICS:
`THE WHOLE OF EXPERIENCE' AND THE `WHOLE'
A science is never concerned with the entire domain of `reality'; rather, from
this it designates its specific domain of `objects' by resorting to some
`predicates' which can be thought of as representing its `viewpoint' on reality.
Mechanics, for example, investigates reality only by means of predicates such as
mass, length, time and force, as well as some other predicates which can be
obtained from these primitive ones by means of explicit definitions;
electrodynamics characterizes its objects by means of primitive predicates such as
time, length, charge and other explicitly defined concepts, etc. This procedure is
quite universal and can be verified in every exact science. It can be maintained,
therefore, that every science characterizes its objects or determines its proper
`domain of objects' by means of its specific predicates. It follows that whatever
is not characterized by these predicates falls outside the competence of this
science while, on the other hand, everything which can be characterized by them
falls within its competence. Every such set of specific predicates determines `the
whole' of physics. By adjoining to this the whole of chemistry, the whole of
biology, etc., one obtains the whole of natural science. In a kind of limit
considerations, by considering the complex of all possible scientific `wholes' one
obtains the `whole of science', which may be considered as characterized by the
totality of all possible empirically definable predicates. For this reason, we
could say that the specific domain of science is 'the whole of experience.' This
is because the 'objects' of science in general are built up by means of primitive
empirical predicates, which fact automatically limits the competence of science to
what can be described by such predicates.
The `choice' of each set of primitive predicates is itself contingent. While this
determines the whole of a certain science, it cannot prevent other sciences from
being both different and equally legitimate `viewpoints' upon reality. The choice
of such viewpoints is in fact a matter of `decision' and `interest', for no
intrinsic necessity could compel one to consider a dog, e.g., from the viewpoint
of mechanics rather than of biology or psychology. On the contrary, one would be
perfectly right in deciding to consider the dog from all such different
viewpoints, and additional ones as well. If we apply this remark to science, we
must say that adopting a scientific attitude towards reality amounts to taking the
decision to place oneself from the viewpoint of the `whole of experience', as we
have already discussed. This decision is certainly fully legitimate. It does not,
however, state a necessity, but is contingent; nor can it exclude other decisions
and viewpoints from being equally legitimate.
In particular, one could be interested in investigating reality from the
viewpoint, not of the `whole of experience', but of the `whole' without further
specification. In this case, he would not be obliged to limit himself to
statements which could be traced back to experience. Such a condition is
compulsory for science only because the `whole of experience' constitutes its
specific domain of inquiry, but this cannot be the condition for admitting
statements which are concerned with the `whole' without limitation. If now we
qualify metaphysics as the effort to investigate reality from the viewpoint of the
`whole', which is different from investigating `the whole of experience,' the
verification principle cannot constitute an objection because it is simply a
`demarcation' criterion which circumscribes only the domain of science (i.e., the
domain of the `whole of experience'). What does not fulfill this principle can be
said to fall outside science, but not outside all meaningful inquiry.
Something more should be noted. Not only is science unable to exclude the
questioning of the `whole' as such, but there are moments when the viewpoint of
the `whole' comes into play within scientific discourse itself. Each specialized
field of scientific research suffers a kind of `contingency', as mentioned above.
This implies the well-known characteristic of `refutability' for scientific
statements: one can never be sure that nature can be described fully by means of
those precise predicates which are selected in order to establish a certain domain
of inquiry. Hence, one must always expect to be confronted with aspects of reality
which fall outside the possibility of being treated by means of the accepted tools
of inquiry. When such cases appear, one is faced with the problem of the `whole',
in relation to which he must measure the inadequacy of his previous viewpoints.
Speaking more generally, whenever one is concerned with the problems of the
`foundations' of science--and this happens not only in the philosophy of science,
but at times also in science itself--one cannot help being involved with the
viewpoint of the `whole'.
These clarifications make possible a clear evaluation of the philosophical
position which reproaches metaphysics for neglecting in its statements the
continuous control of experience. In order to be correct, that is, in order not to
confuse the `contingent' choice of the viewpoint of the `whole of experience' that
characterizes science with a `necessary' requirement for every meaningful
discourse, those advocating that position must prove that the `whole' coincides
with the `whole of experience.' Surely, there is no such proof in the entire
history of philosophy, and such a claim must be held to be purely dogmatic. What
is more, if such a proof were ever to be proposed it would necessarily be
metaphysical, for in order to show that the `whole' coincides with the `whole of
experience' one cannot help taking `the viewpoint of the whole' which means
adopting a metaphysical attitude.
What has been said thus far is fair not only to metaphysics, but to science,
because it does not claim that science contains at least some metaphysical
elements, as some philosophers today seem to maintain. In fact, when we
established that science is obliged to admit mediation of experience, to accept
nonempirical elements in its theoretical apparatus and to resort to a synthetic
use of reason, one might have felt inclined to consider all that as a claim that
these are unavoidable metaphysical components of any scientific knowledge. But
this is not true because all these elements always concern the `whole of
experience.' How this can happen may be exemplified quite easily. A concept like
that of an electron in physics is obtained by a mediation of the empirical
evidence because it is not directly observable; it is a theoretical construct and,
as such, nonempirical. Despite all that, this concept should not be classified as
`metaphysical' because the `predicates' through which it is characterized are
still the usual predicates adopted to circumscribe the `whole of physics,' like
mass, charge, etc. In this way one can see how it is possible to `mediate'
experience, which means to transcend the field of immediate evidence, without
leaving the `whole of experience' as a thematic domain of inquiry. On the
contrary, when a metaphysician says, e.g., that God exists, he does not intend
that this entity be definable through the same predicates as the usually
experienced things, but, quite the contrary, that it belongs to a different
`whole' with respect to the `whole of experience.'
Till now we have discussed the legitimacy of holding the viewpoint of the `whole'
along with the viewpoint of science and have found a sound foundation for this. We
shall now proceed to see whether such a viewpoint, besides being legitimate, is
somehow required. We shall see that this is actually the case.
THE NECESSITY OF METAPHYSICS
Let us return, first, to the remark that science aims at `understanding' reality.
To do so, it has developed a special strategy of separating our many specialized
domains of inquiry and building upon them adequate theories. It is through these
theories that all the different domains can be thought of as organized `wholes'
and `understood' one in relation to the other. But the task of understanding
reality does not seem to be exhausted by this work which renders only a certain
number of partial `viewpoints'. It is quite inevitable, therefore, that an effort
should be made to `interpret' the results of scientific inquiry itself and compose
them in a unified perspective. We might call such a further step an effort at
`understanding the understandings' or, more simply at `interpreting the
explanations' given by the different sciences. In fact, the concept of
`explanation' is the one commonly employed to label the process of building up
scientific theories for the understanding of evidential data in the different
domains of research. We could say that the attempt to understand reality requires
as a first step explanations of the different aspects of reality, followed by an
interpretation of all these explanations which can bring them to unity. Again, the
viewpoint of the `whole' appears decisive for the task of understanding and shows
the necessity of complementing the partial views science can offer.
It is, on the other hand, worth noticing that the need to understand is something
different from `knowledge' as such; though surely understanding must be concerned
with knowledge, it also includes an appreciation or evaluation of knowledge which,
as such, cannot be included within knowledge proper. In other words, we could say
that understanding comes from reflecting upon known things after they have been
determined in a certain way by a scientific inquiry. This reflection has the
double function of conferring an intellectual `interpretation' upon them as well
as that of `giving a sense' with reference to something that already has a `value'
character. The philosophical notion of the `reflecting judgment', borrowed in a
way from Kant, seems to be the best suited for indicating something concerned with
reason rather than simply with feelings or something of the kind, which expresses
a view of the whole, which engages in some kind of evaluation and, therefore,
somehow involves values. Surely one is entitled to employ the name of metaphysics
in order to encompass all that for, speaking historically, metaphysics has meant
at least such a completely encompassing perspective, directed towards an
interpretation of reality, with the purpose of proposing for it a `sense' which
reflects some frame of values. This seems to us to be still a first legitimated
sense in which one is entitled today to conceive a metaphysics along with the
sciences.
But another question arises when we consider the fact that, historically speaking,
metaphysics has often presented itself as a form of `knowledge' and not simply as
an `interpretation' of reality. Is it possible to maintain this claim in our time?
From what was said about the point of view of the `whole' as distinguished from
the viewpoint of the `whole of experience,' we can say that such a possibility
cannot be denied a priori, though it is too complicated a task for the present
paper to show under which conditions the project of a metaphysics as `knowledge'
might be thought of as realizable. At any rate, this problem need not be solved in
order to treat the question that is of interest to us here, namely, the
relationships between man and nature. Can such a question be envisaged correctly
with the help of scientific knowledge only, or does it also call metaphysics into
play?
Beyond all doubt a metaphysical consideration cannot be dispensed with, because
every possible proposal about the correct way of conceiving this relationship
follows from an `interpretation' of man and nature respectively, which cannot be
attained by means of science alone. In fact, every scientific consideration
necessarily unifies man and nature, but this happens simply because, as repeatedly
noted above, every science must employ its own uniforming criteria or `viewpoints'
or `specific predicates.' Though this fact is so trivial that it does not deserve
special discussion, it seems to be so badly understood that we want to stress it.
If one takes the point of view, e.g., of the color red, he will relate under this
viewpoint a red pencil and a red butterfly. From this particular viewpoint, that
is, as `red objects', they are indistinguishable, there is a much greater
difference between a red pencil and a blue pencil that between a red pencil and a
red butterfly. But if one considers a butterfly and a pencil each as a `whole',
surely he will put the red and the blue pencil together and consider the red
butterfly as something very different. Applying this to science, every science is
done by instituting uniformities and deleting differences; i.e., by introducing at
least one viewpoint under which things can be considered as uniform even if they
differ under many other viewpoints. If this be the cognitive procedure of science,
it can be easily understood that one can scarcely expect to discover differences
between man and nature by continuously applying tools of inquiry which render only
uniform knowledge of the two. On the other hand, if the two terms of the relation
are not conceived as distinct the very problem of their relationship becomes
immediately meaningless because identity is the only relation that can hold
between two indistinguishables. It follows that only a metaphysical perspective,
which enables one to consider man as a `whole' and nature as another `whole' can
provide the correct approach to our question.
Moreover, in order to study this relationship we need a broader viewpoint; we must
conceive man and nature from the viewpoint of a `whole' in which there is place
for both. Such a viewpoint cannot be the rather general viewpoint of the `whole of
experience' because, from a purely methodological consideration, we cannot be sure
that the adoption of this viewpoint, which despite its breadth is still
specialized, would not lead us to neglect differences which cannot be perceived
within it. The only methodologically correct position is therefore to adopt the
genuinely general viewpoint of the `whole' without specification, i.e., the
authentic metaphysical viewpoint.
This attitude is the only methodologically correct one because it is the only one
which leaves open all the possible issues. It is possible that, as a result of
inquiry, one might discover a transcendence of man with respect to nature; but it
is also possible that, as a result, one might conclude that man is simply a part
of nature. The second result would imply that natural sciences provide the entire
basis for understanding man. In that case, the conclusion would be correct;
whereas were it to be reached from natural science it would be not the result, but
the presupposition of the inquiry and, as such, would beg the question.
That a metaphysical consideration may be needed, can be inferred from a dichotomy
in the study of man that is typical of our present civilization. On the one side,
progress in biology, neurophysiology and cybernetics seems to indicate that
modellings of man can proceed very far, the tools provided by the natural sciences
and technology could suffice to provide an interpretation of man as a very
sophisticated machine or, at least, as a product of nature with no right to claim
privileged place among other natural beings. The result is a fully naturalistic
doctrine of man, which conceives him very much like one of the usual `things' in
the world. The strange fact is that, alongside this general conception and
frequently within the intellectual circles that adopt it, we find a strong protest
against the so-called `reification' of man, i.e., against the common trend to
manipulate and exploit man, to treat him like a pure thing without respect for his
dignity. It should be clear that the naturalistic anthropology expressed by the
first point of view cannot provide a consistent ground for what is expressed by
the second. If in the last analysis man has to be conceived like a machine or one
of the many things in the world, there is no apparent reason for refusing to
employ or treat him as one would a machine or other natural objects. In other
words, because no room for values seems to be left inside science and technology
proper, to react against the reification of man is to hint at the presence of some
values and hence of a certain unexpressed and implicit metaphysics. It would be a
great advantage to dig this out and to present it in all its explicitness. There
is nothing wrong in having a metaphysics, while there may be great danger in
having an unconscious dogmatic and hidden one.
Interestingly, a rather similar approach is now being developed towards nature. It
begins to be perceived once again that nature is not the pure and simple
collection of `objects' to which man is entitled, not only to know, but to
exploit, manipulate and dispose of in a completely arbitrary and capricious
manner. More and more, nature is emerging as a complex `reality' which must be
considered as a `whole' and, as such, possesses intrinsic properties that cannot
be disregarded without danger. It is surely not a case of returning to a
personification of Nature; nevertheless, serious people speak once again of some
`rights' of nature and of a certain dignity which may call for some `respect' from
the side of man. In other words, the language of values, too, finds a certain
place within the discourse about nature and this indicates the need for an
appropriate metaphysics of nature. Such a metaphysics need not be conceived
according to the old models which certainly were superceded by science.
It is, however, precisely at this point that the difficulty lies: today man is
conscious of the urgency of interpreting himself, nature and his position within
and in relation to nature. Science can offer him a certain amount of `knowledge'
for the fulfillment of this task, but, as noted above, that knowledge, though
necessary, is not sufficient. Whence will man complement this knowledge in order
to satisfy his need for `understanding' himself and nature--from poetry or from
some vague and generic intuitions? For individual needs such solutions may at
times prove useful, but they cannot be of general use. Moreover, they are weak in
that they are quite unrelated to scientific achievements, while what is needed are
interpretations of man and nature which take scientific information into account,
explain it and include it within a `whole' which gives it a sense.
If these are the requirements for a modern understanding of man and nature, it is
practically impossible to avoid the conclusion that such an understanding can be
offered only by a rational investigation which is in agreement with science
without being confined within its accepted limits. It is the specific task of
philosophy to provide such a rational inquiry; more specifically, it is the task
of a philosophy which does not consider itself restricted to a simply `analytic'
attitude. This constitutes an appeal for a metaphysics that is rigorous, rational
and cautious, but also effective and courageous.
University of Genoa
Genoa, Italy
CHAPTER II
DOES SCIENCE COINCIDE
WITH OUR KNOWLEDGE ABOUT NATURE?
ANDRE MERCIER
The question of this study is: Does Science coincide with our knowledge about
nature?
Our reasonable answer might be that we do not know the answer, for, to answer the
question, we would need to possess a precise definition of science and a
sufficiently encompassing knowledge of Nature to be able to see whether, under the
present circumstances, the coincidence of the two is realized with a satisfactory
approximation. Even this would not help much, however, for who guarantees that
Science will always satisfy the definition adopted and that we do not lack an
extensive body of knowledge of Nature concerning which at present we have no idea
whatsoever and which may possibly escape completely the scientific enterprise.
History, on the one hand, may help us by suggesting some sort of evaluation, even
of extrapolation. It is a fact that at one time philosophia naturalis signified
what is meant by science today, that it had quite universal pretentions and that
its precise subject-matter1 was Nature. Even if it is true that in its time
Newton's Principia did no more than explain the dynamics of inanimate point masses
under the assumption that all their interactions were transmitted by forces, the
Principia became the paradigm of what was to be the ever more encompassing science
of Nature, viz., Physics. Science, insofar as it has developed in the tradition
derived from physics, is therefore often seen as the only kind of knowledge we can
have of Nature, no other knowledge in that field being considered authentic.
Probably most scientists today would say so.
On the other hand, the word Nature is somehow assumed to cover the Greek phusis,
or at least the Latin natura rerum. Since res is the origin of the words real and
reality, physics would have somehow to cover reality as the totality of existent
things and of their classes and classes of classes. Their knowledge must then be
some sort of intelligible, ordered and rational explanation of the `nature' of
these qua existing things, i.e., the nature of reality.
Now, the extent to which simple words can be understood is in a way unlimited.
Under no circumstance can we limit it to anything fixed and final, for, apart from
the fact that no living language allows itself to be restricted in that way, the
very purpose of knowledge as the act of cognition is to extend its workings to
ever larger frames. Hence, Science cannot be just one printed book or any number
of books containing a finite number of propositions about a specific kind of
thing.
Therefore, we should rather try to determine the `nature of reality' and compare
it with the `kind of knowledge' Science represents before we restate the original
question and try to answer it.
When we say `nature of reality,' we do not use the word nature as if it were
written with a capital N, that is, as a system of existent beings or an object
susceptible of inner and outer relations. We use it instead as a lasting property,
a necessary attribute, an essence. Thus, the same word sometimes takes on the
meaning of existence, as in capital `Nature', and sometimes of an essence, in
spite of the Aristotelian opposition between these terms. One is nearly tempted to
forge a monstrum and ask, what is the `nature' of that `Nature'? Either this does
not make sense, as it does not make sense to ask what is the elephant of an
elephant; or if it does, in contrast to elephant, it must encompass enough to make
it coincide with its nature. The question is not one of analyzing the language we
use, but of understanding what we believe to be implied by that which is covered
by a word used throughout the ages with a concealed but deeply felt meaning. Its
definition cannot be made explicit, nor can it be made implicit in the sense of
Hilbert. The word nature is not a concept within a limited, hopefully
axiomatizable system of science, but a notion. A notion is always deeply felt to
correspond to a basic constituent of the totality of Being of which, however, no
exact picture can be delivered. Time is another example of a notion, and it is
well-known that neither Augustine nor any contemporary has succeeded in telling
what it is.
Nature, then, is that which coincides with its own nature. The German language has
a good word which cannot be translated into English or French: der Inbegriff.
Nature, we might say, is the Inbergriff of all the natures of things. So, in a
way, it is nothing but reality, i.e., the Inbergriff of the nature of things. I do
not think that any one thing could be omitted by such a notion. Why should it?
There is no sufficient reason to exclude anything from nature, unless it has `no
nature.'
The question arises, therefore: Are there `things', which do not have a nature?
The answer to that is, I believe: either No, if you confine yourself to existence;
or Yes, if you take beings into account which do not need to exist in order to be.
Rather than attempt to oppose essence and existence then, we ask, what is the
difference between being and existence? This appears to be a more modern mode of
inquiry. To my mind, the difference is that existent beings are beings in time,
within time if you will, whereas beings qua beings need not be within time. I
would exclude mathematical beings and `beings of reason' (êtres de raison) which
are not in time and whose being is not ontic, but at most ideal and fictitious.
What else remains which is ontic without being temporal? Either nothing, if all
things have been already counted among the natural things, or an infinite and
capital Being usually called God. There could not be several gods, for each would
have to be distinguished from the others by specific natures; this is excluded,
since it would make a thing out of each of them.
There is nothing, then, apart from God which is not part of Nature. Those who
cannot `believe' in God are materialists--they might also be called `naturalists'.
The word `believe' here is not endowed with a specific religious connotation, but
it does indicate a notable difference between knowledge about things and belief in
God. It might be remarked there is no knowledge of God in the sense of knowledge
about Nature, unless God becomes incarnated. But that belief does not concern us
here, it concerns religion.
Marxists usually term idealists all who are not dialectical materialists. This
classification into two groups is one of the fundamental errors of Marxism today,
for some--and I would personally claim to be among them--are neither Marxist nor
idealist. Another error of Marxism is the pretension that all authentic
apprehension of the natural things, i.e., of everything, has to be scientific. The
scientific approach, however, is not the only one available. Certainly, anyone is
entitled to restrict the word `knowledge' to `scientific knowledge'. But to
declare then that there is no other would be a vicious circle. One should first
understand what he wishes to signify by saying that he knows, and secondly find
out in what the scientific approach consists. Then he can see whether they
coincide.
As to knowledge, I have repeatedly written that it must be understood as an act
performed by the human subject with the purpose of (re-)establishing a relation
between his self and the being of things of which he becomes aware. At the
beginning of his existence man is spiritually--or mentally if you prefer--isolated
from the things around him and even from himself as a thing. This state of
isolation becomes increasingly intolerable as one's awareness of it increases.
Sometimes, in an attitude of contemplation, it leads the individual to abolish the
need of establishing individual links between his self and the other individual
things in their multiplicity and their diversity. This can happen very early in
life as in the case, for example, of Ramana Maharshi, or later on in life after
the isolation has been overcome by other means. The contemplative attitude is a
perfectly authentic modality of knowledge which, however, is not scientific.
Surely, everyone will agree not to call it scientific, whereas not all acknowledge
it to be authentic. Conversely, some consider it the only authentic one and
scientific knowledge to be an illusion. There is then a kind of knowledge which is
not scientific, not objective; moreover, it does not establish a link with Nature
since its procedure is precisely to evade the diverse nature of things in order to
contemplate the divine, which is not Nature.
At this point, one might be tempted to conclude that if there is a kind of
knowledge which is neither science nor knowledge of Nature, then Science coincides
with the knowledge about Nature. The fallacy in this conclusion is immediately
evident: from having found one alternative mode of cognition it does not follow
that there are no other modes. Indeed, if on the one hand there is within the
contemplative attitude or modality only that one mode called mystic, there are
alternative modes to science within the other modality which proceeds by judgment.
An example brings this vividly to mind.
Imagine a valley covered by grass, trees and other vegetation. Considered as a
whole the valley appears green. A geographer could produce a map of the valley
indicating its green-ness by some conventional sign and using different signs to
distinguish grass from trees and other kinds of vegetation. He could even paint or
print them in various shades of green to objectively reproduce the shades of the
various species. As a scientist the geographer would measure the areas covered by
woods and grass, put the towns in their right positions on the map and so on. Some
twenty-five years ago, however, the Welsh poet Llewellyn wrote a book which he
entitled How Green Was My Valley. His readers recognized a valley and got to love
it as much, though quite differently, than if they had known it from the map. The
book was not a piece of science, it was a work of art.
When Rabindranath Tagore founded his School at Santiniketan, he knew that one can
teach by poetry, music and the arts and that this can aid children to mature as
well as teaching by physics and the sciences. He knew also that poetry and the
arts yield an understanding of the things surrounding us which is as excellent,
trusty and valuable as the objective approach typical of science.
The valleys and towns, trees and blades, stars and atoms are things of nature and
in Nature. I can approach them objectively, i.e., as objects to be counted and
measured, cut or analyzed by chemistry, spectroscopy, or another science. I can
write protocol notes about my findings, by induction I can propose laws about
their behavior, and I can deduce from these laws what these objects presumably
would do under such and such hypothetical conditions. I can even verify by
experiment whether my deductions coincide with their actual behavior when they are
placed in a situation described by the said hypotheses. This is the way science
works; it is always done objectively. Blaise Pascal taught how to do it exactly by
doing it himself in proving the possibility of the vacuum outside the terrestrial
atmosphere: a typical saying about the nature of things.
Nevertheless, there remains one difficulty. The scientific reconstruction of the
workings of Nature may be very accurate, but it is never totally or `absolutely'
accurate; its accuracy is valid only within the limits of an approximation. The
approximation is due to the fact that, though we approach Nature, we never possess
it. A scientific description is to Nature what a glove is to the hand or clothes
are to bodies. The scientific enterprise looks like the attempt at possessing the
body, at raping Nature as if she were a maiden; but the rape never succeeds,
though scientists naively often believe that it does. Here, for the second time I
am using the term `believe'. There is a belief in science which is akin to the
belief in a god in religion. The religious belief implies both confidence and awe,
both of which lead to a devotion towards the capital Being recognized. The
scientific belief implies a comparable feeling and the certainty that something,
rather than nothing, is there inside the clothes. It is like a hand being within
the glove or, better, bodies within the clothes as they are called in Newtonian
dynamics. These bodies are believed to look exactly like the inside of the
clothes, like the `contents' of the laws, although nobody has ever possessed such
a body totally and absolutely. The scientist is confident that Nature consists of
such bodies, and each time he finds that he has too grossly conceived some sort of
body he replaces the image by a more elaborate one. Thus, he declared the larger
bodies to be composed of elements, calling them too soon atoms, for these in their
turn must be declared to be composed of particles, which in turn yield to sub-
particles, etc., without end. Yet, in spite of this never-ending replacement of
gross entities by finer ones, he still believes in the existence of things or of a
Nature as the real content of his successive speculations, which he calls theories
involving laws.
Only the philosophers, especially the logicians, could be so mean as to say that
perhaps the laws have no such content and that perhaps the words of scientists
concern nothing but pure constructs. When I was a young student, it was the
fashion among many philosophers of science to say this. But Max Planck dissented
and claimed unshaken that no scientist can fail to believe in the real existence
of the things in Nature.
Let us return now to How Green Was My Valley. The arts are very similar to the
sciences. Certainly, there is the fundamental difference between physics and
music, biology and painting, metaphysics and poetry inasmuch as the sciences are
objective, while the arts are subjective. Indeed, the former abstract from the
concrete and establish theories from facts, whereas the latter produce concrete
realizations from ideas. Nevertheless, just as the former theories and laws are
but approximations of an assumed real content, for the latter concrete works of
art are but approximate representations of ideas conceived. These ideas are always
ideas about things and their inter-relatedness, even though on the whole--
especially in modern art--concrete works may not photographically or
phonographically resemble objects as seen by the eyes or heard by the ears. An
idea is always an idea of . . . or about . . .; therefore it implies the
relationship of the properties of beings among themselves. Hence the creative
artist experiences them as feelings; his attempts to concretize them are the forms
taken by his subjective judgments and may be more or less adequate to the idea
itself. The degree of adequation of a work of art to the conceived idea is similar
to the degree of approximation of the theory to the assumed content. These two
enterprises, art and science, are one and the same as apprehensions of the
existence of things, while contrasting one to the other in their modes of
judgment.
On account of this sameness, both science and art apprehend Nature, for both deal
with the reality of things and show how they are and behave as we experience them.
In art, however, Nature is made comprehensible subjectively, whereas science makes
it comprehensible objectively. This conclusion is a very important step in
answering the original question: Does science coincide with our knowledge about
Nature? The answer is definitely No, since there is at least one field comparable
to science in size and originality which is part of our knowledge of Nature and
differs from science as a mode, viz., art. There is a particular problem
concerning poetry. This is often considered apart from the `other' arts, though it
is an artistic activity.
Is there on the objective plane an activity which similarly stands apart from the
sciences and is yet a `science'? There is; it is metaphysics. Here, significantly,
metaphysics should not be understood as meaning philosophy itself. Rather, it is
the kind of ontological research that is concerned with the apprehension and
comprehension of being notwithstanding their temporal existence. This requires a
procedure for transcending the temporal nature of things. Hence, in that sense,
metaphysics is not a study of Nature, for Nature is the Inbegriff of the natures
of things qua things in their temporal existence--here the phrase `temporal
existence' is a sort of pleonasm, since the existence is always temporal. Thus
metaphysics, though objective by the nature of its judgments, is not a science
proper since it judges on the basis of an experience of beings without attending
to time, whereas the sciences proper judge on the basis of an experience of things
as within time. I would not object to saying that metaphysics does not deal with
Nature. If it is to make sense, however, it must be related to the sciences proper
in the way just described. Thus, metaphysics assumes Nature in order to be able to
abstract from it by leading its existence back to a timeless being: that is its
ontological concern. Metaphysics is the knowledge of the ontic, but not of the
existential.
The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to poetry which is also concerned with the
timelessness of beings; it starts from ideas of timeless beings and works them out
in words. Poetry lacks the concreteness of works of the arts, though of course the
print or voice are very concrete. With metaphysics, it preserves an element of
abstractedness which keeps its works from being pieces of the natural world. The
corresponding experience of the ontic world with which they deal by poetry and
metaphysics is, if not alien to, yet different from the experience of natural
things which pertains to the sciences or the arts proper.
This does not mean that works of the arts other than poetry change in time. They
may involve time as in music, dance, mobile and the like, but they do so in a way
meant to suspend time as the support of existence, for if a thing is to be the
representation of an idea it must be in a sense devoid of time since every idea is
outside time. Also science yields laws and systems of laws whose mere validity,
that is, whose noncontradictoriness and adequateness to reality, make them devoid
of time, even though they describe the temporal behavior or real existence of the
things.
`Poetry and the arts' is thus a phrase analogous to `metaphysics and the
sciences'. This gives by analogy a statute to metaphysics which is in a way much
clearer than many vague representations of the work of metaphysics and protects it
from the attacks of positivists and others on the plane of objective research.
We could say, on the one hand, that, if we want to define Nature in its mere
relation to the scientific or objective approach, Nature is the assumed existing
contents of the laws and theories of science which are themselves timeless on the
basis of their abstract validity. Hence, to abstract means to abstract from time
as well as from concreteness. On the other hand, Nature in its relation to art and
the subjective approach is reality manifested through the concretization of ideas
felt as valid. This concretization also takes account of the character of
timelessness, although the works themselves become and appear as endowed with
temporality in order to embody the nature of existent beings.
This raises the question: Are Science as the objective mode and Art as the
subjective one the only apprehensions and comprehensions of Nature? One who would
prefer to limit the use of the word Nature to the assumed existing contents of
scientific laws only, rather than extend it to the reality manifested in art,
would of course close the debate and answer: Certainly not, since to his mind the
extension to art already exceeds the commonsense of reasonable vocabulary. Since,
however, science and art pertain to the same final matter called Nature--which
could be said to be an `object-matter' in the one case and a `subject-matter' in
the other2--it is reasonable to ask whether that is the end of the apprehension of
Nature or not.
To that question, the answer is: No, for there is indeed a form of the
interrelation between subject and object which is neither realized in the things
called works of art nor idealized in the systems of laws called theories. It
consists of the usages and manners according to which subjects and objects
interact. When subjects and objects are both human beings and interact, these
manners in their organized totality are called morals. It is commonly believed--
and this is the fourth use of the word--that they result from a conscious
reciprocity on the side of both partners. However there is no difference of
principle between these human morals and, say, the ways in which a master acts
towards his dog or horse and in which these animals behave by reaction. There is
similarity also to the ways a stonebreaker prepares the pavement of a causeway,
since the stones have to be chosen and broken in a `manner' suited to the purpose
and they split according to both their nature and the stroke of the hammer. In
their interaction subject and object are mannerly, i.e., morally interrelated. It
is generally believed that there is a choice of good manners, preferable to all
other choices and adequate to the nature of these subjects and objects in their
relatedness. This indicates that morals is also a mode of apprehension of Nature,
for natural things are involved in it in their existence or, more properly, a
coexistence resulting from the desire of the subject to establish a link with the
object different from the objective and from the subjective modes.
There, too, there is a meaningful pursuit or research carried on without the
temporality of that coexistence. That pursuit, however, must take place without
the existence of two different partners, else it could not escape the timeliness
(as opportune temporality) of their coexistence. Therefore, the `metaphysical'
analogue in morals is the morals of the person, where the subject is in
interaction with his own self and which--unaware of any particular timeliness--can
only be displayed in the mirror of the unchanging capital Being. As in poetry and
in metaphysics, the natured-ness of the relation between subject and object
evanesces. In regular morals which implies community, i.e., the particular
concerned coexistence of beings, however, a Nature is thought to support the
morals. Otherwise, why should the manners be chosen as they are, even if each
choice cannot be better than an assumed good choice for the partnership to be
successful (the quality of the good being weighed by the success of the choice)?
Thus, all judgments of value--whether of truth in science, of beauty in art or of
the good in morals--concern a Nature which is believed to be there as a reason of
the activity and a source of experience. Though grounded in the empirical order,
values would not be understandable without the theoretical, the ideal, or the
ethical. If there were no such Nature, why should we act at all? All would be mere
convention and hence arbitrariness; no pragmatic relation between the mind and
reality could exist and be understood.
In other words: Nature is what keeps activity from being arbitrary. Hence, if we
hold that our judgments are not arbitrary, we must believe that a Nature is there
to be approached as nearly as possible, that Nature is one and as comprehensive as
possible. It is also comprehensible, however, for if our knowledge is not
exercised on a vacuum--which would constitute an illusion--then it is exercised on
Nature.
Science is one royal way to grasp Nature, but it is not identical with our
knowledge about Nature.
Institut des Sciences Exactes
Berne, Switzerland
NOTES
1. I would prefer to say: object-matter. See below.
2. See footnote 1, above.
CHAPTER III
SCIENCE AND NATURE
ERROL E. HARRIS
THE IDEA OF NATURE AND ITS DEVELOPMENT
Science is the effort to think systematically about the world as we experience it,
and the results of that thinking. Apart from such systematic thinking no
conception of Nature would be entertained. The idea of Nature is the concomitant
of science for it is the idea of the world as a single structure of interrelated
bodies and events determined by uniform and universal laws, the indispensable
presupposition of scientific thinking. A view of the world as a fortuitous
collection of spirits and their arbitrary behaviour is not an idea of Nature, nor
even of a world created, sustained and manipulated by a single god. Rather, the
idea of Nature is that of a self-sustaining, self-activated world, producing its
own phenomena according to its own intrinsic laws of activity. This is the
necessary presupposition of science, because the aim of science is rational
explanation. This is possible only if the phenomena to be explained are determined
by principles which are regular, universal and intrinsic to a unitary and coherent
system.
Accordingly we find the idea of Nature emerging in the West concurrently with the
scientific thinking of the early Ionian philosophers from Thales onward. First,
the nature of things or what determined their mutual disposition and behaviour was
conceived as the stuff of which they were made; the unitary, systematic
relationships among them was preserved by regarding this substance as
fundamentally one and pervasive. All things were held to be water, or all air, or
fire; their diversity was explained as the differentiation of the one fundamental
stuff or nature according to a single principle of change such as rarefaction and
condensation. Hence, the idea of Nature was extended to the general way in which
things are constructed, interrelated and mutually affected. Scientific treatises
were those `on the nature of things', and they explored precisely these features
of the contents of the experienced world. Finally, the world as a whole, as a
system of interrelated entities governed by universal laws, came to be thought of
as a single, individual Nature, which was frequently personified and conceived as
ubiquitous, omnicompetent and all-inclusive.
To the Greeks, Nature was one vast, living, self-moving, sentient and conscious
organism in which human and other living beings were localized centers of the
pervasive soul-substance. In the last resort, this soul-substance was identical
with, and the pure form of, that ultimate stuff or nature of which all things were
made. The lesser souls, whether of gods, man, or animals, were differentiated by
varying degrees of adulteration of the original stuff by its own less appropriate
forms. The problem for the Greeks, both metaphysical and practical, was how the
human soul could purify itself and become wholly reidentified with the universal
substance.
The birth of modern science in the 16th century produced an entirely new
conception of Nature. The cause and the stages of the revolution are familiar and
can be passed over here. Only the final result need be mentioned. With the
development of the notions of gravity and inertia, Nature came to be viewed as an
aggregation of bodies which moved under the influence of mechanical forces
dependent solely upon their mass and position. Nature was thus seen as a vast
machine.
As is well-known, this conception involved a cleavage between the machine as the
total aggregate of material existence and the conscious mind, whether of God as
its putative creator or of man as the subject of scientific knowledge. Various
attitudes toward Nature arise out of the dichotomy so created. Nature is first the
object of human knowledge, set over against the knowing mind as an alien other to
be observed from without. Next, as science succeeds in discovering natural laws,
Nature becomes an opponent to be conquered and controlled, a combination of force
to be subdued and domesticated in order to serve the purposes of man. Subsequently
it becomes apparent that Nature in the service of man has limitations, that
resources of matter and energy can become exhausted or so modified that man's
purposes may be defeated by the very technology he employs to serve them.
Supervening upon these attitudes toward Nature, however, a third conception has
arisen which complicates more radically the relation between Nature and man. This
new view emerged with the conception, in the mid-nineteenth century, of the idea
of evolution. Henceforth Nature could not be regarded simply as a machine, but was
conceived as a process of continuous development. Laws of mechanics are reciprocal
and reversible, but an evolutionary process is unidirectional and progressive.
Further, under this conception of Nature, man is recognized as a product of
evolution and his knowledge as the outcome of biological development. His relation
to Nature now comes to be envisaged in terms of that between organism and
environment. The effect of this modification was not immediate or total, although
its implications were revolutionary. Environment, at least in the first instance,
was still regarded as external and set in opposition to the organism which mast
adapt itself to alien conditions in order to survive. Man's adaptation follows
upon that of lower species, which involves the development of sensibility, sense-
organs for distance reception and cognitive apparatus. His capacity to know and to
act intelligently, his conquest and control of Nature, his social and technical
advance, are thus seen as aspects of his adaptation to environment.
So conceived, social progress, though very different in character and in principle
from biological evolution, appears as an extension of the same process. Yet, as it
proceeds, the development of human social organization with its accompanying
technical advances reacts upon and bedevils biological adaptations. Species are
decimated, energy sources are tapped and drained, the ambient life-giving
envelopes of atmosphere and sea are polluted and the balance of Nature is upset.
With the advance of biological science and the study of ecology it has become
apparent that the idea of adaptation of organism to environment was a
misconception, for the environment is not static, nor is it a mere external
setting for indwelling life. Evolutionary change involves the environment equally
with the living thing. The two constitute a single organic whole, an open system
in dynamic equilibrium. Modification of, and `control' over, the environment,
therefore, becomes less a means than a menace to human survival; the exploitation
of Nature becomes more inimical than advantageous. Voices are then raised
advocating conservation, which involves a conflict between the demands of
technical progress already made and those of environmental preservation. In some
sense the demand is for a reversal of the evolutionary process, which runs counter
to the very conception of evolution itself. The use of technology to mitigate the
ravages of technology is severely limited. The preservation of resources can be
effected by new techniques only at the expense of other resources. Pollution of
atmosphere and water can be limited by new devices but not eliminated. If
population can be controlled, consumption may be limited, but the demand for
progress and `development' will still persist. The evolutionary process cannot be
arrested, nor is it obvious that the results would be beneficial if social
progress could be reversed.
The idea of Nature hitherto engendered by science seems, in its effects on
practice, to have led men into an impasse or a labyrinth. To escape from this man
needs a new guiding-thread in the form of a new conception of Nature and of his
own place in it. Is there any evidence that contemporary science gives any promise
of such a change? I think there is.
ORGANIC WHOLENESS
The conception of Nature as an evolutionary process, while remaining valid and
fundamental, is in certain respects only provisional and transitional in modern
science. Its adoption formed a bridge between mechanism and organism, providing
for the emergence of the latter from the former; but it also served as a means of
reducing the organic to the merely mechanistic. The dominant and characterizing
feature of living things is their capacity for auturgic self-maintenance. This
propensity has never been wholly explicable; in the last century it was attributed
by some thinkers to a mysterious vitalistic principle or entelechy. This
perpetuated the cleavage between the animate and the inanimate and ran counter to
the principle of evolution which requires that the process of change from the
inorganic to the organic and organismic be conceived as continuous. The Darwinian
version of evolution which is the most prevalent and best attested, alleges as the
`mechanism' of the process nothing beyond chance mutation and natural selection,
excluding any vitalistic principle, teleological influence or orthogenesis.
Evolution, in consequence, comes to be regarded as a series of random changes in
physico-chemical processes, leading by some form of natural selection to more and
more complex forms from which have emerged the numerous diverse species of living
things. The speculation that life has evolved from the non-living is, accordingly,
accompanied by the conception of living processes as no more than highly complex
chemico-physical activity. Reductionism became and retains the ideal of scientific
explanation. Such reductionism is the counterpart of the technology which seeks to
manipulate the processes fundamental to life and ecology.
What this approach overlooks, though inevitably it must and tacitly always does
assume it, is the integral, poly-phasic coherence of the organism and the
consequent forms of its self-maintenance through growth, regeneration and
reproduction. Without the dynamic coherence of living entities there could be no
evolution and nothing to evolve. Adaptation is meaningless except on the
presupposition of a systematically unified and self-maintaining organic whole
which maintains itself precisely by means of such adaptation. Without self-
reproduction mutation is equally meaningless; apart from organic integrity,
selective advantage is an inapplicable concept.
Organismic wholeness is thus the indispensable presupposition of evolution. Even
the most radically physicalistic of biologists, Jacques Monod, has declared the
fundamental distinguishing characteristic of life to be `teleonomy', the quasi-
purposive determination to systematic wholeness. In essence `teleonomy' is the
dominance of constitutive parts, functions and processes by the structure or the
total organic system. This factor, whatever it is, maintains or increases negative
entropy in the ordered whole by mutual adjustment of its constituents, both among
themselves and to environmental variations.
The mechanistic and the Darwinian conceptions of Nature both involve some form of
antithesis between the purely physical and the animate. In the former it is a
stark dichotomy between matter and mind, in the latter it is the persistent
contrast of organism to environment. The thorough-going organismic conception of
the biosphere recognizes the unity and systematic interconnection of organism and
its ambient world. It is not merely that the organism itself is an open system
which, in constant commerce with its surroundings, exchanges matter and energy in
continuous flow. There is also a symbiosis among contiguous organisms forming a
biocoenosis, limits to which can be set only relatively. In the final analysis,
therefore, the whole biosphere is a single organic whole. Nor can we stop here,
for the description of the earth as a series of envelopes, lithosphere,
hydrosphere, atmosphere, and so forth, is valid only for limited purposes. These,
along with the biosphere, are intimately interdependent and the whole earth must
be taken as a single organic unity.
Lewis Thomas, giving expression to this idea which is perhaps the most recent
development in the concept of Nature, writes:
I have been trying to think of the earth as a kind of organism, but it is no go. I
cannot think of it in this way. It is too big, too complex, with too many working
parts lacking visible connections. . . . If not like an organism, what is it like,
what is it most like? Then, satisfactorily for the moment, it came to me: it is
most like a single cell.1
He returns repeatedly to this theme:
Jorge Borges, in a recent bestiary of mythical creatures, notes that the idea of
round beasts was imagined by many speculative minds, and Johannes Kepler once
argued that the earth itself is such a being. ln this immense organism, chemical
signals might serve the function of global hormones, keeping balance and symmetry
in the operation of various interrelated working parts, informing tissues in the
vegetation of the Alps about the state of eels in the Saragossa Sea, by long,
interminable relays of interconnected messages between all kinds of other
creatures.2
As seen from the moon: "Aloft, floating free beneath the moist, gleaming membrane
of bright blue sky, is the rising earth. . . . It has the organized, self-
contained look of a live creature, full of information, marvelously skilled in
handling the sun." The atmosphere is conceived as a membrance "able to catch
energy and hold it, storing precisely the needed amount and releasing it in
measured shares."3
Not even the earth taken as a self-contained unit, however, is separable from what
lies beyond its atmospheric skin. It is integrally dependent on the stream of
solar energy and inextricably involved with the whole solar system. Then comes the
cosmological physicist to assure us that no terrestrial phenomenon is isolable
from its interrelations with the rest of the universe in both galactic and
extragalactic space.
The outcome is a conception of Nature as a single, individual totality, organismic
throughout, in which distinctions are always relative; partial elements are always
determined in their individual form and detailed behaviour by the over-arching
pattern of the totality.
DIALECTICAL PROGRESSION
It is not simply that the idea of Nature in the advance of science has come full
circle and returned to that entertained by the Greeks. In some sense this has
occurred, but the new conception is much more elaborate and sophisticated than the
original one; it is rather a combination and reconciliation of the two opposite
notions of mechanism and organism. The earlier mechanism rested on Newtonian
physics, which has today given place to Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. Physics,
in our time, has ceased to be mechanistic and has even adopted a conception of
matter which is itself non-materialistic. Contemporary physics is as teleonomic in
principle as contemporary biology. It is by the whole structure of the physical
world that its details are determined. The curvature of space-time dictates the
laws of gravitation and electro-dynamics and fixes the fundamental physical
constants. The enfoldment of space manifests itself as energy, wave systems
suffuse the whole of space, and the superposition of waves appears as material
particles. The structure of energy fields determines the interlocking of particles
in the atom; in turn, their mutual disposition determines the form of the molecule
and its chemical valency. From these again arise the artistry of crystalline
forms; no hiatus is found between them and those aperiodic crystals which are the
foundation of the chemical cycles of living metabolism.
Each level provides the basis of that which succeeds, yet on every level the
characteristic properties of the appropriate entities depend upon their total
structure. They are `co-operative properties', impossible for less complex
entities. Atoms have properties impossible for free electrons; molecules evince
chemical affinities which are dependent solely upon the pattern of combination of
their constituent atoms and are not characteristic of any atom in isolation. This
is especially true of the macromolecules involved in the activities of living
matter, which are not feasible at the inorganic level. It is the structure of each
whole that determines its propensities; and structure is always whole, for it is
not what it is unless structurally complete. We find, in consequence, that
throughout the entire scale of natural forms, wholes predominate over and
determine their parts. `Totum in toto et totum in qualibet parte' is true at every
stage.
Consequently the cosmic organism, while it is one and indivisible, is at the same
time a range of developing phases which can be represented and can display
themselves as an evolutionary scale. The totality is constituted by the scale of
its internal forms; each level is in some sense self-contained and all-pervasive.
Yet, each gives rise to the next higher level by virtue of the potentiality
infused in it by the immanent principle of the totality of which it is no more
than a phase. This is an idea of Nature, not merely as an all-embracing living
animal, but as a dynamic organismic system, comprising a continuous range of
wholes on levels of progressively increasing complexity and integration. They are
wholes in mutually dialectical relation, so that the entire system manifests
itself as an evolutionary progression.
The dialectical relation is complex, for the wholes which it relates are each, in
one aspect, self-contained and self-dependent, and, in another, mutually
implicated and inseparably interrelated. Essentially the relation is serial, each
whole being a fuller and more adequate realization of the systematic principle
governing the entire series. Thus, each is related to its predecessors as their
fulfillment, requiring and incorporating the prior forms while actualizing
potentialities of which they were incapable. For this reason, while the subsequent
involves the antecedent, it also supersedes and, in some sense, negates its
forebears. Each whole, then, is a grade or developmental stage within the total
series, but also a distinct relatively self-subsistent phase standing in contrast
and opposition to its neighbors. Yet, because this opposition is resolved in the
next higher phase which preserves the contrast while superseding it, the entire
series remains continuous and coherent.
MAN'S RELATION TO NATURE
The relation of man to nature has now to be understood in the light of this
dialectical conception. Human personality, developing within social structures
peculiar to its appropriate level in the scale, is integral to the whole. On the
other hand, as one level distinct from others, it confronts the prior phases as
other and opposed. This is only one aspect of its relation to them, however, for
they are also its forebears and progenitors in which the potentiality of its
emergence is instant. What man sees as Nature is his own self in becoming; but
more than this, it is the very matrix from which his very being is contrived and
the soil out of which he is nourished. It is not that man has power to exploit
Nature, rather, man is molded and engendered by Nature. This, however, is not as
physical entities are determined by mechanical forces, but as a higher phase of
integral totality determines and specifies itself within the matrix of pre-
existent levels of being.
Three major metaphysical questions arise out of this conception of man and Nature.
The first concerns the individuality and self-identity of man as a person, the
degree of his self-sufficiency and freedom. How far is his identity submerged and
overwhelmed in such a conception? If, prima facie. it may seem to be fatally
subordinated to an all-absorbing totality, two considerations forbid any such
conclusion. Apart from man's thought and self-reflective consciousness there would
be no idea of Nature. It is his own self-determining and free thought that makes
him aware of his world and his relation to it. Hence, whatever idea of Nature
science generates, it is man's own science, his own construction, his own
judgement of the world and the self-made interpretation of his own experience. It
cannot, therefore, be wholly subordinated to, and submerged within, the totality
conceived as Nature. Further, this reflection is not in conflict with that
conception itself, for it concerns a totality which is self-generating in a scale
of forms each of which is more self-complete and self-maintaining than its
predecessors. The human mind supervenes at a relatively highly-developed stage;
accordingly, it represents a high degree of self-sufficiency, integrity and self-
determination.
The second major question is that of the ultimate character of the totality. Is
it, as a whole, a consciousness self-aware of its own identity? Or is it a mere
schema correlating its diverse phases as we have conceived them? The latter is
hardly plausible and is not consistent with the conception of a scale of
concretely existing phases. In the first place, far from being a mere schema, the
totality must be seen as a continuum of interwoven forms; secondly, among these
forms human personality is one of the more highly developed, though in obvious
ways incomplete and limited. Whatever transcends human consciousness can hardly be
something more abstract, more diffuse and less integrally whole. The implications
which follow upon this reflection demand to be worked out in detail.
From these two questions a third follows naturally. How does human life and
purpose relate to the totality in which it is integral? What sort of self-
determining conduct on the part of mankind is most appropriate to the conception
of Nature above outlined? The aspiration to conquer and control Nature is now
revealed as arrogant folly, liable to lead, as seems probable in our own day, to
self-destruction. Man must somehow see himself as the instrument of Nature's own
purposes, which his science must divine and follow. If we are to live
successfully, satisfactorily and virtuously, perhaps in a new and more significant
sense we shall have to revive the ancient exhortation to live according to Nature.
That does not mean, however, that we must revert to what is primitive. It implies,
rather, that when Nature is adequately understood the general direction of
evolution will be seen more clearly, and human action and policy can then be
properly aligned and assimilated to it.
Though these three questions are fundamentally metaphysical, they have
consequences for ethics, social theory and technology. None of them is wholly new,
but each requires reconsideration and must be reformulated in the light of a new
conception of Nature. Nor are they wholly separable, for the answer to any one is
implied in, and implies, the answer to each of the others. They are questions too
large and difficult to receive in a single paper the treatment they deserve.
Hence, I shall not attempt to do more than indicate how I, myself, might approach
the answers to them.
The Freedom and Individuality of Man
If wholes are indivisible and teleonomic and in all cases determine the nature and
behaviour of their parts, and if the parts are thus reduced to integrants or
moments within their wholes with no really independent existence, would men not be
reduced to mere puppets whose strings are manipulated by alien hands? Nature as
the whole to which they belong imposes its laws upon them. Does it make any
difference whether they are mechanical in the old classical sense of that word, or
organismic according to the new view of Nature suggested in this paper?
It does, indeed, for the totality is not just organic, but dialectical and issues
in a whole on a level superior to organism. The organic is superseded and sublated
in the psychical and epistemic. Consciousness and intelligence supervene upon
organism and the higher phase, not the lower, is the dominant determining factor.
Nature conceived as one vast organism is not a stupendous protozoon or an all-
pervasive slime mould. The more the totality under consideration is advanced in
the dialectical series, the more fully and distinctly it is articulated. Though
its elements are inseparable, they are nevertheless distinct; and the more highly
developed the whole, the more completely it will be differentiated. Even at the
organic level we find, not just one vast organism, but innumerable, exquisitely
variegated and diversified organisms organically interrelated. At any super-
organic stage, therefore, we should have a totality differentiated into
individuals each of which is more than merely organic.
This is precisely what we do find. In the higher animals (at least) organism
supports and burgeons into conscious mentality; at the human level intelligence
reaches the pitch at which social co-operation and theoretical reflection are
possible. Only here does the capacity develop to frame an idea of Nature, itself
testimony to a high degree of self-consciousness and all that this implies. In
spite of what might be considered undesirable mystical associations, it would not
be inappropriate to call this the spiritual level of the dialectical sequence.
If we review the entire course of that sequence, as the scale advances we observe
a continuous increase in the self-sufficiency and self-determination of the
elements at each successive stage; this applies equally to the differentiations
and to the totality. Therefore, at the spiritual level the elements should be
spiritual, that is, self-conscious, intelligent beings capable of a high degree of
self-direction and self-determination. Their interrelations will be equally
spiritual, or what we more ordinarily call social; and the totality of which they
are members will be a community. What we are outlining here is nothing less than
the condition of individuality and freedom.
Freedom is not, despite frequent misconception, an indeterminate capacity to do
all and sundry according to the unpredictable and unaccountable caprice of the
agent. Unregulable caprice is not freedom, but insanity. On the other hand,
external determination equally precludes freedom. Intelligently directed action,
however, is self-determined, because intelligent thinking is neither more nor less
than the self-specification in conscious thought of a universal principle.
Deliberate action, which depends on such self-determined consciousness, is the
only sort of action which is really free, and only an intelligent being is capable
of it.
Now such capability supervenes only at levels of development subsequent to
organicism. It is at the super-organic level, which is both dependent on and
regulative of the organic reactions that subserve it, that the capacity for
thought and action emerges. (Below this there can be no free individuality; hence,
to call that independent would be a mistake. lt is independent neither of its
organic matrix nor of the social whole that it both generates and sustains, and
which it nevertheless requires for its own efflorescence.) The totality
characteristic of this superorganic level, therefore, is a spiritual whole,
approached through a social order and determined by rational self-awareness. It is
thus a self-differentiating whole; it actualizes itself through and in self-
conscious, rational individuals, just as analogously the organic totality
specifies itself in and as determinate organisms. The analogy, moreover, is more
than mere accidental similarity, for the self-conscious individuals are themselves
organisms; in them organism realizes its potentialities.
Obviously there is far more to be said about this matter. The essential nature,
the process of development and the structure of an intelligent self-consciousness
as well as its social character give ample scope for further development. Here, I
wish only to indicate the groundlessness of a possible objection to the idea of
Nature that I have adumbrated, namely, that it would submerge and obliterate human
personality.
That this is not the case becomes apparent when one reflects that free activity,
understood as self-determined, is characteristic of all levels of natural process.
It is only under the influence of the older, Newtonian physics that we tend to
think of mechanical action as crassly determined. But contemporary physics is, as
I have maintained, teleonomic; and whatever is a whole determining its own
elements is self-determined and to that extent free. Organic activity is a still
higher degree of freedom. Metabolism is the self-regulating process of the organic
system; it has been described by Hans Jonas as the first realization of freedom.
So we go up the scale: physiological processes are homeostatic, that is to say,
self-regulating; they constitute the next degree of freedom. Instinctive behaviour
is a grade higher, and then intelligent conduct. It is the new conception of
Nature that preserves the conditions of human freedom, rather than destroys them.
It is more compatible with human personality than any of the prior conceptions of
Nature.
The Ultimate Character of the Universal Whole
Development of the last topic naturally leads to reflection upon the second
question raised for discussion. Is the universal totality merely a logical schema?
Is it a spatio-temporal or a taxonomic structure? Or is it at once all these and
more besides, namely, a living, self-conscious, spiritual being? Of course, the
first two descriptions must be readily admitted, but they cannot be exhaustive. No
dialectical system such as I have posited can be limited to a mere logical schema
or even to an evolutionary series extended in space and time. The dialectical
relations require that the prior phases be retained, sublated in their successors,
even though they are superseded by them. Equally, the only complete and full
reality which the prior phases enjoy is the realized actuality of their
potentialities in the higher forms. Without these the more primitive cannot even
exist because it is the immanence of the ultimate totality which brings them into
being and makes them what they are. Our best and in the last resort perhaps our
only clue to the nature of this ultimate reality is the highest stage with which
we are acquainted. That, we have seen, is the self-conscious, personal and inter-
personal. Can the existent universe as a whole be conceived as a being of this
kind?
The answer, of course, is implicitly given in religion, which postulates a supreme
being of the kind required. But that is not a complete or a distinct answer,
because the question remains how we are to conceive the Deity. Not only do
different religions give us different conceptions, but none of them is in itself
clearly intelligible, for all are veiled in imagery or described in figurative
language. No doubt that is unavoidable when finite minds seek to comprehend the
infinite, but the metaphysician must strive to penetrate the obscurity, to
interpret the metaphors and to give the imagery meaning.
What we have so far maintained is that the universe is one single, indivisible
whole, that it is self-specifying, self-differentiating and proliferating as a
continuous scale of inter-dependent forms dialectically related. Each form is
itself a whole, self-differentiated in its own way and according to the principle
operative at its own level. The later is superior to the earlier, inclusive of all
that precedes and the fruition of prior potentialities. Each successively is a
more articulate, more fully integrated and more self-determinately whole than its
predecessors. Accordingly, the whole gamut is sublated and summed up in the final
form, the extended series of its phases being not only compatible with, but
necessary to its all-encompassing unity.
If we have been correct thus far, it should follow that the highest form hitherto
experienced, human mentality, is the closest analogy to the ultimate nature of the
absolute whole. In that case, it must involve something like, yet somehow
transcending, self-conscious personality. It must involve and yet transcend some
form of organized community. It must be at once a physical, organic, intelligent,
moral and spiritual whole, of which we (with all that is implicated in our nature)
are integral members.
So regarded, Nature cannot be limited to what we discover through the physical and
biological sciences. We must add to these the social, psychological and
philosophical sciences, and must reflect upon the combined results of them all, if
we are to arrive at an adequate metaphysical conception. Nature can no longer be
thought of as the merely physical, devoid of all psychical and conscious elements,
that is, as the sort of abstraction by which it was represented in the nineteenth
century. Far from excluding man and his mind, far from standing over against and
opposing humanity as something to be subdued and exploited, nature and mind are to
be seen as one; matter and mind are fused into a single reality, as body and mind
form one person.
Once again, the implications of all this demand further development than the scope
of this paper will permit. But if we cannot now go further, what I have already
said may give some indication of the answer to our third question: How does human
life and purpose relate to the totality in which it is integral?
Man's Relation to Universal Nature
From the position set out it would seem to follow that the relation between man
and Nature must be sought at the upper end rather than in the lower or middle
strata of the scale. The whole, in its ultimate character, is of the nature of
mind involved in and involving the interpersonal relations of a community. That
again presupposes and sublates the biological and the physical. In relation to the
whole, mankind must be seen as a single community, a kingdom of ends, the
undivided interest of which is to maintain the integrity of the world that it
inhabits. That maintenance is a responsibility for man; hence, his relation to
Nature is ethical, rather than simply biological or technical. The conception we
need is that of a spiritual community of persons, mutually responsible for the
welfare of all and for the material basis on which that depends. Nature must be
pictured as man's Garden of Eden of which he is the latest product, the latest
species generated in the process of its self-evolution. As its intelligent
progeny, he has the responsibility of keeping it fertile, healthy and beautiful;
he must be its cultivator not its exploiter. His is a moral responsibility at once
to Nature and to his fellows, that is, to the ultimate totality. Therefore, it can
be fulfilled only in a spirit of unreserved self-giving if it is to be fulfilled
adequately. It must not be simply a duty imposed but, in a consciousness of
identity with the whole, a service freely rendered. In the final outcome, it must
be the tendence of a spiritual Heimat in which the human spirit finds itself
because, man and Nature being one, what is done to Nature is ipso facto done to
mankind.
Northwestern University
Evanston, Illinois, USA
NOTES
1. The Lives of a Cell (New York: Viking Press, 1974). p. 5.
2. Ibid., p. 41.
3. Ibid., p. 145.
4. Cf. The Phenomenon of Life (New York: Dell, 1966).
CHAPTER IV
PROGRESS AND NATURE
MARGARET CHATTERJEE
Certain preliminary considerations attend any attempt to deal philosophically with
the subject: Man and Nature. I mention only a few. Progress is very much a
nineteenth century concept, related to the expanding economies of the Victorian
era. Twentieth century thinkers operate more with the concept of development
which, in all conscience, is equally controversial. In a sense, therefore, we
appear to be concerned with an historical exercise for the concept of progress
arose more in the context of the discussion of history or social change than in
connection with the concept of nature as such.
Presumably, the juxtaposition `progress and nature' raises questions about man's
place in nature and his ability to change it. The pragmatic outlook is built into
that of the twentieth century to such an extent that to dig a hard-core
philosophical structure out of all this is by no means an easy task. This is
especially so considering the fact that the basic philosophical arguments are to
be found in pragmatist writings about truth and meaning, rather than about more
metaphysical questions concerning the relation of man to the cosmos.
PROGRESS
Let us return to the nineteenth century concept of progress for some
clarifications. The notion of biological free competition implied in Darwin's
theory of evolution paralleled free competition in economics. The extraordinary
optimism of the Victorians led them to believe that this free-for-all would result
in progress. Due to historical factors, it did so happen that certain countries
did emerge first in the industrial race, but an interesting question can be raised
in this regard. Theism has traditionally been a massive base for a cosmic optimism
which civilizations with a cyclical conception of history have not shared. For all
its apparent secularity the nineteenth century concept of progress was still
buttressed by the doctrine of the "invisible hand." British writers never
succeeded in being as secular as the leaders of the French Enlightenment. The
philosophical radicals, like their brothers in spirit, the pragmatists, believed
in piecemeal engineering, especially of the kind that could be spearheaded by
legislatures. For both, metaphysics was subordinate to the realities of political
and economic life; indeed, they were wise enough to see these as conflated in what
they called `political economy'.
There was, however, a metaphysical inconsistency about the concept of progress
which no less a person than Bury, author of The Idea of Progress, pointed out in
no uncertain terms. It is the inconsistency between the premise of flux and the
postulation of an end or objective: "In escaping from the illusion of finality, is
it legitimate to except that dogma itself?"1 In other words, in addition to a
self-congratulatory awareness of whence we have come, is it not necessary to have
an idea of whither we were going? If not, wherein could we speak of progress? Yet,
to have such an idea would surely reintroduce the very eschatological element from
which we were trying to free ourselves. Tennyson's far-off divine event towards
which the whole creation moved needed to be given some body. I am suggesting
rather obliquely that shorn of an eschatology the concept of progress wears rather
thin. Earlier thinkers had relied, if not on an out-and-out theodicy, then on
sketching out of some sort of Utopia against which we could match our piecemeal
efforts. Karl Marx is perhaps the first major nineteenth century thinker to
confess his lack of faith in Utopias, in spite of appearances to the contrary, and
to leave the content of his millennial hopes quite open as being merely a
classless society once the state had withered away.
JAMES AND PRAGMATISM
Oddly enough, both British liberal writers and Hegelians of the Right in the
nineteenth century tended in their theorizings about progress to glorify what was
historically actual. Pragmatists, on the contrary, were fully men of the twentieth
century in being free of this particular brand of euphoria. They were free of any
simple-minded belief in the onward and upward march of history, of apocalyptic
hopes, and of doctrinaire beliefs in the perfectibility of man or the possibility
of collective redemption. Much of the pragmatist approach was compatible with
conservatism, at least in its piecemeal tinkering that was not reckoned to shake
the foundations. The pragmatist understanding of progress need not raise the
hackles of an Oakeshott or an Isaiah Berlin. Pragmatism stands for a secularized
occasionalism where man essays to `change reality' and takes full responsibility
for the `secondary nature', that is, the whole apparatus of the culture of cities,
which he has himself made. The benevolent etatisme of the welfare state, whether
of the capitalist or socialist variety, can claim the pragmatist scriptures as its
own. Failures of engineering can presumably be corrected and power structures be
geared to an endless remedial task which in detail, of course, varies from time to
time and country to country.
For the metaphysical underpinning of all this let us turn first to William James.
Peirce had spoken of an element of pure chance or spontaneity operative in the
world, but that does not make us either nature's prisoners or nature's playthings.
For William James, too, it is the surd element in things that gives man his
opportunity. The world is loose-jointed enough (plastic enough, in Schiller's
phrase) to make room for engineering activity. James poses the following question
in his book Pragmatism: "The really vital question for us all is, What is this
world going to be? What is life eventually to make of itself?" Like Bergson, whom
he admired, he believed in the creativity of man, his vitality, rather than his
intellectuality. Both James and Dewey share a preference for bios over logos,
reacting against the abstractions and verbalisms of some of their predecessors.
The implications of this in pragmatist thought should not be underestimated. To
look on theories as instruments rather than as answers is to refuse to submit to
the authority of the concept, the definition. In a sense, they overstate their
case. In some respects, however, the pragmatists paradoxically resemble the
idealists, for example, in their belief in the dynamism of thought and in their
common rejection of the realist position that experience makes no difference to
the facts. But William James is clear on the point that a block universe of an
absolutist kind would make all human efforts nugatory. If reality is in the
making, man's role in bringing about progress is vindicated.
What, then, is to be said of nature? James speaks of "the world's possibilities"2
and of the act as the turning place where these are worked out. The analysis of
possibility here is not as stringent as one would wish. Presumably there is some
kind of congruence between the possibilities in man and the possibilities in
things, and as a result of their commerce nature can be transformed. James
advocates meliorism, but does not identify a genuine metaphysical warrant for
assuming that human intervention will be for the better. Nature is not an
intractable factor on which man imposes his beneficent purposes.3 To assume that
these purposes are necessarily good would surely be to fall into the ranks of the
tender-minded. The world, James admits, is "multitudinous beyond imagination,
tangled, muddy, painful and perplexed." The meliorist does not claim to set
everything right, but that by his act he can "create the world's salvation." The
theist may detect here a pelagian element.
Some further metaphysical grounds need uncovering at this point. In his Preface to
Essays in Radical Empiricism,4 Perry stresses that for William James there is no
disjunction between consciousness and physical nature. The well-known phrase `mind
and its place in nature' would therefore have no meaning in James' view. In The
Principles of Psychology5 James writes that "it is the essence of all
consciousness to instigate movement of some sort." This neutral monist framework
no doubt accommodates free creative activity, in the sense of free continuous
change from within as opposed to discontinuous transition. But a theory of change
is not the same as a theory of progress, nor is a model of growth such as we find
in Schiller for growth can be in unsatisfactory directions. Satisfactoriness is a
notion which begs the question in pragmatist writings. A universe which is only
`strung-along'6 may be a universe in which man cannot fulfil his destiny, but only
drift in a sea of contingencies. The concept of destiny is perhaps foreign to
pragmatist thought, though it seems to presuppose a belief in the fundamental
goodness of man and to share Gibbon's faith that `barbarism' has been left behind.
DEWEY AND PROGRESS
For explicit reference to progress one must turn to John Dewey rather than to
James. In his treatment of inquiry Dewey develops James' instrumentalism as a form
of adjustment between an organism and its environment. He attempts to give a
logical basis for progress in the individual as well as in society. Hitherto, he
grants, progress has been technical rather than moral but it is through the
experimental study of nature that progress is to be made. Science and technology
are "transactions in which man and nature work together."7 In common with many
nineteenth century thinkers Dewey is fascinated by the future. The future is to be
successfully `invaded', and this is to be done through intelligence. As in the
case of William James, in Dewey also non-dualist metaphysic renders redundant talk
of intervention or interaction. In Experience and Nature Dewey observed: "Fidelity
to the nature to which we belong, as parts however weak, demands that we cherish
our desires and ideals till we have converted them into intelligence, revised them
in terms of the ways and means which nature makes possible. . . . Nature induces
and partially sustains meanings and goods, and at critical junctures withdraws
assistance and flouts its own creatures."8 This indicates a homogeneous universe
within which the human element is at work by a kind of connivance of powers.
"Supernatural synthesis" is "unnecessary" according to Dewey. Reflective morality
is a situational matter, where situation is defined in terms of interaction
between objectives and internal conditions.
Writing of Bacon, Locke and Newton, Hoffding said that they were inspired "by a
fervent faith in intelligence, progress and humanity." This is no less true of the
pragmatists. When pressed on the content or qualia of progress Dewey offers the
ideals of personality, friendship and the democratic way of life. It is Homo faber
who brings about progress, but there is no inevitability about it for human needs
and acts are vastly diverse. For this reason Dewey does not enthuse over the
utilitarian idea of a "fixed and single end lying beyond the diversity of human
needs and acts." In keeping with a metaphysic of openness he would rather eschew
talk of ends. "Acquisition of skill, possession of knowledge, attainment of
culture are not ends: they are marks of growth and means to its continuity." More
explicitly, "growing or the continuous reconstruction of experience, is the only
end."9 This view of progress is quite free of eschatology. In a sense he is more
free of the linear interpretation of progress than were the nineteenth century
thinkers, for he recognizes that there can be progress in some sectors while it is
absent in others. Progress is a "retail job, to be contracted for the executed in
sections." Yet, intelligence is not to be divorced from aspiration; without
apology reconstruction can be inspired by hope. As to the content of moral
progress, Dewey finds it in increasingly rational and social conduct and the
conscious pursuit of the same. His thinking, along with that of James and Bergson
in a different style, is sufficiently based in biology to stress the link between
our conception of morality and human needs.
DEVELOPMENT AND CRITIQUE
All this sounds frankly naturalistic. In many ways the pragmatists' manner of
looking at the relation between man and nature, their understanding of progress in
terms of growth, is the philosophic source of the twentieth century concept of
development. Even the current prophets of doom who speak in terms of the limits of
growth would claim that their view was pragmatically justified. Likewise, both the
advocates of planning and those who favor the operation of market forces can claim
that the pragmatists are on their side. No doubt the founding fathers of the
pragmatist movement could hardly be expected to foresee the dangers of the almost
unlimited power that states, corporations, etc., have come to possess; or the
powerlessness of the dispossessed, the wretched of the earth; or the backlash of a
despoiled nature ruthlessly exploited by man. Pragmatism as such does not provide
guidelines of the kind found, for example, in the work of Simone Weil or Albert
Camus. `Welfare' and `growth' are terms which need analysis, and their content
does not remain unchanged from culture to culture or period to period. A nemesis
can overtake those who exploit nature irreverently no less than those who in
mythic times challenged the gods. If we have learned anything in this century it
is this: that progress in one sphere can be accompanied by retrogression in
others.
The pragmatist view of progress is closely linked to belief in the potency for
good of science and technology. It is, however, cosmic impiety, in Russell's
telling phrase, that leads to all the ecological problems with which we are
familiar today. Workableness provides no criterion for adjudication in situations
where there are many workable alternatives. Progress in this century is
notoriously uneven and in some societies has been achieved at the cost of
eliminating indigenous tribal and aboriginal communities. Those who have become
disillusioned with life in advanced industrial societies turn their back on
`progress' and seek a new life in communes in out-of-the-way places; they opt to
jump off the bandwagon. Though the pragmatists were not ipso facto committed to
the rejection of cultural diversity, as a matter of historical fact they had no
doubts about the benefits of industrial civilization.
There are a number of rather more philosophical objections. Although pragmatism
was not associated with any theory of gradualism or inevitability, as a social
philosophy it neglected the role of conflict and crisis in bringing about social
change. Metaphysical commitment to pluralism led the pragmatists to stress atomism
and individualism, which in turn made them rather less than sensitive to
institutional blocks to progress. The major intractabilities which perpetuate
poverty, injustice and a host of other ills are human; one does not need to adopt
any particular philosophical concept of human nature to see that this is the case.
The pragmatist understanding of progress made much of the concept of control, but
tended to ignore the dangers of being controlled. The hazards which attend the
manipulability of men are seen not only in the horrors of the thirties on the
Continent, but in the consumer societies of the seventies.
Pragmatism, in fact, lacks an overall framework. Even improvisation, too, if it is
well done requires a theme. The pragmatist affirms that the doors of possibility
are not shut, but a metaphysic of pluralism alone cannot guarantee this. An open
society tries to do so, but no ostensibly open society has as yet been able to
guarantee justice for its weaker sections or satisfy the minimum needs of all its
citizens. For this we need perhaps, not only a theory of transition such as
pragmatism provides, but some sense of horizon which a purely naturalistic view of
the relation of man and nature may not be able to provide.
University of Delhi
New Delhi, India
NOTES
l. John B. Bury, The Idea of Progress (New York: Dover, 1932), p. 352.
2. William James, Pragmatism (New York: New American Library, 1965), p. 282.
3. We carve out everything . . . to suit our own purposes." Ibid., p. 253.
4. Ralph Barton Perry, Preface to Essays in Radical Empiricism (New York:
Longman's, Green & Co., 1912), p. xi.
5. (New York: Holt, 1907), p. 551.
6. William James, A Pluralistic Universe (London: Longman's Green & Co., 1912), p.
128.
7. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1946), p. 26.
8. (New York: Dover, 1929), pp. 420-421.
9. (Boston: Beacon, 1957), p. 185.
CHAPTER V
NATURE AS OBJECT AND AS ENVIRONMENT
THE PRAGMATIC OUTLOOK
JOHN E. SMITH
In the pragmatic outlook on Nature there is an unmistakable duality and tension
which points, on the one hand, to a basic problem and, on the other, holds out
some possibility of a resolution. This duality manifests itself in the two faces
assigned to Nature by those who first articulated the position. In one face,
Nature is object to be known and subjected to control through the development of
scientific knowledge and its application in all the forms of modern technology.
This conception was enhanced by the dynamic and instrumental theory of
intelligence or technical reason which received its fullest expression in the
philosophy of Dewey.
In its other face, Nature is environment or the natural habitat of man, an
ecological system which is supportive of human existence. It is not simply hostile
in the sense made popular by the well-known phrase of the poet, "Nature, red in
tooth and claw." The conception of Nature as environment was derived from the
doctrine of evolution and from the emphasis placed by the Pragmatists on the life-
sciences. The tendency of these thinkers to stress the continuity between man and
Nature in their attempts to overcome what they regarded as the excesses of
idealism, led them to regard man as at home in Nature, rather than as an
inhabitant of an alien world.
The present crisis, environmental and ecological, stems from a somewhat desperate
realization that there is a tension, even a contradiction, between these two
conceptions. Nature understood merely as an object of control has resulted not
only in the conception of a denatured Nature, but also in all those actual
exploitations and pollutions of natural resources--rivers, forests, landscapes--
which threaten the very existence of Nature as environment. The problem as it now
appears is whether and how Nature can be recovered as environment. The solution to
this problem turns on the question of whether man can maintain some rational
control of his ability to control nature? If this cannot be done, Nature as object
will overcome Nature as environment. The quality of our life will surely decline
or, worse still, our very survival will be endangered.
Ultimately, much depends on the possibility that the same belief in the intimate
connection between thought and purpose, which first gave rise to the instrumental
and pragmatic conception of reason, can be invoked to criticize and to reorient
the use of reason to purposes other than amassing profits through the ruthless
exploitation of Nature. In short, the purposes or values expressed through all
forms of technology must themselves be subject to more ultimate values which
concern the being and quality of human life. At the present time there seems to be
a tendency to question the long-accepted belief that the problems created by the
technological use of reason will, in time, be resolved by a further application of
that same reason.
NATURE AS OBJECT
To better understand our present predicament, it will be useful to explain more
fully the way in which the two faces of Nature have developed within the framework
of the pragmatic outlook. In doing this, we can also set forth the Pragmatist's
conception of experience and consider its relation to Nature. I shall suggest that
the esthetic and valuational dimension, which in this view belongs essentially to
experience. contains resources for the redirection of the instrumental
intelligence. For the classical empiricists experience was basically a domain of
sheer, sensible fact serving as a touchstone for science. In contrast, the
Pragmatists understood experience as the multi-faceted product of the interaction
between man as the language and sign using animal and Nature; it was a product
shot through with relations and meaning, with value and importance. For them
experience is the substance of both individual and social life, rather than being
primarily material viewed from a distance by a spectator whose principle aim is
theoretical knowledge.
In accordance with the pragmatic outlook thought appears, above all else, as a
human activity exercised under specific circumstances and for specific purposes.
lt is not, on this account, to be taken as "subjective" or as a mere bodily
function as some critics have alleged. The aim of the Pragmatists was to see
thought in existence, as actually functioning in ongoing human life and
experience. Contrary to much that has been said and with the possible exception of
James, these thinkers did not believe that thought had to sacrifice its autonomy
in order to perform its function. Peirce's emphasis on formal logic and the logic
of science, together with Dewey's concern for controlled inquiry testify to their
interest in preserving what Peirce called logical self-control.
At the same time, however, they were suspicious of "pure" thought standing apart
from all relation to human purposes and aims. Thinking is always to some purpose,
ranging from a purely theoretical aim at one end of the spectrum such as solving a
fifth degree equation, to the practical aim of repairing a broken instrument. In
both cases, thought stands under the constraint of an end and is meant to
accomplish something. The future is the all-important mode of time because, unlike
the past, it is still open to the shaping power of the human will.
The interests of the Pragmatists in science, it is true, led them to concentrate
on the behavior of the things in Nature with the ultimate aim of anticipating,
imitating and controlling that behavior in order to satisfy human needs and wants.
It was this interest which established the crucial connection between theoretical
science and technology. As I shall suggest, the aim of controlling Nature came to
assume such dominant importance that other aims, including the purposes behind the
control of Nature, were often thrust into the background. Frequently this was done
in the vague hope that all would turn out well in "the long run." We now know that
this hope was illusory; controlling Nature cannot by itself be a final end because
that control itself has consequences which manifest themselves throughout the
entire fabric of human life.
It was no accident that the Pragmatists understood in dynamic terms the meaning of
ideas, principles and theories concerning both Nature and social life. The natures
of things, the predicates through which we describe and explain them, do not
denote purely static and fixed characteristics; on the contrary, their meaning was
understood in terms of the way the objects possessing these characteristics will
behave under certain circumstances. To know that something is hard, soluble,
dangerous or edible is to know what it will do in interaction with other things
and human beings. Thus, the reactions of things provide man with the clues he
needs to identify them, and at the same time enable him to prepare appropriate
responses to their presence.
Nature then becomes a vast network of more or less regular patterns of action and
reaction, but insofar as it is subject to such control as is within the compass of
human knowledge and ingenuity, Nature has, so to speak, no interiority or autonomy
of its own. One of the principal reasons why technology or the science of control
developed so rapidly and with such scope on the American scene is found in the
continuity of so-called "pure" science and all forms of engineering. When
theoretical knowledge is itself understood as the result of the activity of
controlled research and that knowledge represents a grasp of the dynamic behavior
of the things studied, then the gap closes between knowing, on the one side, and
doing or making, on the other.
There is, however, a price to be paid for such a development no matter how great
its contribution to the fulfillment of urgent human needs, economic, medical or
nutritional, etc. This price is the denaturing of Nature as can be seen at once by
comparing the classical conception of Physis with that of Nature as the sheer
object of the engineering will. Physis was nature alive and filled with norms by
which a sound specimen could be distinguished from a deficient or deformed one. It
was pregnant with value in the form of processes of growth and creativity. Above
all, Phvsis represented a natural habitat in which man could rejoice at the
sights, the sounds, the colors, the glory and wonder of all living things.
Unhappily, from the standpoint of instrumental reason and the motive to overcome
Nature through the creation of an artificial environment, this living and vibrant
Nature is banished, a victim of machines and commerce.
NATURE AS ENVIRONMENT
As was pointed out previously, however, Nature as object represents but one face
of the pragmatic view of Nature. There is also Nature as environment, as the scene
for the unfolding of man's experience. Though undoubtedly overshadowed and
obscured, it is important to be aware of the presence of this second face because
it can contribute to the creation of the climate of opinion necessary to deal
effectively with the contemporary ecological crisis. Viewing the natural order
from the vantage point of evolutionary doctrine, the Pragmatists were led to three
basic conclusions concerning Nature and man's place therein. There was, first, an
appreciation of Nature in its concreteness as natural habitat, with a tenure of
its own in the total scheme of things; second, a strong emphasis on the continuity
of man with Nature; and, third, a conception of experience as the "third term"
between man and Nature, an emerging system of meaning, habit and value which is at
the same time the very substance of human culture.
1. Study of Nature as a vast system of real kinds and evolving forms afforded a
new appreciation of the extent to which Nature is supportive of life, including
that of man, rather than merely the scene of the elimination of the supposedly
unfit. This supportive capacity of Nature was described with force and precision
in a well-known book from the earlier decades of this century, The Fitness of the
Environment by Lawrence Henderson. There, Nature is shown to have its own
structures and spatio-temporal regimen as distinct from any imposition by man of
his patterns of control through technology and culture. Henderson dramatized the
delicate balance of the organic and inorganic conditions in the cosmic order which
make possible human life and its continued development. The Pragmatists, too,
understood this autonomy of Nature coupled with man's dependence on it. However
much they stressed the precariousness of life vis a vis the natural order and
hence the need to control that order, they had due respect for its integrity as
the matrix of all living things. As a result, they believed that Nature is more
than an object to be totally transformed by human will; it is also a qualitative
order with which man must cooperate if he is to survive. The key to that
cooperation is reliable knowledge of the workings of natural processes.
2. Closely connected with the foregoing is the belief in the continuity of man and
Nature. This continuity was not construed in terms of identity, implying a
reduction of man to lower and simpler forms of life. Stressing, as they did, the
distinctive character of consciousness, intelligence and purpose, the Pragmatists
could not consistently have regarded all three as mere appearance or as evanescent
manifestations of some underlying matter. In their insistence on continuity, the
Pragmatists were calling attention to the fact of man as a natural creature with
roots in the earth. For them continuity also implied the openness of Nature to the
human mind, as evidence against the doctrine that man is in a totally alien
universe or that he is encapsulated in a subjective tissue of experience which
prevents him from reaching the so-called "external world." All communication
between human selves takes place through the medium of Nature; Dewey, especially,
included relationships with Nature along with social interactions. In Human Nature
and Conduct Dewey wrote:
Infinite relationships of man with his fellows and with nature already exist. The
ideal means . . . a sense of these encompassing continuities with their infinite
reach. This meaning even now attaches to present activities because they are set
in a whole to which they belong and which belongs to them.1
Implicit here is a rich conception of Nature as the encompassing whole, enbracing
the total life of man. This is far removed from the view of Nature as object which
dominates the thought of the physical scientists and the engineers.
3. A unique and not always recognized feature of the pragmatic outlook was the
development of a new conception of experience. This was not based, as in the
classical view, on a passive spectator who merely observes the data of sense. Its
foundation was rather a dynamic interaction between a living, organic being
equipped with language and intelligence and whatever presents itself to be
encountered or engaged. Experience, in this sense, is the realization of that
previously mentioned continuity with Nature. Experience is not a distinct subject
matter such as the content of the senses in contrast to thought; rather, it is the
meaningful and significant result of the engagement between Nature and man.
Neither is experience confined to content. Whatever there is, from stones to hopes
and fears, can be encountered in some mode and to some degree. Experience,
however, embraces contexts or meaning dimensions in such a way that one and the
same object can be apprehended or experienced in many contexts. A single tree, for
example, will appear to the botanist as a representative of a species, to the
lumberman as so many board feet of timber, and to the poet as the force of Nature
manifested in the destiny of the acorn to become an oak. These varying contexts
are not to be regarded as merely subjective additions made by the human mind. On
the contrary, they are rooted in Nature inasmuch as it is the tree which has the
capacity, through its own structure, to figure significantly in the diverse
meaning patterns. It is these patterns which are realized in experience in virtue
of being encountered by the subject of experience who is able to apprehend them.
Among the dimensions of experience one which is both outstanding and of special
importance for our problem is the aesthetic dimension. This embraces both the
realization of value or significance in human life and an apprehension of the
reality experienced in its own terms as valuable in itself. Thus conceived, the
esthetic represents the transcendence of the instrumental intelligence since it is
quite illegitimate within the compass of esthetic perception to regard what is
thus experienced as a means to a further end. Such perception has a finality about
it and represents our appreciation of whatever is encountered for itself in its
own quality and value. Esthetic perception posts a "No Trespassing" sign in Nature
and at the same time reveals the limits of technological reason, for if there are
no final goods and values then even instrumental values lose their point and
purpose. It is as if one had at his disposal all possible ingenious means for
overcoming obstacles and attaining goals, but had no clear idea of which ultimate
ends to strive for. From Know-How to Nowhere, the alarming but accurate title of a
recent book on technology in America, nicely expresses our current predicament. It
can be resolved only if Nature has a status of finality in itself which takes man
beyond Nature as object, and even as environment, because Nature can be destroyed
in its environmental capacity unless it and the experience which it engenders
possess intrinsic value standing beyond the reach of instrumental intelligence.
Let us attempt to understand more clearly the nature of the esthetic dimension by
considering Dewey's account of what he called "having an experience." In contrast
to philosophers who have tended to speak of experience in an unrestricted sense,
Dewey was interested in the unity of individual experiences had and identified as
such. To have an experience is to have moved through a course of events to some
form of consummation. It may be the solution of a problem, playing a game, writing
a book or enjoying a meal. In all these, there is a sense of fulfillment and
completion such that the experience stands out as a significant whole, pervaded by
a dominant quality. Thus we say, "That was a terrifying, poignant, sad, etc.
experience"; its value for our lives resides precisely in this quality which is
borne in upon us by the experience as a whole. It was Dewey's contention that no
experience has significant unity unless it has such aesthetic quality. A passing
stream of impressions or a succession of colors or sounds do not by themselves
constitute an experience because they lack the pervasive quality which would
identify them as that particular experience. By contrast, the experience of having
arrived at one's destination after undergoing some harrowing events is an
experience suffused with the quality of relief or of anxiety overcome. The entire
sequence of happenings is taken together in one whole of meaning. In asking where
we are to go for an account of such experience, Dewey replied:
to drama or fiction. Its nature and import can be expressed only by art, because
there is a unity of experience which can be expressed only as an experience.2
Within the interaction between Nature and man the emergence of what has value and
intrinsic worth sheds light on both experience and Nature. Nature is disclosed in
its esthetic capacity as a reality surpassing the status of object and even of
environment; as such, it has a claim on man as a responsible being. Experience,
moreover, without the pervasive qualities which punctuate it would be either an
inchoate mass of events or an endless series of happenings registering themselves
on the consciousness of a being for whom they have no more meaning than the
passing scene has for a camera recording it on film. The aesthetic, then, is a
touchstone of significance and provides a standard in accordance with which to
judge the limits of the instrumental intelligence.
Reducing Nature to the status of object means setting aside all limits to
technological control. This results in that total exploitation which in turn,
destroys Nature as environment. The recovery of Nature as the supportive habitat
of human life is impossible without imposing limits to man's control. It is the
esthetic dimension which marks out those limits and points the way to a more
rational control of the engineering will itself.
Whether, in fact, the balance can be redressed is not a question to be settled
here. What is important to understand, however, is that the very pragmatic outlook
which provided the basic rationale for technology is not without resources for
directing that technology towards human goals.
Yale University
New Haven, Conn.
NOTES
l. John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct (New York: Modern Library, 1930), pp. 330-
31.
2. John Dewey, Art as Experience (Capricorn: New York: G. P. Putnam & Sons, 1958),
p. 43.
CHAPTER VI
MAN, TECHNOLOGICAL PRAXIS AND
NATURE IN DIALECTICAL SYNTHESIS
JANUSZ KUCZYNSKI
Hegel and Faure considered architecture to be the art by which dynamic and
vigorous societies initiate the development of civilization. In a similar manner,
philosophy can be called `the architecture of culture'. This term refers to the
most general and comprehensive intellectual construction summing up in an
integrated form the principles and the achievements of science, arts, technology,
material production, politics and, indeed, of almost every human physical and
intellectual endeavor.
Thus conceived, philosophy proves to be, not only a mere point of departure for
the development of civilization, but its epitome. To put it more clearly, as a
synthesis it is also a point of departure, for it both lays foundations and
creates upon them the intellectual construction of the future. Some syntheses,
such as those of resignation or of historical decline, may simply bring an end to
something. These demonstrate the unacceptability of Nietsche's conviction that
decadence, because devoid of the power to generalize, is doomed to cultivate mere
details. The role of stoicism, for example, was but that of summing up, while
Augustinianism ushered in a new epoch. Descartes seems to have adumbrated right
from the start a sweeping outline of the architectonics of modern individualism
and rationalism. Hegel perceived the value of his own philosophy in completing and
crowning the development of mankind. Marx and his disciples have a full awareness
of summing up and continuing past achievements, while at the same time throwing
open completely new horizons.
In comparing philosophies with architecture we had in mind naturally only those
philosophies which perhaps deserve the name (for, obviously, not all have been
included in the above), that is, those capable of mastering the world
intellectually and thus capable also of working out syntheses.
THE RISK AND THE NEED FOR SYNTHESIS
The need for synthesis is perhaps more urgent today than ever before, in order
both to master the world by imposing an intellectual order on reality and to
discover the main features of the epoch precisely through synthesis. Thus, the
goal is to detect the guiding principles and thereby to establish one's own place
in the reality of culture and humanized matter. The very tendency which Gabriel
Marcel called the ontological hunger for being finds its superficial, yet
distinct, expression in the hunger for synthesis; hence, it is also a quest for
roots or for a fulcrum.
Synthesis becomes a kind of a priori for subsequent development, the basis for
further, including analytical, investigation. It should yield that insight which
Bergson sought through his intuition, namely, the idea and penetration of the
world which is subsequently exploited by a host of analyses devoted to particular
and narrow fragments. A summarizing synthesis seems but a report on the stage of
knowledge achieved thus far, while an open synthesis, a projecting one, can be
compared to a map whose contours are merely outlined and is meant to be filled in
and complemented through subsequent investigations.
Synthesis, therefore, is a form which integrates sciences, arts, politics, and so
forth; it signifies a comprehension, attainable perhaps first of all through
philosophy, of the essence of culture, the network of its typical tendencies and
the foundations of a view of the world. As this comprehension is achieved through
diverse forms of social consciousness and the principles of practical1 activity it
has cultural, historical praxis and anthropological significance. Thus, synthesis
makes possible the functioning and development of culture rather than its
vegetation and decay.
The main concern of this paper is to attempt an assessment of one of the most
brilliant and comprehensive syntheses, that advanced by Henri Van Lier in his book
entitled The New Age.2 It is a significant essay presenting an intellectually
inspiring and invigorating integration of technology, science, art and ethics,
viewed in the perspective of an all-embracing, philosophical vision of culture. It
is one of the most symptomatic expressions of the quest for ideological and
philosophical orientation to be found in contemporary Western thought. Further, it
is a synthesis of a special kind, for it is worked out as if the march is
simultaneously "in progress" and at the crossroads.
To put it more forcefully, in its political aspect the work defends individualism
and cosmopolitism, while in its totality it expresses technocratic leanings
despite certain pro-democratic declarations in the chapter devoted to art. That
is, the author's unificatory aspirations were powerful enough to lead him to the
theory of convergence tacitly assumed as the obvious premise or generalization of
the contemporary state of civilization. While the above would suggest that the
book is written from a standpoint trenchantly inimical to socialism, it is, in
fact, not so. In a certain sense, it is even pro-socialistic, since in attempting
to strike a balance at the crossroads the author directs his far-reaching
philosophical insight all the more clearly toward the socialist world and
particularly towards the socialist vision of the world. Here, in my opinion two
types of convergence theorists are of interest: those who would have socialism
become similar to capitalism and those who believe that capitalism must come to
resemble socialism and give rise to a single civilization and cultural formation
without recourse to social revolution. As Van Lier appears to belong to the latter
group he is one of the most interesting witnesses of the ideological
transformations occurring within bourgeois culture and an exponent of its boldest,
most sincere and unbiased explorations. His individualism constitutes man's
defence against reification and the anonymity of mass culture. His cosmopolitism
protests nationalistic and certain chauvinistic movements, as well as the
particularisms stemming in part from the growing disparity between the development
of single countries and even of various parts of the capitalist world. His
technocratism is not directed against man, but expresses his belief in the
beneficial and omnipotent power of technology for delivering this world and
securing its further development and prosperity.
The philosophical stratum of the book evidently yields to Marxism. It is worthy of
note that this is observable more in the actual solutions proposed than in its
declarations. This pertains, above all, to epistemology and ontology. The author's
theory of society and its development conceives the productive power in a one-
sided manner. While basically acknowledging its prominent role, he absolutizes the
role of technology and underrates the role of the relations of production which
are crucial from the socio-economic point of view. Hence, there are such paradoxes
as: convergence along with an almost Marxist theory of culture and civilization;
technocratism hand-in-hand with declarations about a world freed from alienation;
individualism alongside dreams of the community of mankind. Obvious contradictions
and incompatibilities follow: the statement that "there is nothing intermediate
between an expert and an ignoramus"3 is followed by a thesis about the "public
participating in the creative process" and the statement that "contemporary art is
democratic in a very deep sense, which signifies something more than cheapness and
the ability to duplicate the standard."4
Nevertheless, rather than dwell on errors, our interest lies in his efforts
towards a synthesis using dialectics as its axis. It is my intention, therefore,
to rectify this peculiarly dialectical synthesis through the polemical
argumentation in the subsequent parts of this paper. Transcending the limits of
polemics, I shall attempt to formulate counter-propositions against the background
of the kind of philosophizing which is under analysis.
THE STATIC VERSUS THE DYNAMIC MACHINE: IMITATION OF NATURE VERSUS STRUGGLE WITH
NATURE
The point of departure for Van Lier in his analysis is technology conceived in
close relation with culture and, indeed, as its foundation. The three phases or
aspects of the machine revealed in its historical development lead to basically
divergent types of culture and equally divergent philosophies. The static machine
seems best suited to mechanistic and sentient materialism: it passively imitates
nature of which it is a fragmentary appendage. "The mechanic machine was but an
extension of either the human body or the natural forces: watermills, windmills
even pumps and the mechanical press took advantage of water and the wind, using
them according to their natural capacity and efficacy, without attempting any
transformation and on the spot."5
With the advent of the dynamic machine around 1800,
The machine ceased to be an innocent means of relieving man's labor and securing
him decent conditions for everyday existence; it became rather an instrument with
boundless power, capable of satisfying equally boundless needs. The transition
from Newcomen's machine to that of Watt may be regarded as the symbol of this
basic change. In Newcomen's machine steam pushed out the piston which had been
pressed in by the natural pressure, that is, the weight of the air. We were still
in the world of windmills and watermills. Completely reversing the problem, Watt
used steam to press in and develop the momentum. Since its pressure can be
increased indefinitely, power became capable of unlimited growth. In this manner
the propelling ability passed from nature to man and energetism such as will be
later developed by thermo- and electrodynamics was born. Thus the machine, which
in its origins did not arouse the anxiety of the humanists, suddenly became a
source of new morality, almost of a new religion, of efficacy, quantity,
efficiency and progress.6
The dynamic machine, therefore, broke away from man and nature.
The locomotive, the furnace, the electric turbine or the internal combustion
engine not only become separated from the laborer, what is more, they unleash
natural forces and transform one of these into another: mechanical to electrical
to chemical. The concept of energy and the principle of its conservation are
discovered in relation to the capacity of these machines to transfer energy from
place to place independently of its source. Hence, the feeling expressed by those
who witness these processes . . . cannot be included in the culture and the
systems of sanctified values which knew and related among themselves only man,
nature and certain objects. Compared with the semi-artificial instruments of old,
the dynamic machine represents perfect artificiality and constitutes a separate as
well as singular realm. . . . It becomes the means of the means. It inaugurates
the realm of pure means, equally distinct from man and nature and equally uncanny;
some even say: monstrous as the realm of pure artificiality.7
As we interpret it, the dynamic maachine seems at one and the same time best
suited to the classical German activistic idealism and the French and English
positivism. It is both a peculiar product and a substantiation or perfect image of
these differing intellectual and cultural trends. On the one hand, it expresses
the attitude of unlimited activism imposed on nature and society from outside,
while also representing in itself the perfect order of the mechanical world, of
inexorable facts, laws and systems independent of man. It embodies both the menace
and the hope of the great era of the middle class: its brutal power and total
alienation and, simultaneously, the hope of an unlimited mastery over the world of
nature and man. All in all, Van Lier refrains from assessing the social
consequences attendant upon the advent of the dynamic machine. He merely quotes
among others the arguments adduced by its enthusiasts, the American technocrats of
the 20th century:
You will argue that the advent of the dynamic machine liquidated the shortage of
goods and, hence, of privileges and social classes. Actually, it is quite the
contrary: as we have clearly demonstrated it brings about a new class division
into producers, technicians and executors, the very division being more alienating
than hitherto.8
One further quality of dynamic machines must be taken into account since it is
significant to the problems under analysis here. This is the fact that these
machines are abstract. "Abstractness is nothing other than stereotyped recurrence
and succession which acquired a purely numerical character through acceleration. .
. . Abstractness means information directed to itself which screens the world
instead of revealing it."9 Bergson's critique of positivistic civilization
converges with this critique of the dynamic machine as obscuring the world.
Information directed to itself and having no `deeper' contact with being evinces a
tendency towards a peculiar inner multiplication
while an overflow of information places a screen, as it were, between
consciousness and things; it is by force of this phenomenon that it can be called
passive. It is passive not because it causes drowsiness, but because the activity
which it stimulates concerns principally the substitutes of reality, images,
sounds, words, imaginings which are apt to evolve into delusions.10
Without being explicit the author leads us to the conclusion that the dynamic
machine is a typical expression of the dominating culture of the 19th century with
its mixture of idealistic and positivistic tendencies. Fortunately, we can attempt
to be more consistent. Are the interrelations warranted which he suggests between
technology or, more precisely, the form of the machine and the style of culture in
itself and unmediated by the socio-economic system? While being a rhetorical
question it possesses a certain inspirational value unrecognized by the prevalent
Marxist line of argumentation. A comprehensive view would conceive the machine
rather as a product of the economico-socio-intellectual culture; consequently, it
is philosophy which gives birth to the machine rather than the other way around.
The word "rather" implies that the multilayer structure of social life and the
mutual interrelations of its elements virtually exclude any alternate major
relation.
THE DIALECTICAL MACHINE: TOWARDS UNITY WITH NATURE
This influence contributes to historical augmentation: the dialectical machine is
a result of the development and qualitative transformations of the dynamic machine
in much the same manner as the latter continued the static machine, despite
considerable differences. Since, however, the author did not furnish an explicit
qualification we must reconstruct his line of reasoning in subordination to our
polemical presentation, juxtaposing it with our counter-proposals and
supplementing it with our revisions. The dialectical machine of which the atomic
pile and computer are examples, is correlated in time with the second industrial
revolution.
Whereas the machine of the 19th century, being analytical, linear and sequential,
appeared totally abstract and deserved all the indictment which for ages were
lodged against abstractness, our contemporary machine . . . betrays enough synergy
to make its concreteness prominent, thus resulting in a far-reaching modification
of its cultural significance. . . . The concrete mentality was finally introduced
in the definition of cybernetics worked out by Norbert Weiner's team in 1948 for
information machines and . . . in 1958 for dynamic machines.11
What exactly is synergy, which is so crucial for the dynamic machines.
Within the internal combustion engine there obtains a marked antagonism between
compression and explosion stemming from the fact that under the impact of
compression the explosion can be transformed into a detonation. In contrast,
compression within the Diesel engine is both the source and the result of
explosion, which reduces to a bare minimum the antagonism between the two. It can
increase itself and the power of the explosion simultaneously."12
Possibly this phenomenon can be discerned all the more clearly in the operation of
the jet-propelled engine which, together with the aeroplane, becomes a significant
example of the attempt to make machines resemble living organisms, of the synergy
of function and surroundings, and of an almost ideal cooperation of the machine
with the environment.
Already the consequences of the dialectical machine for culture are clear. The
dynamic machine was opposed to life, thereby generating chaos and pernicious
socio-cultural consequences. The dialectical machine, on the other hand,
accomplishes a reconciliation of mechanism with the life environment and develops
some features of a living creature. Thus, the age-old idea of organicity seems to
recur, this time in the concrete, bringing "a preponderance of the whole over its
part, wherein a part ceases to exist as a mechanism and becomes an organ."13 The
synergy of the machine and nature seems observable in modern aerodynamic
solutions: the automobile takes advantage of the resistance of air to increase its
cohesion,
special projections of the synchronous propellers direct the stream of air under
the aeroplane's wings to increase its carrying capacity. . . . we bear witness to
a great reconciliation, active this time, which occurs on the basis of mutual
conditioning and thanks to which the "associated environment," to use Simondon's
term, is taking shape. The water surrounding Guimbal's turbine, the air
surrounding the bolids or that which is found between the wings and the propeller
of the Breguet 941 aeroplane no longer belong to the machine; nor are they simply
the forces of nature: together with the machine they constitute the intermediary
reality. Once this type of reality has a chance of getting somewhat disseminated,
of becoming more spectacular . . . its cultural significance, that is, its ability
to substitute for the older and more static nature, will become obvious.14
The term "intermediary reality" ought to be kept in mind as it will constitute the
axis in the analysis for the philosophically significant conception presented in
the following parts of the paper. The dialectical machine is distinguished by
various synergies that lead to the following two significant concepts: that of
concreteness and that of dialectical network.
The abstract machine to the extent to which its functions
were separated easily lent itself to explanation or reparation and was adapted to
performing various tasks. The concrete machine, however, introduced a new world,
more powerful and more flexible in its totality in comparison with the world of
the past.15 In its full extent synergy is synonymous with the organic
relationships between mechanical elements; . . . it implies dialectical relations
between machine and nature, between matter and form. . . . The recent machine
inaugurates a new technological and cultural vision of reality.16
In our interpretation, which at the same time attempts to furnish the missing
links in Van Lier's argumentation, concreteness is dialectical since it both
continues and transcends the abstractness of the old type within the new machine.
We can perceive here an analogy to, or even the inspiration of, the Marxist theory
of cognition: from the initial, existing and empirical concrete, through
abstraction, generalization and theory, towards the concrete of creative practice,
that is, the creation of a new reality.
The concreteness of the dialectical machine implies a complexity of structure
which re-enacts the imitation of the concreteness of nature on a qualitatively
different level; thus, the product of technology becomes a replica of the
dialectics of nature. Naturally, the above statement breeds a number of new
problems. This imitation also existed before, but the previous machines were
exterior to nature, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Whereas the static
machine was appended to nature and the dynamic machine was opposed to nature, the
new machine, owing to its concreteness, attempts to place itself inside nature
through the intermediary reality mentioned above, that is, through synergy and the
entire dialectical network. It marks a dialectical leap into new behaviour and new
mentality. Paradoxically enough, the problem of industry destroying nature may be
a symptom of this process of getting located inside nature; it is simply one phase
of the difficulties of adaptation. Having already ventured such an optimistic
diagnosis, we have full right to anticipate that the development, not of the
machine, but of dialectical technology (the whole network of plants uniting
metallurgical, chemical and agrotechnical solutions with advanced socialistic
relations) will bring about a specific "naturalization" of technology, a fuller
imitation of nature and a veritable synergy.
In the course of argumentation pursued by Van Lier this becomes inextricably
related to another component of the dialectics of the machine, that is, with
network:
It is no longer the machine that is the fundamental echnological conception but
the network, a synergic aggregate of synergic machines. . . . The dialectical
network is of horizontal tension. It has numerous loops and focuses. Its order is
no longer hierarchic but functional, as that of the organs of the human body,
which are interdependent and control one another within the self-regulation system
of the whole organism. Initiative is transferred from one point to another
depending on the exigencies of the moment.17
Both concreteness and the network are inextricably connected with the idea of
reversibility.
The concrete epoch, totally engrossed as it is in the idea of reversibility,
attempts where it can, and particularly in relation to the internal combustion
engine, to substitute the scheme: raw material = product + by-product, for the
scheme: raw material = product + refuse. In a way it is forced to do this with
respect to atomic energy, whose remnants are pernicious in the extreme.18
The above example of the idea of reversibility does not seem to be sufficiently
apposite. The issue can be grasped more tangibly with respect to information
machines and the use of cybernetics in the development of technology and modern
culture in general. In this case feedback can be considered a concretization of
the constitutive principle of dialectics, quite in tune with the tendencies
evinced by the most recent philosophical output.
THE RELATION BETWEEN THE SOCIO-PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM AND TECHNOLOGY
Van Lier's conception, which in the foregoing interpretation has been
systematized, specified and supplemented, is both inspiring and significant. It
subjects technology to a specific philosophical scrutiny, laying emphasis on the
dialectical character of its present stage of development. This attitude yields a
deeper understanding both of technology itself, and of its impact on the
development of society, its mentality and culture. Further elaboration of this
point is an urgent task for philosophers, engineers and inventors in particular.
Dialectics of this kind contribute to fruitful humanistic interpretations and may
aid in research and design work. Thus, adoption of the idea of the dialectic
network should consistently result in concrete and practical cooperation between
engineers and philosophers, between naturalists and humanists in general.
The value of this conception is found also in what that it presupposes as obvious,
mainly that handling dialectics itself is a serious, novel and fresh manner. Van
Lier does not rest content with schematically opposing dialectics to metaphysics,
indeed he never uses the latter term. Rather, he concretizes the general approach
by opposing dialectic vision and activity not only to the static, but with equal
emphasis to the dynamic and the abstract approach. Inventiveness and boldness in
the use of language enriches the conceptual stock at the disposal of dialectics by
such terms as concreteness, network and synergy of the first and second degree.
His application of crucial terms: "dialectics" and "machine" is especially
interesting. Frequently, the author does not attempt to introduce any arrangement
or any order into the flux of his thoughts. Thus, the book possesses all the
values, together with all the shortcomings, of an essay and perhaps of the famous
French "light" style. For these reasons the above presentation is bound to
transcend the limits set by purely interpretative activity and at certain points
elaborate and supplement the author's vision. The point at issue here is not the
dialectical theory of the machine but the dialectical machine. Van Lier may not
have been aware of the significance of this term: through it contact is
established, no longer with a dialectical theory, but with a man-created reality
which, though artificially produced, is dialectical.
I propose to formulate the point with more caution, and the restriction seems
quite evident: namely, that the dialectical machine is but the preliminary stage
of a process in which technological reality is becoming dialectical. A fully
dialectical technological network will be a phenomenon so significant and
revolutionary in its nature that its full-fledged development may correspond to
the communist civilization alone.
Is this dialectics attained solely through imitating nature? The concept of
intermediary reality refers us to quite another set of problems. Suffice it to say
here that with the concrete machine, synergically linked with the entire network,
the degree of imitation of nature allows us to refer to the dialectics of nature
as "existing" in the products of technology. Hence, it is possible to conceive of
reproducing the dialectical processes in the artificial products created by human
beings.
Much to our surprise, however, the conception analyzed above seems to pertain
rather to the simplest laws of dialectics, chiefly to the principle of universal
interrelatedness, the principle of transformation of quantity into quality and,
partially, to the principle of negation of the negation. These principles or laws
can be correlated with such terms as synergy, network, concreteness,
transformation of the forms of energy, energy and matter and even information and
energy. That, however, which is most crucial and profound in the theories of
dialectics elaborated hitherto, namely, the laws of unity and the conception of
the struggle of the opposites, is not to be found there; simultaneously, the
sphere of problems delimited by Van Lier together with the manner of
interpretation clearly point in that direction.
It might be ventured that in a way the static and the dynamic machines function
above all on the basis of alienation from and antagonism towards nature. The
dynamic machine constitutes a result of a pragmatic establishment and
petrification of a discovered discrepancy or contradiction "freezing" its opposed
poles, as it were. This state has its corresponding consequences which find
expression in an unmitigated, absolute, that is, precisely antinomic and
metaphysical opposition between nature and culture. Naturally, the man who
introduced this antinomy into the European mentality, Jean Jacques Rousseau, lived
at the time when the transition from the static to the dynamic machine was just
occurring (the boundaries between these two technologies are here delimited with
ample tolerance). Subsequently, the triumphant progress of the dynamic machine was
paralleled by the drastically growing discrepancy between nature and culture,
observable both in the numerous theoretical and philosophical conceptions as well
as in the realities of the contemporary world, especially the world of dynamism,
brutality and total alienation of technology from the natural and social
environment.
The dialectical machine, on the other hand, seems to take its place in the very
center of the tensions between nature and culture, uniting the two poles of the
same human reality which we prefer to qualify by the classical term: praxis.
It is at this point that technology acquires greater veracity: it is no longer the
veracity of imitating a separated fragment of reality, but that of cohering to the
very essence of the inner processes of reality. It is a matter of "getting fitted
in'' the schemes of nature, through synergy and the all-embracing interrelations
obtaining within the dialectical network. Furthermore, due to its growing
concreteness and complexity, the machine constitutes a miniature replica of the
world. This can be predicated of the great industrial-information-cultural
networks, of computers, spaceships and atomic power plants. As I have frequently
taken the liberty of transcending the boundaries set by the author's explicit
argumentation, I would venture one step further: on the grounds of Hegelian-
Bradleyan language we could even refer here to imitating the absolute, precisely
in its complexity and concreteness. Couched in more modest terms, the dialectical
machine will be considered a step towards the absolute, man's actual and most
powerful instrument in his incessant and hitherto futile attempt at deification.
This is due to the peculiar location of this machine at the "very heart" of
nature, as if in the center of a contradiction. To be sure, earlier machines,
together with the majority of preceding cultures and philosophies, absolutized
contradictions or incompatibilities in a special way. Through their partial
solutions they were able to use a fraction of the tensions or energy they
themselves represented and, moreover, wasted most of it due to their very low
performance index and great amount of refuse. In the domain of its cultural
counterpart this found expression, for example, in absolutizing certain fragments
of reality, in viewing reality by different philosophies each time as if from a
different vantage point. All this was done in full confidence that these
fragmentary and superficial opinions revealed the absolute truth. Recall how many
philosophers regarded their own conceptions as "Copernican revolutions" or turning
points: Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Comte, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Bergson and most
others. Manifestly, in the domain of culture waste was equally great inasmuch as
the possibilities afforded by energy of thought, truth and ingeniousness were
concerned.
The dialectical machine, on the other hand, affords a location within the
contradiction itself; rather it makes it possible to take full advantage of the
contradiction and frequently at the preliminary phase: for example, the
development from atomic energy to nuclear energy. It domesticates the tensions
without annihilating them. To be concise, previously the dynamic machine killed
nature whereas the dialectical machine coexists with nature which it has managed
to domesticate. The difference between Henri Van Lier's position and my own
consists in the fact that I consider the dialectical machines of the present to be
but infants of a new species. Hence, caution is indicated in assessing the
present, with the main bulk of any optimism being directed to the future.
I locate the principle upon which nature is to be domesticated much more clearly
within the entire dialectical network, in the essence of the oncoming culture.
Confronted with the alarming facts of the destruction of rivers, woods and fields,
and in view of the more intensely manifested cultural pessimism in contemporary
civilization, all this may seem a mere fantasy. The reply is quite simple: this is
nothing other than a classical operation of the dynamic machine, specifically of
the dynamic industrial-cultural network. The consequences of the destructive
activity of this dynamism were so pernicious in the most industrialized countries
of the world, that as early as the Roosevelt administration there appeared
organized attempts at remedying the situation. These were rooted in common sense
and the instinct of selfpreservation; partially at least they were an integral
part of political and economic needs. The care taken of the Tennessee river basin
furnished the most spectacular example. Within general political structures such
activity supplies a humanitarian alibi for the governments of quite a few
capitalist countries. Nevertheless, one cannot deny them their significance and
their beneficial consequences. Recently, the struggle to purify the river Thames
and the war waged against smog in London proved quite encouraging in their
results. Against this background the scandals concerning water pollution acquire
more significance.
As can be gauged from the foregoing, developing a dialectical network is no simple
matter, both technologically and economically. Nevertheless, it is an absolute
necessity and in the conditions of socialism it ought to be approached with
manifest care and energy, and in full awareness of the possible negative
consequences. Public opinion would seem to be sufficiently mature to accept a new
hierarchy of values on condition that synergy or even a specific symbiosis of the
new man with nature were not so much reinstated as constructed anew.
University of Warsaw
Warsaw, Poland
NOTES
1. ln thc course of the present paper I shall confine myself to presenting only
one kind of praxis, that is technological praxis. Cf. the classification of types
of praxis in Louis Althusser and Etienne Balbor, Lire de Capital (Paris: Libraire
Francois Maspero, 1968). However, while approving of Althusser's striving to
clarify Marxist thought, I decidedly oppose his sui generis neodogmatism, which
finds expression, among others in radical theses on "breaking off" with tradition
(rupture or coupure epistemologique), supposedly achieved by Marx. Thus, I reject
the ahistoricism and ahumanism of this French Communist (Cf., e.g., the reasoning
in Chapter V entitled "Marxism Is Not Historicism").
2. Henri Van Lier, Le Nouvel Age (2nd ed.; Paris: Casterman, 1964). In dialectical
perspective, I will adopt as a significant point of reference a part of the
terminololy and problematics of this inspiring and topical work. Nevertheless, the
present article expresses my own proposals and critique of some of its tendencies.
3. Ibid., p. 199. "Point de milieu entre l'expert et l'ignare."
4. Ibid., p. 202, 203. "Artiste et public ouvriers" and "L'art contemporain est
démocratique en un sens tres profond, qui va beaucoup plus loin que le bon marche
et la multiplicabilite des standards." In a slightly earlier work, Les arts de
l'espace (Paris: Casterman, 1960). p. 10, Van Lier wrote: L'art n'est donc plus
lie aux loisiers d'une caste. En prenant conscience de son serieux, il s'est
democratise, comme en temoignent la mentalite de ses createurs et l'extension
vertigineuse de son public. Il ne s'oppose plus au travail, ni meme a la
technique. Il participe a la recherche commune, sur un autre plan." This confirms
the aforementioned perspective of a dialectical synthesis of opening, possible
only as an intellectual correlate of a synthesized or unified society, that is,
mankind understood as a community. The path towards this synthesis leads through
democracy and socialism. Art, perhaps because of the present invincible animosity
of many philosophies becomes, to an even greater degree than philosophy, an
intellectual factor in integrating and synthesizing qualities. Similarly, the
scientific and technological revolution is a material factor unifying mankind,
while the socialist revolution and, above all, the construction of developed
socialist societies is a political factor.
5. Ibid., p. 29. "la machine mecanique . . . prolongeait le corps humain et les
forces naturelles: moulins, voiliers, captaient l'eau et le vent selon leurs débit
propre, les mettaient en oeuvre sans travestissement, les utilisaient sur place."
It is significant that in this era of machines which copy nature and thus express
a technical praxis of submission there arises as a generalization of this praxis
an observant materialism akin to the one in the Enlightenment period. But it is
also significant that even in that period a philosophical generalization of the
socio-political praxis brought forth a poignant consciousness of the counterposing
of man and the world, expressed most profoundly by Rousseau in a counterposing of
culture and nature. I wrote more broadly on the counterposition of nature and
culture while discussing the works of B. Baczko in my book Porzadek nadchodzacego
swiata (The Arrangement of the Oncoming World; Warsaw: Ksiazka i Wiedza, 1964),
pp. 208-218.
6. Ibid., p. 25. "Elle cesse d'être un moyen innocent d'alléger quelque peu les
tâches humaines et d'assurer, vaille que vaille, une subsistance au jour le jour,
pour apparaître comme un instrument de puissance indéfinie destiné à satisfaire
des besoins également indéfinis. On peut prendre pour signal de cette mutation le
passage de la machine de Newcomen à celle de Watt. Dans la Newcomen, la vapeur
avait pour effet de repousser le piston, alors poussé par la pression
atmosphérique: le travail dépendait de celui, fatalement limité, d'une force
naturelle, le poids de l'air; nous étions toujours dans le monde du moulin à vent
et à eau. Watt retourne de problème: dorènavant, c'est la vaoeur qui poussera,
assument le temps moteur, et comme on peut accroitre indéfiniment sa pression, la
ouissance elle aussi sera indéfiniment "multipliable. Ainsi les commandes passent
de la nature à l'homme: l'énergétisme, tel que le developperont la thermodynamique
et bientôt l'electrodynamique, est né. . . . Et la machine, qui depuis ses
origines n'avait guère alerté les hommes de culture, se prit à inspirer une morale
et presque une religion: celle de l'efficacité, de la quantité, du rendement, du
progrès." Let us add that it is also the source of a new philosophy of pragmatism.
There exists yet another aspect of those "philosophies of praxis," which appear in
this way not only from dynamic technology, but above all from a class or
ideological need to compete with the only authentic philosophy of praxis, i.e.,
Marxism. The article by Rudiger Bubner; "Eine Renaissance der praktischen
Philosophie," Philosophische Rundschau, XXII (1975), 1-34, can serve as an example
of such an ideological manoeuvre.
7. Ibid., p. 30. "La locomotive, le haut fourneau, la turbine électrique et le
moteur à explosion, non seulement s'isolent de l'ouvrier mais au lieu d'épouser
les forces naturelles, ils les attisent de toutes les manières; ils les transmuent
d'une forme dans une autre--mécanique, thermique, électrique, chimique--et c'est
même à ce propos que sera découvert le concept d'énergie et le principe de sa
conservation: ils le transportent en tous lieux sans rappel de leur origine. D'où
le sentiment, exprimé par les temoins, de se trouver devant un nouvel être qui . .
. restait inassimilable par la culture et les systèmes de valeurs consacrés,
puisqu'on n'y connaissait que l'homme, la nature et quelques objets les reliant.
Après les engins d'autrefois, semi-artificiels, la machine énergétique est un
artifice consommé, formant un règne à part, insolite. . . . Elle est un moyen de
moyen. Elle m'augure le régne du pur moyen, aussi distinct de l'homme et de la
nature, aussi insolite--d'aucuns diront: monstrueux--que le régne du pur artifice.
Max Weber, Die protestantische Ethik und der `Geist' des Kapitalismus absolutizes
in a classical manner the ideal or religious aspect of the entire historical
process, just as Van Lier in the above-mentioned reflections absolutizes an
opposite asnect of the same process, i.e., technology. I use the concept of
absolutization in the meaning which became commonly known in Marxist methodology
after the exoression used by V. I. Lenin in The Philosophical Notebooks (Warsaw:
Ksiaaka i wiedza, 1956), pp. 335-39. "From the point of view of primitive, vulgar
and metaphysical materialism, philosophical idealism is merely nonsense. On the
contrary, from the point of view of dialectical materialism, philosophical
idealism is a one-sided, exaggerated, sickly growth (uberschwengliches) or
distension (Dietzgen) of but one of the slight aspects at the margin of cognition
into the absolute, detached from matter and nature and transformed into a diety."
Cf. its chapter "W sprawie dialektyki" (Concerning Dialectics).
8. Ibid., p. 33. "La machine énergétique comporte la suppression de la rareté et
par là des privilèges et des classes sociales? Nous venons de voir au contraire
qu'elle implique une nouvelle division en classes--celles de l'homme d'affaires,
du technicien, de l'exécutant--plus aliénante que l'ancienne. D'où que nous la
prenions, nous sommes au rouet."
9. Ibid., p. 35. "Abstraction que la répétition et la succession stéréotypées
rendues purement numériques par l'effet de l'accélération. . . . Abstraction que
l'information tournant sur elle-même et faisant écran au monde au lieu de le
révéler."
10. Ibid., p. 34. "L'information proliférante fait écran entre l'esprit et les
choses, et c'est d'ailleurs en ce sens qu'elle est passive; non qu'elle
provoquerait la somnolence, mais l'activité qu'elle suscite s'adresse
principalement a des substituts de réalité, images, sons, mots, phantasmes, qui
ont tôt fait de devenir fantômes."
This criticism of abstractionism expresses one of the aspects of dialectical
thought presented by Hegel as well as by Marx and Lenin which must be especially
stressed in our perspective of the striving towards the concrete. However, while
corresponding to the concept of the concrete in the dialectics of Hegel and in
Marxism, they are counterposed in a synthetic presentation. Hence, only authentic
Marxian and Leninist dialectics open a realistic possibility of overcoming the
concrete of matter, nature and society in a new unity. This is achieved through a
humanistic creationism, directed against both theocentric creationism and a
dogmatic Marxism which at times is simply Neo-Hegelianism. I wrote about this
problem more broadly in an article entitled: "The Two Unities of Creationism:
Hegel as an Object of Negation," Studia Filozoficzne, XII (1974), and in my recent
book, Homo Creator (Warsaw: Ksiazka i Wiedza, 1976), pp. 7-40. I have developed
more extensive discussions of Christian thought on this topic in many other works,
among them Zvc i filozofowac (To Live and Philosophize; Warsaw: Ksiazka i Wiedza,
1969) and an article presenting a philosophical criticism as well as an evaluation
of the possibility of socio-cultural cooperation between Christians and Marxists
entitled: "The Marxist-Christian Dialogue," Dialectics and Humanism. The Polish
Philosophical Quarterly, II (1974), 117-132.
11. Ibid.. pp. 37-38. "Tandis que la machine du XIXe siècle, encore analytique,
linéaire, juxtaposée, paraissait globalement abstraite, et méritait tous les
reproches qui se sont depuis toujours attachés a l'abstraction la nôtre . . .
découvre assez de synergies pour que la concrètude y passe a l'avant-plan,
entraînant une modification profonde de son sens culturel. . . . La mentalité
concrète se campe définitivement dans la définition de la cybernétique par
l'équipe de Norbert Weiner, en 1948, pour les machines d'information, . . . en
1958, pour les machines d'énergie."
12. Ibid., p. 41. "Alors que dans le moteur à explosion il y a antagonisme marqué
entre la compression et la déflagration, puisque celle-ci sous l'effet de la
pression risque de se transformer en détonation, dans le Diesel, la compression
étant la source de la déflagration réduit 1'antagonisme entre elle et son effet
qui la provooue en retour; elle pourra s'augmenter en l'augmaentant." More
precisely, this is a synergy of the second degree.
13. Ibid., p. 43. "Une prévalence du tout sur la partie, ou la partie cesse d'être
un rouage pour devenir un organe." Seemingly, this is again a copying of nature,
but in reality the machine begins to infiltrate it and become a part of nature.
Technical praxis enters nature as if from the interior, utilizing and at the same
time intensifying its forces. When Marx stated in the "Capital," that science is
becoming a direct productive force he saw precisely and in an unusually far-
reaching manner this problem of the transition from thought (science) to activity,
to praxis that creates a new world. Contrary to, among others, Althusser, and the
theory of an "old" and "young" Marx and contrary to a dogmatic-scientistic
orientation of some Marxists, this thesis profoundly corresponds to the famous
words from the "Economic-philosophical Manuscripts": "Communism . . . as full
naturalism = Humanism, as a Full humanism = naturalism; it forms a true solution
of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man." (Warsaw: Ksiazka
i Wiedza, 1958), p. 94.
14 Ibid., pp. 43-44. "Un léger recouvrement des hélices synchrones permet de
diriger uniformément sur les ailes le débit de l'air accéléré de manière a
augmenter la portance. . . . Une réconciliation s'opère mais active, à base de
causalites reciproques, et qui fait naître ce que Simondon appelle un "milieu
associe." L'eau autour de la turbine Guimbal, l'air autour du bolide ou entre
l'hélice et l'aile du Bréguet 941 ne sont pas machine; ils ne sont non plus simple
nature; ils formant avec la machine une réalité médiane. Ce type de réalité n'aura
qu'à prendre plus d'amoleur, à devenir plus spectaculaire . . . pour que son
incidence culturelle, l'estompement de l'ancienne nature immuable, saute aux
yeux."
15. Ibid., p. 46. "La machine abstraite, dans la mesure où elle separait les
fonctions, se prêtait bien a l'explication, était aisément réparable et se
montrait a des roles très divers. Mais la machine concrète introduit un monde
nouveau qui dans son ensemble est plus souple que l'ancien. "We wish to pursue the
subject further in the direction of the main problem of our paper. The concrete
dialectical machine is a means of creation and, simultaneously, a symbol of a new
nature, not only, as Van Lier has it, of the old world. Similarly, Howard L.
Parsons does not go beyond this borderline, although he writes about "the
reconstruction of nature" in his work Man, East and West: Essays in East-West
Philosophy (Amsterdam: B.R. Gruner, 1975), p. 105. That is why in the perspective
of a Marxist humanistic creationism, we are concerned not only with copying and
maintaining nature, but also with the creation of new nature through a scientific
and technical revolution. To this one must add the maintenance of continuity
between the value of the old and new nature, keeping in view that great synthesis
which was inaugurated among others by the following words of Marx: "Consistent
naturalism or humanism differs from idealism as well as from materialism while
being at the same time the truth which unites them both. At the same time, we
perceive that only naturalism is able to understand the act of universal history."
(Economic-philosophical manuscripts. ed. cit., p. 148).
16. Ibid., p. 47. "La synergie prise dans toute son extension est synonyme de
rapports organiques entre les parties machiniques . . . suggère des rapports
dialectiques entre machine et nature, matière et forme . . . la machine récente
introduise une nouvelle vue technique et culturelle de choses."
17. Ibid.. pp. 55-56. "Le concept technique fondamental n'est plus la machine mais
le reseau, ensemble synergique de machines synergiques. . . . Le reseau
dialectique est a tension horizontale. Il ya des noeuds, des foyers multiples. Son
ordre n'est plus hiérarchique, mais fonctionnel, comme celui qui régne entre les
organes d'un corps, où chacun dépend des autres et les commande, dans une
autorégulation de l'ensemble. Selon les moments et les urgences, l'initiative
vient tantôt d'un point tantôt d'un autre." The dialectical network of machines is
here a technical and technocratic correlate of the socialist idea of united
mankind. The network itself must be "embodied" in a network of new social
relations, in order to be truly universal, profoundly transform the world and
establish a new reality.
18. Both manifestos of the "Club of Rome" include, from our point of view, a basic
omission: neither the arrest nor the partial directing of development can save the
world. What is needed is: (a) a basic acceleration of development through a
scientific and technical revolution, including a power such as atomic power for
peaceful purposes, and a biological (humanistic, genetic, truly "green")
revolution. (Bodo Manstein, "Der Mensch ein Zerstörer der naturlichen Ordnung?" in
Was ist das der Mensch? Beitrage zur einer modernen Anthropologie [Munich: Piper
Verlag, 1968], pp. 69-79 wrote on the necessity of a "biological dialectics" [der
biologischen Dialektik] and the mounting of the "barricades of the biological
revolution" in order to arrest the process of devastation of the environment and
to save nature. Though a pessimist, in this evaluation of the situation he calls
for the use of the revolutionary instruments of science to save nature; revolution
is thus seen as serving a sui generis conservatism!); and (b) linking of this
development to an equalizing social development which leads towards a new and true
community of man with mankind, technology and nature.
CHAPTER VII
NATURE AND HUMAN PRAXIS
IN KARL MARX
ANDREW N. WOZNICKI
The student of Marxism faces from the beginning, not only a multitude of
interpretations, but also a variety of forms of Marxist philosophy, especially in
regard to the problematics of socio-political taxeology.1 Moreover, this
proliferation of interpretations has led to a wide variety of contemporary socio-
political movements. Although Marx was preoccupied mainly with the practical
realization of his socio-political doctrine in accordance with his premise that
"the philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways; the point is
to change it,"2 nevertheless, he was aware of the need to develop an appropriate
philosophical anthropology of the social reality as well.
In this paper my principal concern will be to develop the question of human praxis
in Marx's socio-political taxeology by unfolding the main philosophical principles
of his theoretical doctrine on nature and man. In addition I will attempt to
scrutinize critically the proposition of Professor J. Kuczynski's paper as to the
practical application of Marxist socio-political philosophy to the present time by
evaluating human praxis in respect to one kind of praxis, i.e., technological
praxis. In this I will attempt to play a constructive role as advocatus diaboli,
for as it has been observed rightly: "Far from being exhausted, Marxism is still
very young, almost in its infancy: it has scarcely begun to develop. It remains,
therefore, the philosophy of our time. We cannot go beyond it because we have not
gone beyond the circumstances which engendered it."3
In applying Marxist philosophical principles to the vital problematics of
contemporary technological praxis, Professor Kuczynski's approach consists mainly
in an historicist and humanist evaluation of philosophy as the basic "architecture
of culture," that is, of all human activities. This raises the question of the
justification for the mutual relationship between philosophy and culture. Are the
two really distinct one from the other? If they are, is this distinction one of
kind or of degrees? In other words, is the priority of philosophy in any order of
human praxis justifiable in Marxism? In dealing with the relationship of the two-
fold human praxis, Professor Kuczynski refers to an historical experience of
Western man and the variety of philosophical systems, while focusing upon that of
Karl Marx, as "fully aware of summing up and continuing past achievements while
opening new horizons." His search for a new "dialectical synthesis" of human
activity as exercised today in technological praxis is centered upon three
principles of Marxist socio-political taxeology, namely:
1. the dialectical tension between the static and dynamic forces of technological
progress according to the priority of being over consciousness;
2. the dialectical development between quantitative and qualitative transformation
of technological praxis according to the "synergetic modifications" of material
productivity and human creativity; and
3. the dialectical resolution of contradictions between being and becoming
according to the proletarian and revolutionary socio-political activity as
evidenced in "the communist civilization alone."
This paper will critically evaluate the philosophical presuppositions and possible
implications of Marx's doctrine on human praxis according to the above-mentioned
threefold philosophical principles.
THE PRINCIPLE OF PRIORITY OF BEING
OVER CONSCIOUSNESS
Marx bases his socio-political taxeology on a two-fold motive power of human
praxis, namely "use-value" and "exchange-value." A critical scrutiny of the
Marxian socio-political taxeology, however, manifests a dialectical shift between
the two, namely, from materiality and individuality of human praxis to sociability
and division of labor in production, on the one hand, and from the proletarian and
economic system of values to political and revolutionary activities, on the other.
This dialectical shift within Marxist sociopolitical taxeology necessitates an
analysis of the problematics of the nature of the motive power of human praxis.
Marx bases the motive power for the socio-political dialectical movement between
"use-value" and "exchange-value" on the priority of being over consciousness. In
other words, he maintains that there is neither an individual nor a social
consciousness of men which could be a determining factor of any economic
production system; it is rather the very opposite, namely, human praxis is
determined by production. To be more specific let us recall the fact that although
Marx did not reduce human social praxis entirely to economic forces, he certainly
considered the economic value system to be the predominant force. In arguing this,
he insisted that his doctrine of a two-fold value system in economy was discovered
by his observation of development "during the period of manufacture."4 He also
attempts to prove his doctrine of human praxis historically, especially by
relating it to the teaching of Plato and Aristotle. Referring to Plato's theory of
human material production Marx said:
This standpoint of use-value alone is taken by Plato, who treats the division of
labor as the foundation on which the division of society into classes is based. .
. . . Plato's Republic, insofar as the division of labor is treated in it as the
formative principle of the State, is merely the Athenian idealization of the
Egyptian caste system.5
Referring to the doctrine of Aristotle, he admits that "in the form of commodity
values all labor is expressed as equivalent to human labor, and consequently is
labor of equal worth."6 With this view of the Aristotelean doctrine of economic
and social systems, Marx ascribes to Aristotle a discrepancy between his doctrine
of the equality of values in material production and the factual or existing
inequality of men in the social stratification of the Athenian State. Marx's sole
explanation of this is that Aristotle was prevented from discovering it because of
"the historical limitation of the society in which he lived . . . ."7
However, Marx's presupposition of the priority of being over human consciousness
seems to contradict this explanation of the discrepancy in the Aristotelean
economic and social doctrine. This suggests some possible ambiguity in the Marxist
notion of praxis: does it mean economic force only, or does it signify any kind of
human activity which could determine material production as such? If the former,
then the case of Aristotle is merely an accident and is explained by Marx on the
basis of historical circumstances; if the latter, then one must admit that there
is no necessary priority of being over human praxis. The only alternative would be
to presuppose that there is a specific dialectical "leap" between the quantity of
material production or exchange-value, and the quality of human consciousness or
use-value, but in either case the relation between being (economy) and human
praxis (consciousness) must be proven rather than taken for granted.
Moreover, even were we to agree with Marx that there is priority of being over
consciousness, and accept in principle the Marxist philosophical presupposition
that human praxis is determined by material production, this priority could not
have an ontological but only a dialectical character, that is, it could not be
purely in the objective reality of material production, but must be also
intertwined somehow with the human non-material element of man's consciousness. In
other words, human praxis understood as man's consciousness, in order to be
determined by the economic well-being of human social praxis as the antithesis of
material production, would have to have a self-contained reality which differs
ontologically from pure materiality. The materialistic triads of the historical
development of human praxis would never be completed in an ultimate synthesis by a
final dissolution of the socioproductive contradictions between different economic
and political systems which, according to Marxist anthropology, is to take place
in "communism." This self-developing and self-destructing power of human praxis
and material production requires an essential and real distinction between being
and consciousness, that is, that somehow and in some form there be a real
distinction between matter and spirit. Consequently, neither idealistic nor
materialistic interpretations could logically claim to be the whole and complete
truth.
THE PRINCIPLE OF MATERIAL PRODUCTIVITY AND HUMAN CREATIVITY
According to Marx, the main failure of any traditional materialistic philosophy is
that reality (Gegenstand) has been "conceived only in the form of objects of
observation but not as human sense activity, not as practical activity, not
subjectively."8 As a result, all previous variants of materialism neglected the
human reality which manifests itself in man's activity. It is also the conviction
of Marx that his own socio-political philosophy does recognize the subjective
element as the main motive power of human activity in shaping man's consciousness
which is based on both material productivity and human creativity.
Thus, referring to the division of labor, Marx holds that there is a real division
between material productivity and human creativity. In his German Ideology he
says:
The division of labor only becomes a real division from the moment when the
distinction between material and mental labor appears. From this moment,
consciousness can really imagine that it is something other than consciousness of
existing practice, that is, really conceiving something without conceiving
something real; from now on consciousness is in a position to emancipate itself
from the world and to proceed to the formation of `pure' theory, philosophy,
ethics, etc.9
In view of this text it should be evident that for Marx the real division of
material productivity and human creativity involves contradictions in which their
natures continue to co-exist. Continuing his analysis of the nature of "the
distinction between material and mental labor," Marx says that:
Even if the theory (i.e., `pure' theory), theology, philosophy, ethics, etc.,
comes into contradiction with existing conditions, this can only occur as a result
of the fact that the existing social relations have come into contradiction with
the existing forces of production.10
Moreover, although Marx attributes to human praxis some immateriality of its own,
noting that "it is quite immaterial what consciousness starts to do on its own,"11
nevertheless, ontologically speaking, there is no real distinction between
material productivity and human creativity. In other words, to distinguish between
material production and human creativity on the one hand, and within the division
of labor regardless of the actual system on the other, is merely dialectical; it
consists in the self-resolving motive power of many different contradictions of
which one element becomes a condition for another. This raises the question of
whether this dialectical self-resolving power of contradictory elements is truly
real, whether, for instance, it is found in the very nature of motion which
according to Marx is the mode of existence of matter, or whether it is only
intentionally real and found within "mental labor," for instance, in any planning
of productive forces by the existing social organizations. If the former, then
there is again no real distinction between material productivity and human
creativity, because the dialectical self-resolving power of contradictions
contained in any social system would be determined by material forces as such; if
the latter, then ontologically speaking neither production system would be
privileged because there would be unlimited possibilities of controlling the
material forces in any production system by "mental labor."
Turning to the division of labor which depends on both material and mental
elements, Marx insists that there are three main factors in the dialectical
resolutions of all contradictions existing in any taxeological system. They are:
"the forces of production, the condition of society, and consciousness."12
Referring to these factors Marx adds that they
can and must come into contradiction with one another, because the divisions of
labor imply the possibility, indeed the fact, that intellectual and material
activity--enjoyment and labor, production and consumption--devolve on different
individuals and that the only possibility of their not coming into contradiction
lies in the abolition, in its turn, of the division of labor.13
The interdependency of material productivity and human creativity resolves the
seeming contradiction between economic equality in the division of labor and
social inequality in the aforementioned reference to Aristotle. Further, Marx's
understanding of praxis as both material and mental value enables him to explain
the dialectical interreaction in the process of any system of division of labor.
In other words, the dialectical interreaction between material and mental elements
leads to the establishment of various relationships between the value of products
and social reality:
Thus, when men bring the products of their labor into relation with each other as
values, it is not because they see in these articles the mere material receptacles
of homogeneous human labor. Quite the contrary. Whenever by an exchange men equate
as values their different products, by that very act they also equate as human
labor the different kinds of labor dependent upon them. They are not aware of
this, but they do it.14
Thus, the distinction between material productivity and human creativity, as well
as the very nature of the dialectical interrelationship among material and mental
activities leads Marx to the conclusion that there is a unilateral and
hierarchical relationship between value systems. To quote Marx himself:
Value, therefore, does not carry a label describing what it is. It is a value,
rather, that converts every product of labor into a social hieroglyph. Later on,
men try to decipher the hieroglyph, to penetrate the secret of their own social
products, for to stamp an object of utility as a value is just as much a social
product as it is language. The recent discovery, that the products of labor, so
far as they are values, are but material expressions of the human labor spent in
their production, marks indeed an epoch in the history of the development of the
human race, but does not by any means dissipate the mist through which the social
character of labor appears as an objective character of the products themselves.
Thus, despite this discovery what is true only for this particular form of
production (commodity production), namely, that the specific social character of
the labor of independent producers consists in the equivalence of every kind of
labor, as human labor, and that it assumes in the product the form of value--this
fact appears to those caught up in their relationship of commodity production as
the final truth. In the same way, the scientific analysis of air into its
component elements left the atmosphere as an experienced physical object
unchanged.15
This priority of the material praxis over the human praxis brings us to the third
and final principle of Marx's social taxeology according to which the relationship
between material productivity and human creativity is both proletarian in nature
and revolutionary in character.
THE PRINCIPLE OF BEING AND BECOMING
In his Theses on Feuerbach, Marx enumerates the follow-ing characteristics of
human praxis: human sense activity, practical activity, real sense activity, human
activity, objective activity, revolutionary activity, practical activity, "this-
sidedness" of his (man's) thinking in practice, practical revolutionary practice,
revolutionary practice, revolutionized in practice.16 In this sketchy summary,
human praxis is described in both an objective and a subjective manner. The
"objective" element of human praxis points to the very nature of material things
through which human praxis can constitute itself as relating its own self to the
outer self according to the actual conditions of material production. The
"subjective" element of human praxis contains factors in man's activity which
constitute its own selfhood, through which material production is found in the
process of becoming. In other words, human praxis consists in a specific
dialectical tension between being and becoming, necessity and contingency, things
and human activities. This raises the question: Is the fundamental motive power of
human praxis objective or subjective? To answer this question one must analyze
Marx's understanding of praxis as a principle of being and becoming.
In the order of being, praxis is conceived as something which is done, can be done
or has the readiness to be done. (This is similar to the Heideggerian notion of
praxis as Vorhandensein and Zuhandensein.) In the objective sense praxis is
expressed in the form of a result obtained by man's activities and presents itself
linguistically as a noun, namely as `deed' and `product.' Praxis, however,
understood as a `deed' or `product' presupposes a subject which makes praxis to be
praxis. In Theorien uber den Mehrwert Marx says:
Man himself is the basis of his material production, as of all production which he
accomplishes. All circumstances, therefore, which affect man, the subject of
production, have a greater or lesser influence upon all his functions and
activities as the creator of material wealth, of commodities.17
Man, then, is the creator of material wealth and, as such, the main motive power
transforming things. "In this sense, it can truly be asserted that all human
relations and functions, however and wherever they manifest themselves, influence
material production and have a more or less determining effect upon it."18 In the
order of becoming then, praxis is the very condition of developing the productive
forces of things by the human creative activity which is contained in the process
as such and reveals itself linguistically as a verb: `to act' or `to work'.
Consequently, in the dialectical tension between being and becoming, the praxis of
nature is interrelated with that of human activity.
In human praxis, however, Marx emphasizes that in this interrelationship which
takes place between the objective and subjective elements of material productivity
and human creativity there is not always a proper and just order of distribution
of material goods among men. According to him, this social maladjustment consists
in the fact that the `surplus-values' are not equally distributed between the
owner and the producers. In this respect, Engels sees Marx making "two great
discoveries": "the materialist conception of history and the revelation of the
secret of capitalist production through surplus value."18 The main purpose of
Marxist taxeology consists in rooting out the social injustice found in economic
systems.
The contemporary socio-political situation is characterized by a new division of
labor between the owners of material goods and the producers of commodities. In
fact, the new economic and human reality manifested in mutual interreaction and
correlation indicates that human social praxis is proletarian in nature and
revolutionary in character. Social praxis is proletarian because there is in
capitalism an unequal division of the social product between the workers and the
owner, since all `surplus-value' is captured by the owners of the material goods.
Political praxis has, on the other hand, a revolutionary character because, due to
his refusal to share the `surplus-values,' social inequality will never by
voluntarily eliminated by the capitalist. The reason is that:
Political economy, which as an independent science first sprang into being during
the period of manufacture, views the social division of labor only from the
standpoint of manufacture, and sees in it only the means for producing more
commodities with a given quantity of labor, and consequently, of cheapening
commodities and speeding up the accumulation of capital.20
However the final question arises: Why must human social praxis have a proletarian
and revolutionary character? Does it have any compulsion to accept these
postulates as absolute and ontologically necessary in ultimately resolving social
injustice in the contemporary world? Unfortunately, neither Marx nor his followers
could prove the ontological necessity of holding the proletarian and revolutionary
postulates. Several non-Marxist thinkers, however, insist that the Marxist socio-
political taxeology is arbitrary, and that the postulates for the proletarian and
revolutionary activities include both a circulum vitiosi and a petitio principi.
I would conclude this paper with three critical observations on these postulates,
one from a Marxist and two from non-Marxist socio-political philosophers:
Svetozar Stojanovic from the Corcula-Group of the Yugoslav philosophers and editor
of the Journal, Praxis, formulated a new `categorical imperative' for his fellow
thinkers and compatriots: Act in such a way that you neither consider your own
human dignity nor that of your fellowmen available as means for revolutionary
purposes.21
Narcyz Lubnicki, the Polish logician and methodologist from the Maria Sklodowska
University in Lublin, charges that the proletarian characterization of socio-
political change involves a circulum vitiosum and petitio principi.
The thesis of class character contains the error of a circular argument as well as
assuming what needs to be proved; this thes1s is presupposed proved, disregarding
the fact that it demands independent warrant. Apart from the influence of the
physical and social environment on the mentality of the investigator of that
environment, a sincere intention objectively to analyze a given problem will
certainly lead to less falsification of the result of the inquiry than would a
conscious class conditioning or racial political tendency.22
A leading praxeologist, Tadeusz Kotarbinski, voices the opinion that praxis is not
necessarily revolutionary, but can also be based on positive cooperation. In his
Traktat o Dobrej Robocie, Kotarbinski distinguishes two sorts of relationships in
human praxeology, a positive one, which could lead to coexistence of different and
at times radically opposed systems of values, and a negative one involving
conflict. By the very nature of human praxis the latter is not the only possible
way of overcoming the tension existing between values systems, if good will can be
postulated. Human action, then, is not necessarily based on Emmanuel Lasker's
Machology, but can also be dealt with in detente.
University of San Francisco
San Francisco, California
NOTES
1. By the term `taxeology' the author understands a science of arrangement (from
Greek: taxis).
2. Theses on Feuerbach, in: Marx-Engels Gesamtausqabe (MEGA). 1, 5, p. 535. (The
English trans. of T.B. Bottomore in Karl Marx, Selected Writings in Sociology and
Social Philosophy [New York: McGraw-Hill, 1956] will be followed and compared
throughout).
3. Jean Paul Sartre, Search for a Method (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1963), p. 30.
4. Capital, in: Volksausgabe (VA), 1, p. 383.
5. Ibid., p. 386.
6. Ibid., p. 65.
7. Ibid.
8. Theses on Feuerbach, MEGA, 1, 5, p. 533.
9. MEGA. 1, 5, p. 21.
lO. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Capital, VA, 1, p. 79.
15. Ibid., pp. 79-80.
16. MEGA. 1, 5.
17. Vol. 1, pp. 388-9, ed. by Karl Kautsky, 1905-1910.
18. Ibid.
19. Anti-Duhrino, MEGA, p. 9.
20. Capital, VA, 1, p. 383.
21. Cf. G. Petrovic, "What is Freedom?," Praxis, IV (1965), pp. 419-432.
22. Teoria poznania materializmu dialektycznego (Lublin:
Uniwersytetu Marie Curie-Sklodowskiej, 1946), p. 125.
CHAPTER VIII
PRAXIS AND NATURE
SATINDRANATH CHAKRAVARTI
PRAXIS
The roots of the philosophy of praxis can be traced to the Hegelian system itself.
The young Hegelians. Arnold Ruge, Bruno Bauer, Moses Hess and others, were
fascinated by the term and some gave it a new meaning by stressing the connection
between it and the social sphere. In an essay written in 1943, Ruge says this
about Hegelian philosophy:
Nowhere has the theoretical emancipation been so thoroughly carried out as in
Germany. The birth of real, practical freedom is in the transition of its demands
to the masses. The demand is only a symptom of the fact that theory has been well-
digested and has been successful in its breakthrough into existence. The ultimate
end of theoretical emancipation is practical emancipation. But `praxis', on the
other hand, is nothing else than the movement of the mass in the spirit of theory.
It was Feuerbach, however, who brought out the connection between matter and the
content of a political movement, and identified praxis with the material forces
inherent in the masses. In a letter to Ruge, dated 1843, he wrote:
What is theory, what is practice? Wherein lies their difference? Theoretical is
that which is hidden in my head only, practical is that which is spooking in many
heads. What unites many heads creates a mass, extends itself and this finds its
place in the world. If it is possible to create a new organ for the new principle,
then this is praxis, which should never be missed.
While the new and revolutionary relationship between theory and practice was
shaped by the young Hegelians, it was Marx who introduced a concrete historical
content into this relationship. His early writings reveal that, from one
standpoint, a synthesizer attempting to combine the view that `philosophy is its
own time apprehended in thought' with the notion that ascribes to philosophy a
constructive role in shaping human development.
In 1842, Marx wrote:
But philosophers do not grow like mushrooms, out of the earth; they are the
outgrowth of their period, their nation, whose most subtle, delicate and invisible
juice abounds in the philosophical ideas. The same spirit that constructs the
philosophical system in the mind of the philosopher builds the railways with the
hands of the trade. Philosophy does not reside outside the world just as the mind
does not reside outside man, just because it is not located in his belly.
Marx takes his point of departure from the Hegelian view that philosophy is always
related to historical actuality. He points out, however, that the philosophical
medium itself severs the link between reality and its philosophical reflection,
causing the illusion that the object of philosophy is philosophy itself. The
result is a merely contemplative attitude which has no object and which endangers
all philosophical speculation. Philosophy is reduced to a mere ineffectual
fluttering of wings in the air; its translation into an objective language, that
is, language relating to objects or praxis is thereby rendered ineffective.
Marx holds that only the unity of theory and practice transfers man from an
objectless world into the sphere of objective activity. He wrote, therefore, in
1842:
As every true philosophy is the quintessence of its age, the time must come about
when philosophy will get in touch with the real world of its time and establish a
reciprocal relationship with it not only internally, through its content, but also
externally, through its phenomenal manifestation as well. Then philosophy will
cease to be just a system among systems, but will turn to be a philosophy in
general, confronting the world.
To understand the Marxian concept of praxis, one has to understand the specific
nature of Marx's materialism or naturalism. Praxis, to Marx, is both cognitive and
social. He had a more or less organized system of beliefs as to the nature of
reality and the nature of man. Marx was a materialist. He believed: (a) in the
primacy of matter, a term which denotes the totality of material objects and not
the substratum of all the changes which take place in the world; (b) that the
existence of mind without matter is a figment of the imagination; (c) the rule of
the laws of nature; and (d) the independent existence of the external world. Yet,
while materialism constituted Marx's general frame of reference, Marxian
materialism rejects mechanistic materialism and evolves a novel anthropological
conception of nature.
In Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and The German Ideology, Marx
rejects as untenable the theory of knowledge of the British empiricists, the
French materialists and Feuerbach. These philosophers held (a) that man is a
product of circumstances and upbringing, (b) that the human mind is a passive
recipient of sensations, and (c) that perception is a mere effect produced in the
senses by external stimuli.
However, Marx points out that the causal theory of perception cannot explain the
simplest act of cognition, not to speak of its explaining the vast range of human
experience; nor can it account for the social change and evolution of man. He is
convinced that idealists, especially Hegel, are correct in emphasizing the
contribution and role of the 'subject' in the process of cognition; this
conviction finds expression in his First and Third Thesis on Feuerbach. He
recognizes that it is idealism that develops the "active side" of cognition,
although idealism does not know real "sensuous activity as such." Marx believes
that Hegel is wrong, however, when he conceives the mind as an autonomous activity
independent of and undetermined by its material and social environment, pointing
out that Hegel regards this environment as posited by the mind's own creativity.
By introducing the concept of "praxis" and giving it a new dimension, Marx first
of all tries to rehabilitate the world of sense and restores the "practical
sensuous" in knowledge. The human world has been created by men and women in the
course of their history, starting from an original nature, but this nature when
received by us has already been transformed by human practice and the efforts of
men, through tools, language, concepts and signs. The enormous scope of praxis in
human creation can be perceived by all with eyes to see, for human labor
encompasses landscapes, cities, objects of common use and even artistic creations.
The sensuous leads us to the concept of praxis and this concept, in turn, upholds
the richness of the sensuous.
Praxis can be studied at different levels: as the base or foundation, i.e., as
productive forces, techniques, organization of labor; as structures, i.e., as
institutions and ideologies. Lefebvre studies praxis under another schema, namely,
the repetitive, the innovating and, between these two extremes, the mimetic. In
18th Brumaire. Marx refers to historical acts which imitate the past and borrow
their customs, gestures and words from famous models. This following of models is
mimetic praxis; occasionally it may create without knowing how or why, but more
often it imitates without creating. In repetitive praxis, the same gestures, the
same acts are performed again and again within determined circles. In innovating
or inventive praxis, activity is directed both toward knowledge and culture, or
ideology, and toward the field of politics. Political action condenses all partial
changes in a total phenomenon; when this happens we have what is called
"revolution." Revolution embraces society as a whole and transforms the mode of
production, property relations, ideas and institutions, in short, the entire way
of life. We might add that revolutionary praxis introduces intelligibility into
social relations. Lefebvre says,
Thanks to it, thought and feeling are once again brought into accord with the
productive forces (the base), social forms into accord with their contents. Here,
again, we encounter the fundamental idea of going beyond a given historical stage,
of progressing to a higher stage. It creates intelligibility as living reason in
the heads of men and as rationality in social relations.
MARX'S CONCEPT OF NATURE
Marx, the journalist, historian, social scientist, economist and knight of class-
struggle, is recognized today as one of the foremost thinkers to have made their
impact on history. But Marx, the philosopher, is anathema even today in academic
circles. Though he was a blunt-spoken philosopher and did not elaborate a
systematic philosophy in the manner of Hegel, that does not suffice to explain why
he is not recognized as having had a definite conception of nature, man and
society. Of late, the central importance of Marx's concept of nature in the
formulation of historical materialism is gradually receiving more attention.
Traditionally the tendency has been to counterpose an abstract concept of man with
an abstract concept of nature. Marxism cuts across this tendency and shows how the
development of industry and science mediates between historical man and external
nature. This mediation may result either in their eventual reconciliation or in
their mutual destruction. Marx's concept of nature has to be understood in its
socio-historical character. He considers nature to be "the primary source of all
instruments and objects of labor," seeing nature from the beginning in relation to
human activity. Every statement about nature, whether of a speculative,
epistemological or scientific kind, according to Marx, already presupposes social
practice, that is, the ensemble of man's technologico-economic modes of
appropriation.
One is inclined to observe that the sensuous world and finite men in their social
milieu are the only digits taken into account by Marx. There exist for him only
"man and his labor on the one side, nature and its materials on the other."
On the basis of the objective logic of the human work-situation, however, Marx
attempts to comprehend the other areas of life as well. "Technology discloses
man's mode of dealing with nature, the process of production by which he sustains
his life, and thereby also lays bare the mode of formation of his social
relations, and of the mental conceptions that flow from them."
Nature interested Marx mainly as a constituent element of human practice. This is
his position in the 1844 Manuscripts. "Nature, taken abstractly, for itself,
rigidly separated from man, is nothing for man." Nature in itself, in its pristine
purity and unworked is economically valueless; it has a purely potential value
which awaits its realization. In Grundisse, Marx writes the material of nature
alone insofar as no human labor is embodied in it, insofar as it is mere material
and exists independently of human labor, has no value, since value only embodied
labor . . . ."
Passages in The Holy Family reveal that Marx was conducting a battle on three
fronts. He criticizes Spinoza's concept of substance, that is, that nature exists
"in itself" without human intervention or mediation. He criticizes also Fichte's
Self-consciousness, that is, the concept of the `Subject' with capital `S', and he
criticizes the ascription of independence to consciousness and its functions in
relation to nature. Marx emphasizes that the mediating subject is not simply
"Spirit," but man as a productive force. Finally, he points out that the Hegelian
Absolute, while uniting substance and subject, has not been concretely and
historically established but only "metaphysically travestied." Marx writes:
In Hegel there are three elements, Spinoza's substance, Fichte's Self-
consciousness and the necessarily contradictory Hegelian unity of both, the
Absolute Spirit. The first element is metaphysically travestied nature severed
from man; the second is the metaphysically travestied spirit severed from nature;
the third is the metaphysically travestied unity of real man and the real human
race.
Marx's emphasis in such passages is that Nature cannot be separated from man, that
man and the accomplishments of his spirit cannot be separated from nature, and
that even man's capacity for thought and reasoning is a product of nature and
history. True, Marx accepts that the sensuous world, nature, is not "a thing given
direct from all eternity" and remaining ever the same. It is the product of
industry and the state of society. At the same time, however, he accepts that this
society-mediated world is a "natural world," historically anterior to all human
societies. Marx does not concede the point that because of "social mediation" the
priority of external nature is assailed and the laws of nature cease to be
objective.
Two points emerge from Marx's concept of nature. First, material reality is from
the beginning socially mediated. Second, matter as such is an abstraction and is
present only in definite modes of existence. Marx would not pose abstractly the
question of a pre-human and pre-social existence of nature, for each presupposes a
definite stage of the theoretical and practical appropriation of nature. He
admitted no absolute division between nature and society and precisely because of
this did not accept any fundamental methodological distinction between the natural
and historical sciences. He wrote in The German Ideology:
We know only a single science, the science of history. History can be contemplated
from two sides, it can be divided into the history of nature and the history of
mankind. However, the two sides are not to be divided off; as long as men exist
the history of nature and the history of men are mutually conditioned.
In criticizing Bruno Bauer, Marx said, nature and history are "not two separate
`things'." Men always have before them a historical nature and a natural history."
The novelty of Marx's view is that, on the one hand, he does not accept the
feasibility of an "intellectual history" investigating a purely immanent
succession of ideas. On the other hand, he rejects the concept of nature,
historically unmodified, which is supposed to exist as an "object" of natural-
scientific knowledge. According to him, the historical practice of men, their
activity, is the increasingly effective connecting link between the two apparently
separate areas of reality. The 1844 Manuscripts envisage, as a result of the
reconciliation of nature and history through practice under Communism, a fusion of
natural science and historical science, that is, the science of man. "Natural
science will one day incorporate the science of man, just as the science of man
will incorporate natural science; there will be a single science."
Marx did not deny that matter has its own laws and its own movement. What he
sought to emphasize is the truth that matter's laws of motion can only be
recognized and suitably applied by men through the agency of mediating practice.
The laws of nature exist independently of, and outside, the consciousness and will
of men. Man, Marx holds, can only become certain of their operation through the
forms provided by their labor processes. While, in a sense, the laws of nature are
thus "independent," they are also socially determined. Marx, therefore, writes to
Kugelmann: "It is absolutely impossible to transcend the laws of nature. What can
change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these
laws express themselves." Nature cannot be wished away; its power cannot be broken
entirely; but it can be ruled in accordance with its own laws.
Though society also faces the same laws of nature, its socio-historical structure
determines the manner in which men are subjected to these laws, their mode and
field of application, and the degree and extent to which they can be understood
and made socially useful.
PRAXIS AND NATURE: THE MODE OF REFLECTION
Does knowledge consist exclusively of the passive imitation of objective
structures; can it be conceived in the manner of mirror-reflection? Marx would say
that `nature' is a human world and `man' an active, dynamic, tool-making agent. In
the course of history man's organized intervention into natural processes becomes
more comprehensive, with the consequence that nature appears to be made rather
than given. Marx would not, therefore, subscribe to the `passive-imitation theory'
of knowledge, though there are writers who want to emphasize that he adhered to a
`reflection theory' of knowledge.
But can one speak at all of a `theory of knowledge' in Marx? For him, the
culmination of epistemology is the philosophy of world history. Traditionally, the
process of knowledge is described as a relation between the `subject' and the
`object' which is, as it were, eternally fixed. Classical German Philosophy,
however, had arrived at the theory of the `unity of theory and practice', and this
was accepted by Marx. Therefore, Marx believed that theoretical reflections should
correspond to the different forms of human praxis, that is, his struggle with
nature. Since the subject and object of knowledge are inseparable, he argued, the
cognitive consciousness is a form of social consciousness; it should not, then, be
viewed in isolation from psychology and human history. The cultivation of the five
senses is also the work of all previous history.
Marx developed a kind of genealogy of conceptual thought, the essence of which is
that consciousness is not a fixed datum but springs from history and is subject to
historical change. He wrote:
For the doctrinaire professor man's relation to nature is from the beginning not
practical, i.e., based on action, but theoretical. Man stands in relation with the
objects of the external world as the means to satisfy his needs. But men do not
begin by standing `in this theoretical relation with the objects of the external
world'. Like all animals they begin by eating, drinking, etc., i.e., they do not
stand in any relation, but are engaged in activity, appropriate certain objects of
the external world by means of their actions, and in this way satisfy their needs
(i.e., they begin with production). As a result of the repetition of this process
it is imprinted in their minds that objects are capable of "satisfying" the
`needs' of men. Men and animals also learn to distinguish `theoretically' the
external objects which serve to satisfy their needs from all other objects. At a
certain level of later development, with the growth and multiplication of men's
needs and the types of action required to satisfy these needs, they gave names to
whole classes of these objects, already distinguished from other objects on the
basis of experience. That was a necessary process, since in the process of
production, i.e., the process of appropriation of objects, men are in a continuous
working relationship with each other and with individual objects, and also
immediately become involved in conflict with other men over these objects. Yet
this denomination is only the conceptual expression of something which repeated
action has converted into experience, namely, that fact that for men, who already
live in certain social bounds (this assumption follows necessarily from the
existence of language), certain external objects serve to satisfy their needs.
Marx's emphasis here is that man's relation to nature is neither an abstractly
fixed datum, nor initially theoretical and reflective, but always practical and
transforming. Production comes with sensuous needs and all those human functions
which transcend the immediacy of the given develop with production. Nature appears
at first to be a chaotic mass of materials. From repeated intercourse with nature,
common to men and animals alike, there emerges an initial classification of
natural objects according as they produce pleasure or pain. The theoretical
achievement at this level is undoubtedly elementary. True, structures are
established and objects with pleasurable associations are isolated from others.
But assignment of names to different objects with a view to exercising control
over them corresponds to the economically more advanced, and hence more organized,
human group and the contradictions emerging in it. Despite his materialism Marx
did not see in "concepts" naively realistic impressions of the objects themselves,
but reflections of the historically mediated relations of men to those objects.
From the above, it follows that a formal analysis of consciousness or cognition,
or knowledge about knowledge, isolated from problems of fact and content is not
possible. Also, the problem of knowledge, if it truly exists by itself, cannot be
separated from a whole ensemble of more or less well-defined historical
conditions. There cannot be any problem of knowledge until the concrete, practical
functions of knowledge have been exercised. This exercise does not occur by chance
or in itself, but in the situation which gives it its form.
One is inclined to observe, after Marx, that practice has already accomplished the
mediation of subject and object; only later does it become the theme of
reflection. Marx was a `realist' inasmuch as he considered that any productive
activity presupposed "natural material" existing independently of men. He was at
the same time not a `naive realist', in that for him, men did not persist in the
contemplation of the immediate but continuously transformed it within the
framework of nature's laws. Praxis or labor destroys things as immediate, but
restores them as mediate; filtered through human practice, a thing-in-itself
becomes a thing-for-us.
It may be noticed that Marx did not accept the rigid dualism of the
epistemological position which had dominated modern European thought since
Descartes. German philosophy, no doubt, tried to overcome this dualism, but only
on a speculative basis. Marx did the same on a materialist basis. In the 1844
Manuscripts Marx wrote:
It is only in the social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism
and materialism, activity and passivity, cease to be antinomies and thus cease to
exist as such antinomies. The resolution of theoretical contradictions is possible
only through practical means, only through the practical energy of man.
In Marx's materialism nature and society are mutually mediated within nature,
i.e., reality as a whole. The social subject, through which all objectivity is
filtered, is only a space-time-determined component of this objectivity, and it is
social practice that unites the moments of knowledge and mediates the transition
from one to the other.
The theory of knowledge as reflection where consciousness and its object are
placed in opposition to each other cannot, therefore, be ascribed to Marx. By
accepting the constitutive role of praxis for the object, Marx rejected the
aforementioned theory. The objective world is no more in itself to be reflected,
it is largely a social-historical product. Alfred Schmidt, therefore, is correct
in saying:
Consciousness always enters as an active spirit into the reality reproduced by it.
It is the task of knowledge not to capitulate before reality, which stands around
men like a stone wall. Knowledge by revivifying the human historical processes
which have been submerged in the established facts, proves that reality is
produced by men and hence can be changed by them; practice, as the most important
concept of knowledge, changes into the concept of political action.
In summary: Marx, it seems, understood the development of man's conceptual
apparatus as an effort aimed at a continually more exact reproduction of a
humanized external world which has its own objective laws. According to him, human
cognition, though incapable of absolutely and finally mastering its object,
approaches it in a constant and progressive evolution. Human cognition, moreover,
reproduces ever more faithfully (and this is in the ideal order) the structures
and patterns of the external world which are themselves outside human thought. For
Marx, knowledge is a social construction and the categories are constructional
tools.
Calcutta, India
CHAPTER IX
NATURE AND FREEDOM
KALIDAS BHATTACHARYYA
NATURE VS. FREEDOM
The Notion of Nature
The term `Nature' stands for the totality of contents that are natural. By
`natural' is meant whatever is in space and/or time and is causally determined by
some or all other such spatial-temporal contents. Of natural contents, the
physical are in time and space, whereas the mental are in time only. Whenever some
mental contents appear to be also in space, as for example in the case of images,
either this is due to a misreading of the corresponding introspection or the space
in question, never able to be pinpointed as statically there, is only a function
of time. Mere space and time, however, are not sufficient criteria for designating
something as natural. Primarily, whatever is natural is understood by that very
fact to be real also. Illusory contents, though spatial and temporal, are not
normally understood to belong to Nature; their space, if not their time also,1 is
often held to be illusory. At least in our understanding, the reality of the
natural content is its causal determination by other such contents. True, these
other contents too must be real in their turn, but that reality, again, has to be
understood in the same way. As everyone knows, questions about the causal
determination of Nature as such would all be illegitimate for one who is wholly
immersed in it; ex hypothesi a first cause, if any, would be beyond Nature. That
there is causal determination in2 Nature implies, if this not be stating the same
thing over again, that every natural content is believed to be derivable,
inductively or deductively, from its determinants.
One might ask further concerning the status of a class of phenomena which, though
accreditedly "natural," are not yet as determinate, that is, as precisely
foreseeable as are the movements of gross matter, namely, what is the status of
the behaviors of living creatures and, especially, human actions which are said to
be self-consciously free. Does not the picture get very complicated when we are
told that infra-atomic material behaviors are indeterminate throughout? Are all
these behaviors to be excluded from Nature?
We contend that actions which are specifically human and said to be free are in an
important sense outside Nature, but that the other two classes of phenomena are
still natural. Behaviors of living creatures, including those of man insofar as he
is living, may not be as determinate as the behaviors of gross matter, but that
does not disqualify them for all causal determination. Life phenomena may not be
as mechanical as movements of gross matter, but neither are they, like human
actions, self-consciously free. They are not self-conscious at all, and hence not
free like human actions. Similarly the indeterminacy of infra-atomic behaviors
falls short of freedom.
Actions which are self-consciously free begin with resisting Nature.3 We shall see
later in what precise sense this is so. There is no question of such resistance,
however, on the part of life-behaviors. The word `life' is used here in a wide
sense covering those mental phenomena which are not self-conscious, that is,
conscious of transcending or going against Nature, resisting its pressure,
howsoever slightly. In other words, 'life' includes all mechanical bodily and
mental behaviors.
If life-behaviors that are not free are nonetheless called indeterminate, this is
because they are not always, and in every respect, as determinate as movements of
dead masses of matter. Given certain conditions, how such matter will behave can
be calculated beforehand with all precision and in every detail. It is not so with
life-behavior and one might ask why dead physical movements4 alone should be
called determinate and held in such exaggerated esteem that any movement falling
even a little short of it risks flat non-recognition? Life-behaviors are still
determinate. First, as manifest, they are dead physicals through and through,
subject to all the laws of physical determination. Secondly and more to our
purpose, there is at least a pervasive systematic correlation between living
behaviors in one series and avowedly physical movements in another series, so that
if there is a relation of determination among the items of the second series one
may reasonably postulate some such determination in the first series as well,
though that determination is weaker inasmuch as it is not directly tractable. In
fact, we instinctively depend upon such postulation in our day-to-day dealings
with living behaviors and self-consciously use it when we study them. It is at the
basis of all logic of probability and is not very different from normal inductive
procedures.
The Notion of Freedom
We have just seen that of the three classes of behaviors which appear to be
indeterminate lifebehaviors are not really so. In spite of all appearance to the
contrary they are determinate, though in a way different from movements of dead
physical masses. We have also claimed that human actions which are self-
consciously free are, so far, really exempt from causal determination and in that
respect outside Nature. This claim will be substantiated in the present section.
The exact character of the indeterminacy of infra-atomic physical behaviors will
be taken up in the next section.
Human actions differ considerably from both life-behaviors and gross physical
movements. Intrinsically, they are unforeseeable and beyond statistical
expectation. Though man often behaves predictably, most of these predictable
behaviors are not characteristically human. Being a living creature man must
behave to a considerable degree like other living creatures, whether in order to
care for his sheer biological needs or under mechanical social pressures which for
most men are little more than herd-instinct. Where, at a higher and distinctively
human level he appears to behave mechanically, this is because once having freely
chosen to act according to some norm he forms a habit of acting that way. These
are determinate behaviors, but what is characteristically human is his self-
conscious free acts.
We add--and this is central--that with regard to one's mechanical behavior there
is no way of knowing that our calculated expectations of what one will do under
given conditions will not be betrayed. This is no empty possibility and indeed we
are often betrayed in this manner. True, once this happens it can always be shown
that what one did was after all determined by a more subtle (natural) phenomenon
that escaped our notice when we made the calculations. Nevertheless, the obstinate
counter-possibility continues, now pushed back a little by saying that he might
not have succumbed to that antecedent determinant.
This `might not have' is no empty possibility. In the case of behaviors which are
sheerly physical and may also be living we never speak of such contingency except
metaphorically. In the case of man, however, we not only speak of it, and at times
seriously, but the possibility of not succumbing is abundantly actualized in the
explicit form of non-attachment. This `non-attachment' is self-conscious
withdrawal from a particular desire or aversion which is otherwise compelling. Man
qua man often consciously refuses to succumb to external or internal pressure,
whether or not he succumbs immediately afterwards to another such pressure. By
practice he may learn in this way to resist succumbing to a large number of such
pressures, if not ultimately to all of them. Refusal to succumb to a pressure may
not be causally determined by attachment to another pressure; it may well be only
conscious refusal.
Admittedly, it is difficult to understand how one can withstand causal
determination. How can one defy laws of matter and life? Our reply is (i) that
insofar as man is a physical and living thing he is strictly subject to these
laws, but (ii) that he is more than this and insofar as he is more he is above
causal determination. Having a living body with a mechanical mind, every man, qua
bodily and mechanically mental, is subject to the laws of matter and life. Thus
far he is like any animal of lower origin and there is no question of resisting
causal determination. But man claims and feels that he is more; it is precisely
here that his distinctive humanity lies. This something more is his self-conscious
freedom.5 Initially it was evident in a negative form as non-attachment.
Positively and at a more reflective level it is manifest as a drive toward
something opposed to Nature or as just a drive in the opposite direction, in which
case its negativity and positivity may be said to alternate.
Non-attachment--better, detachment--is not a `natural' phenomenon which could be
treated successfully in empirical psychology. It is not to be classed with other
mechanical mental behaviors as though, while not yet accounted for on a
naturalistic line, it is yet believed to be manageable in that manner. Rather, it
constitutes the limit of all naturalistic treatment, a gap in the mechanistic
account of mind, much as are individual idiosyncrasies in etiology. Individual
idiosyncrasies can no doubt be managed to an extent by statistical computation,
but subtler idiosyncrasies crop up afresh every time. Similarly here, however much
and in whatever line a mechanistic account is sought for this detachment, e.g., as
being statistically correlated to such and such circumstances or within such and
such limits, fresh detachment appears every time at the frontier.
One becomes fully conscious of this detachment only when it has the substantial
strength to resist a considerable quantum of natural pressure. Short of that it
also enters one's consciousness, however imperfectly, though in speaking it one
may exaggerate. Such exaggeration is so common that mechanical mental behavior
which happened only as a natural effect tends to be spoken of in terms of `I did
it', as though even here the `I' is standing detached. In such cases the `I did'
is clearly a misstatement of the actual state of affairs and due entirely to the
simple and of itself innocuous fact that an unreflective I-feeling accompanies
every psychic behavior mechanically mental or otherwise. In fact, nothing could be
psychic6 if it were not accompanied by some I-consciousness; what accompanies the
mechanical mental is only a simple I-feeling. Detachment proper begins at a higher
level, though it may have its own sub-levels of clarity. To the lowest of such
sub-levels belong actions which involve choice from among different causes or
motives, instinctive choice being the lowest. To another, much higher up, belongs
the choice not to submit to any such cause. When one chooses among different
motives all but the chosen one must have been resisted. This resistance to one
motive, followed by submission to another, could be detected through retrospection
by the agent himself. At higher levels, however, one is fully conscious of
resistance, that is, detachment from the beginning, and not only in retrospect.
To be once in conscious possession of detachment, however, does not mean that
there will be no relapse or subsequent animal-like submission to Nature. People do
often relapse in that way, but often, too, in the spirit of detachment they reason
to the motive or pressure to which they appear to submit. This enables them to act
freely upon the motive. It often happens, of course, that the whole reasoning is
but a post facto rationalization of what has really been a case of blatant
submission. The minimum that freedom requires is non-submission that is
detachment.
To continue in detachment does not mean that one has ceased to act. Detachment is
only the negative aspect of freedom, which is exercised positively in three ways.
First, in full consciousness one may tend toward a trans-natural ideal which, as
distinguished from the natural mental, may be called `spiritual'. Secondly, it may
be that the whole thing is just the sheer drive and not directed toward any
definite ideal. This is a sort of dallying with negation itself; it is a
perpetual, though contentless, spiritual life. Thirdly, with full consciousness of
detachment one may yet return to Nature, this time not to submit to it in the
least, but to lord it over,7 or act up to it. More on these three positive forms
later.
Detachment, we have said above, is the negative aspect of freedom that is trans-
natural. Strictly speaking, it is much less than that. It is just negation, a
vacuum pure and simple, a hole in Nature itself; it is a negation that is still
`natural'. As such, naturalistic psychology may treat it as a subject-matter in
its own domain of inquiry, though it must treat it throughout as negation. The
moment, one understands it as something positive it has passed out of Nature. The
erstwhile `natural' negation is then found face to face with trans-natural freedom
which for so long had been peering through the `hole'. Detachment is really the
point where Nature and the trans-natural meet. Naturalistic psychology has gone on
describing and even accounting for the subtleties of this detachment, believing
all the while that it is tackling `freedom' What it has really done is either to
confuse at every step the natural with the trans-natural or to describe and
explain different folds of a type of negation, the type being determined by its
place vis-a-vis the other positive `naturals' with which it has been dealing.
Infra-atomic Behaviors Indeterminate and Yet Natural
In the last two sections we have examined two kinds of behaviors, those of living
creatures qua living and of man qua man. We have shown that the former, though
apparently indeterminate, are not really so; they are, therefore, `natural'. In
contrast, the other kind of behaviors, those viz. of man qua man and which alone
have the right to be called `act' are free in the sense of being intrinsically
capable of opposing Nature. They are, therefore, outside Nature; though as we have
seen, they may yet operate as within that very Nature, freely acting up to it or
even dominating it.
Distinct from both these kinds of behavior are those in the infra-atomic world
which are indeterminate and yet physical through and through, in their case there
being no question of life, consciousness or self-consciousness. Infra-atomic
indeterminacy is neither freedom nor organic-mental.
As such there could be only three alternative ways of tackling it.
a. The indeterminacy in question may be understood as only apparent, provisional
or privative. We may go on seeking the missing factor that could make it
determinate under the over-all idea that all that is `natural' is determinate.
b. The second way would be to hold that the behaviors of infra-atomic particles
are, in the last analysis, really indeterminate. This would be based, not only on
the fact that micro-physicists have failed to find determinacy here in spite of
their best efforts, but also on a logical impossibility, viz., in this field the
measurer inevitably becomes entangled in the measurement. As these infra-atomic
particles, with all they involve in this field, constitute the basic reality of
Nature, we have to hold further that all macro behaviors must be interpreted in
their terms, that is, in the language of the Quantum Theory as average behaviors
of masses of those particles. Or, if the particles themselves are reduced to
indeterminate behaviors, our procedure would be to take the macro behaviors as
average masses of the basic indeterminate behaviors. Whichever way we proceed, the
whole idea is that as infra-atomic behaviors alone are genuine and original, all
determinate macro behaviors have, at least at the first step of deduction, to be
derived from them through calculations of probability. Once, however, the first-
level macro behaviors are so derived, the more gross behaviors may be calculated
from them through ordinary classical mathematics.
c. The third alternative would be to proceed in just the opposite manner, taking
macro determinacy as ontologically basic and understanding micro indeterminacy
somehow in its terms, except that it be not understood only as privation.
Of these three alternatives the first can be discounted immediately. Not only has
no missing factor that could supply determinacy yet been found, we are told that
it cannot be found as that would involve the logical impossibility spoken of
above, viz., the measurer becomes entangled in measurement.
The second alternative is indeed the order of the day. But there is a snag. Infra-
atomic indeterminacy could be taken as original and absolute if only it were of
the same nature as the freedom we find in human action. Only then could we start
from it and understand other behaviors in its terms. We have already seen,
however, that this is not so. It could also be an original starting point if, as
is the current view of many scientists, the subject matter of theoretical physics
were not the actual world we live in but only the concept `world' which is said to
be all mathematics while the solid items of our world are only terminal symbols as
it were. As long, however, as we are talking of our actual concrete world we must
discount the possibility of starting from any physical indeterminacy and deriving
the concrete world through any manner of calculation. Over-intellectualistic
science, concerned solely with abstract models and logical calculation, misses all
experimental touch with the concrete world. Presupposing experience, it neither
faces it squarely nor explores the delicate empirical relations. Naively content
with broad accepted empirical features, it boasts of the empirical success of its
models and calculations, not knowing that Nature responds only when their feats
are congenial. When Nature flouts them they turn to other models and calculations,
treating her all the while as a slave rather than as a cooperating friend. This is
why in logic there is so much difficulty and confusion regarding induction. The
entire Nature could be formally modelized if only the model contained `holes',
corresponding to perception and induction, through which solid, concrete Nature
could at least peer. The logic of probability is only a step in that line, but it
is grossly inadequate because all the types of 'holes' have not been taken into
account.
Thus, we are left with the third alternative stated above, viz., to take macro
determinacy as the exemplar and understand micro indeterminacy in its language. If
permissible, it would be treated as lacking determination till now. Failing that,
it would be treated as a merely logical presupposition, seeing that, although
presupposed, it cannot be spoken of except as presupposed and therefore as
manageable by itself. In this it differs from ontological presuppositions which,
though epistemologically presupposed, need not be spoken of as presupposed. Infra-
atomic indeterminacy is, therefore, not ontologically original; it is no
distinctive being from which determinacy could be entirely derived. It recalls a
similar problem in contemporary philosophy, viz., that of the subsistent vs. the
existent. If subsistents must be presupposed for an existent, this is only an
epistemological necessity, which in no way implies that the subsistent is an
ontological prius. The subsistent cannot be defined except as what is presupposed
in such and such manner by the existent, and the manner, too, is understood to
obtain in the existent world. It is the same with micro-indeterminism vs.
macrodeterminism.
Nature as Spatial-temporal and Causally Determined
Thus far, we have been considering causal determination as a necessary mark of
Nature. As for its spatial and temporal character, this has never been seriously
challenged except in seeking clarification of the notions of space and time
involved. Sometimes the common sense notions of space and time have been replaced
by those which, we are told, are scientific. That is, the replacement is in the
interest of theoretical physics, which has been constituted as the paradigm of
science and which, as already said, has sought to replace our actual world by the
concept `world' of mathematics. With that world, however, we are not concerned.
Hence, our definition of Nature as the totality of contents that are in space
and/or time and are causally determined stands. When empiricists insist that the
real must be empirical, that is, perceivable or observable, what they mean is that
the real must be `natural', that it must not go beyond Nature. In effect, then,
they define 'natural' as what is perceivable. If by that they mean that the
natural is that which is, was or will be perceived psychologically, this would be
an obviously inadequate definition. Science with its sole concern for Nature
speaks of many things which are psychologically unperceivable, and modern
empiricists are conscious of that. They understand by 'perceivable' what can be
logically worked out of perceived data; Nature, according to them, consists as
much of such logical constructions as of the perceived data.
Our definition of Nature as spatial-temporal and causally determined does not
differ from this. It states the same thing but attempts to clarify the language,
for all logical passage from given perceptual data is possible only through space,
time and causal determination, in whatever language these three are understood. We
add that the logical character of the perceptual data, too, is that they are in
space and/or time and causally determined. Further, abstract logico-mathematical
determination (derivability) is not as divorced from these three as is commonly
supposed. All depends on how the three are sought to be understood: whether as
they obtain in our concrete actual world or as they are conceptualized in the
interest of the concept `world'. Even in the latter case it depends on how the
concept is formed: whether as empirically abstracted from the concrete actual
world or as a pre-constructed model with which to tackle the actual world. We have
deliberately kept out of account all talks of preconstructed models as we are not
quite sure of their locus standi.
There is still another point before passing to the next section. Are chance
phenomena to be included in Nature or not? All depends on whether they contradict,
that is, resist determination or not. As a matter of procedure, they are not taken
as contradicting determination and normally an attempt is made to explain every
chance phenomenon in terms of causal determination. It is only when such
explanation fails, in spite of all honest attempt, that we leave it as being thus
far intractable.
Neither of the contingencies met with in human freedom and infra-atomic
indeterminacy obtains. If nevertheless we tackle it with the logic of probability,
this is because that is the only logic at our disposal for making anything out of
chance phenomena. The logic of probability can be used in treating any phenomenon,
determined or chanced, but that does not make it the only indispensable logic for
all cases. It is doubtful, too, that this logic is sui generis, entirely
independent, even at its base, on the normal logic of complete determination.
FREEDOM OF MAN
Every Man's Own Nature
Three quarters of man's being is immersed in Nature and is thus far subject to
causal determination. He has a physical body which, apart from life, is a dead
mass or matter, of which every piece, like the total mass, behaves in the same
manner as any piece of matter. This is abundantly evident when a man dies and his
body is left behind, cold and lifeless. As long, however, as he is living, this
mass, without contradicting the way in which it would behave in a dead physical
condition, behaves overwhelmingly as a living body. None of the purely physical
movements and tendencies are suppressed, but the entire physical body is now in a
wider field of activity and purely physical tendencies are newly oriented. Parts
of the dead mass or body, when left to themselves, behave in relation to one
another and to outside matter exactly as does any piece of dead matter. As
belonging to the body, however, they behave additionally in a new way, which
movements are called living. There is no paradox here. In the purely physical
field, too, molecular and translatory movements are distinguished.
Further, there is no life without some form of consciousness. This is evident in
the behaviors of most of the common species of living beings. If there be any
doubt regarding the lowest levels of life, neither is there any assurance that
they do not have consciousness. All animal behaviors, including those of man, can
indeed be interpreted in purely physiological, or even in simply physical, terms.
This is not so of freedom recognized as freedom, and it may well be that this is
excluded because it is eminently conscious. Nevertheless, quite many of the lower
forms of behavior, too, are conscious, though not eminently so. At least many of
our human behaviors which are not free are conscious to some degree, and,
sophisticated though we are, we commonly believe that higher animals, too, are
conscious of many of their behaviors. Furthermore, untutored common sense takes
all living behaviors as conscious in that way. Hence, there is no logical
impossibility for all living behaviors to be conscious, howsoever imperfect may be
that consciousness.
It is true that if all living behaviors, except of course those which are free,
could be interpreted in purely physiological or physical terms, logical parsimony
would require that they should not be taken as conscious. But the law of
parsimony, one must not forget, is valid only where one is concerned with a
theory, not with what are given as facts. In our present case, however, it is
given to untutored common sense that all living behaviors are conscious. Whatever
is thus given and not contradicted by reason must be accepted, for that is
precisely what is meant by `datum'.
That all living behaviors of man and lower species are conscious does not,
however, mean that they are held as objects by some non-objective consciousness
which man and these species possess or that they are consciously generated as in
voluntary action. That happens only when consciousness is explicit. All that we
claim here is that some form of consciousness accompanies these behaviors, which
consciousness is of different degrees of explicitness in the various types of
living behaviors.
Only when consciousness has the form of freedom does it show itself explicitly,
only then is it felt as something other than those living behaviors. In all other
cases it merely accompanies them without distinguishing itself; it accompanies
them so closely, indeed, that the behaviors themselves appear to be conscious.
This feeling, too, one must remember, is never8 different from the consciousness
that is said to be felt. There is no consciousness that does not feel itself, and
if consciousness is of different degrees of explicitness, so, too, is the feeling.
If then every life-behavior is conscious, there is no great ontological difference
between what is called living body and mind, provided by `mind' is meant a unitary
system of mechanical or causally determined mental, i.e., conscious, behaviors.
Every such mental behavior is also a bodily9 behavior; and the more refined the
mental behavior, such as thought, imagination and will, the more hidden from view
is the corresponding bodily one. The bodily behavior should not be taken as a
cause of the mental, nor vice versa, for ontologically they are one and the same
and differ only inasmuch as they are considered from two different points of view.
There is some slight additional difference: while every mental behavior is
determined by some antecedent mental behavior in the same mind,10 a bodily
behavior is determined as much by antecedent bodily behavior in the same body as
in another body.
As they involve increasingly subtle bodily behaviors mental behaviors are higher
in the scale of refinement. At the lowest level there are the organic sensations,
always with somatic over-tones. In appropriate orders of refinement are the more
specific sensations, the higher probably involving unexplicit remainders, the
unconscious dispositions and traces of the lower, both bodily and mental. Why they
are progressively more specific probably depends upon the life-needs of the
translatory movements of the body, including the corresponding mental movements.
Mental behaviors above the level of sensation depend successively more upon the
unexplicit remainders or `traces', the most unexplicit of which are being required
for those mental behaviors said to depend upon thought.
Though `said to depend upon thought', they do not in fact so depend. When, for
example, perception, as distinguished fromsensation, is said to depend on thought,
definitely no thought is operative there in the way in which it operates at the
level of thinking. It is only said to operate there, because at that level
perception somehow involves the subtle dispositions and traces which at the higher
level make thinking possible. These dispositions and traces are required in two
different ways at the two levels. At the level of perception they get entangled,
tied or fused with given matters, which they refuse to do at the level of
thinking. Dispositions and traces maturing into thinking take up matters softly,
tackling them from outside as it were, whereas in perception they mature only so
far as they impregnate sense-matters.
Assuming that they are active, dispositions and traces, understood as mental, are
those behaviors of which we have not even the type of feeling we have of the
lowest bodily-mental movements spoken of above, though we cannot say we have no
feeling at all of them. With a little practice many can be felt indistinctly as
forces welling up from within, though never as what they might actually be or how
they might behave. Even some of the dispositions and traces which lie more deeply
hidden in our mind can be felt through greater practice, though only vicariously
and indistinctly, as when we somehow feel that the forms in which they are trying
to emerge in consciousness are false and yet not wholly cut off. If one can delve
so deeply into the so-called unconscious, we can well imagine that with continued
practice we could go still deeper.
The mental behaviors we have described so far are all mechanical that is, causally
determined. They range from organic sensations at the lowest, through more or less
distinctly felt traces, to mechanical thought at the highest, with each type
possessing distinctive affective tones distributed along a similar line. Thus far,
we have been treating the cognitive side of the mind. Correspondingly, there are
conative behaviors, all mechanical at the level of mind and distributed in the
same order, each with an appropriate affective tone. So far as the mechanical mind
is concerned, its affective side is always an overtone and never substantive. The
whole picture will alter, however, in the next section, when this entire mental
region, along with its corresponding system of bodily behaviors, is looked at from
the point of view of freedom.
The body of each man, as a unitary system of all his lifebehaviors, along with his
mechanical mind constitute his 'own nature'; henceforward, this will be called
human nature (with a small `n'). This is the field reserved for him not only in
which to live but also through which to communicate with the world outside and its
other similar natures. The communication is twofold, both receiving and
communicating. Through his own nature he collects information about Nature--
through body alone when the information is relatively simple and also through mind
when it is complicated. Equally, he reacts on Nature, changing and rearranging it
according to ideas that develop in the mind, this change or rearrangement of
Nature and the growth of ideas being mechanical till now. Since we have already
said that his mechanical mind and his so-called physical body are basically one
and the same thing, viz., his living body, we can say now that his nature is this
living body understood to be as much mechanically mental as physical. This living
body is the medium or means through which he is in twofold correspondence with
Nature.
The living body is not only the medium for all mechanical knowledge of Nature and
mechanical reaction on it, it is equally so for all knowledge and action in as
much as it is free. Free knowledge of Nature is knowing it as it truly is; free
action modifies it in the light of that knowledge. Indeed, the living body,
including mechanical mind, is in a way more important for freedom than for any
mechanical behavior, whether cognitive or conative. While every creature as
instinctively uses its body as a means for communicating with Nature as it uses
anything, for his free knowledge and action man uses his body not only consciously
but with an awareness that it alone is the primary means. Insofar as he uses it
self-consciously he can study and manipulate it, both for its own sake and as a
means for its assessment and improvement. Free man, in other words, is directly
concerned with his body; his freedom finds scope primarily and chiefly in his
body, which is his own nature, and only through this in outside Nature.
Thus, for free man the body that is consciously used as a means is no mere part of
Nature. To effect any change in outside Nature he has first to introduce an
appropriate change or new movement in this body which is his own nature.
Obviously, that movement is not entirely Nature's own; at some point it has
originated freely and literally out of nothing, and insofar seems to have violated
Nature's law. If he had no body, no such question of violation would arise. Yet
from another point of view, with all his body and freedom he cannot alter the laws
of Nature; being in the world, he has to move according to these laws of matter
and motion. How could he then perform that impossible feat of originating new
movement? The reply lies in the exact relation of man's own nature to Nature.
His own nature or body-mind complex is no mere part of Nature; itself a microcosm,
a tiny duplicate of the entire Nature, it constitutes a whole world of its own, a
Leibnitzian monad. Viewed that way, it is not a part of Nature, for no part can
possibly represent the whole; it is a full empire for each man, with all the
offices and rules of management that are found in Nature. In another way, too, it
is a part of that Nature. Varying the Leibnitzian conception to suit our purpose,
we may liken individual men's own natures to States that form a healthy
federation, and that federation itself to Nature as a whole. From the point of
view of strictly determined mechanical Nature each man's own nature, equally
determined in every detail, is only one part among others; only as a matter of
accident is it attached to a particular man. From another point of view, however,
viz., insofar as he is a free man, each man's nature is his. It is what he has
earned, as it were, or carved out of Nature in order that it may be managed by
him, though with all the help he can get from that Nature. It is what he has taken
over from Nature in order that it may be brought in line with his genuine freedom,
bettered and perfected. There lurks, indeed, a possibility always that he may
succumb, as unfortunately he often does, to Nature's determination and thus turn
his possession into an animal's den. Still worse, retaining some shadow of freedom
and consciously utilizing it, he may turn his empire into a veritable hell. This
is a possibility he faces.
Different Functions of Freedom
We have shown in the previous section that three quarters of man's being are
immersed in Nature and how, in this way, he behaves like any animal. The remaining
fourth quarter is his freedom. It is a `quarter' only from the point of view of
Nature; in itself, it constitutes an expansive field capable of engulfing the
whole of Nature. It can do this either by seeking to rearrange the details of
Nature in order that freedom might prevail or, not satisfied with mechanical
acquiescence, by trying to understand Nature through questions, challenges and
experiments, filtering through reason what Nature offers mechanically. Reason, as
will presently be shown, is a function of freedom.
Ordinarily, we talk of freedom only in the context of conation; we commonly hold
it to be freedom of will. Once it is remembered, however, that freedom is
primarily what resists natural determination there is no reason why it should not
also be cognitive and, in an important sense to be clarified later, affective, as
we find in art and religious love and devotion.
The type of freedom we discussed in the section The notion of freedom was freedom
of will. There we showed that a large part of our conative life is in the field of
Nature and determined through and through; nearly the whole of conations which are
usually called free can be shown to be determined by factors that could not be
detected by the person concerned. Nevertheless, we have insisted that actions
which are distinctively human always involve choice, which must start with some
form of detachment. Detachment, in its turn, is a form of resistance to Nature,
incipient or pronounced. This detachment is at the root of all morality: an action
is primarily moral precisely insofar as it resists some `natural' motive, personal
or even social. Among `natural' behaviors some may be better than others, and the
`natural' principle which determines this comparative goodness may legitimately be
called Good. Morality, however, is something different from Good; something other
than `natural' Good in our active, individual or social life is valued equally, if
not more. That `something other' is detachment, conscious disinterestedness, utter
unselfishness.
So far, however, we have characterized morality only negatively and, though some
mystics value this negation more than anything else,1 there is also a positive
side. In the section on The notion of freedom we saw that the positive aspect can
be understood in two ways. It can be understood as a trans-natural progressive
movement upward for an increasingly close communion with some distant ideal.
Alternatively, it can be seen as a movement downward to the world of Nature, with
full conscious detachment or unselfishness manipulating things proximately in the
interest of all individuals, among whom the agent is but one, but ultimately in
the interest of reason.
Reason is not exclusively a cognitive affair. Primarily it is the principle of
objectivity; when any mental affair is brought to that level of consciousness and
molded according to its requirements it is acceptable to all individual persons,
provided they also exercise reason to some extent. Though each mental behavior is
private to the individual to whom it belongs, when it is brought to the level of
reason, i.e., rationalized, it becomes acceptable or at least communicable to
others. Thus rationalized it is no less, and perhaps more, communicable than
perception. Communication is possible only at the two extreme levels of mentality.
At the lowest level, perception is immediately communicable because the object
perceived as over there is a common thing for all who perceive it. Higher mental
behaviors become increasingly private. They, too, get communicated, however, when
brought to the highest level where reason supervenes and takes them up. Such
objectification is possible because reason is a common property of all minds.12
Even perceptions could be communicated in that way, in which case, however,
rational communication would be only a clarification or secondhand confirmation of
the direct communicability or objectivity it possessed.
Though reason is a common property of all minds, this does not mean that all minds
possess similar reasons, for that would make mental behaviors incommunicable. They
would be similar without anyone knowing that they are so and, therefore, would
remain as private as before. Communication, and thereby objectification, is
impossible without some identity of contents. Perception, for example, can be
communicated only because there is outside an identical object to which all the
percipients might refer. Rationalization, too, can be understood as referring to a
perceivable object. The distance is so great, however, that the object, being
almost on the vanishing point, is of no tangible use. Reason, on the other hand,
has its own method of communication by means of which it objectifies in an
altogether different manner which is normally called `logic', but in special cases
may be logic's cousins. The object of this objectification is not only
nonperceptual experience but, if need be, perceptions also. Here, the
objectification of an experience means asserting its content as real.13 Dressed in
reason any mental process can be communicated in this new fashion. In this case,
the identity required by communication is the identity of reason itself, for there
can be no perceivable object here and all mental affairs are private.
Is not reason itself, however, a mental affair and as such private? It is, but it
is distinguished from other mental affairs by being at the upper limit of
mentality and hence, quite novel. A similar situation obtains at the lower limit,
for both limits are meeting places of the mental with an identity outside mind. At
the lower limit the outside identity is the object, called `percept', every
percept being as much mental perception as it is content outside mind. At the
upper limit it is reason that transcends mind. This outside reason is the identity
different from the similarity of different reasons of different minds. Whether
this identical reason has to be grasped or realized as being outside mind is
another question,14 quite as much as is whether the percept has to be grasped as
outside perception or as the thing which is said to be perceived.
This outside identical reason is not necessarily logic. It is logic only insofar
as mental behaviors are cognitive, seeking to present the world as it truly is. So
long, on the other hand, as mental behaviors are conative, i.e., concerned with
what we do, this outside reason, which shall henceforth be called Reason, tells us
what we ought to do. This cannot be established by logic, which tells us only what
is truly there, though this is not entirely independent of the ought-to-do, nor
vice versa. Ought-to-do is primarily a conative realization of Reason or a
bringing into being in the world of Nature of what I am as above the level of
mind, that is, as above individuality. It is the bringing into being on the level
of Nature of the identical I, super-ego or essential spirit, which is equally
present in all individual minds though not equally sensed by all as that which
must be so brought into being. In a way, then, even at this primary stage there is
some dependence on the cognition of what I truly am. This cognition is not yet
cognitive possession, however, but only a sort of sensing what I truly am from a
distance. Over and above this initial dependence of morality on cognition, there
is a different and more solid dependence. What I sense I truly am seeks to be made
real in the midst of concrete natural situations and to be given concrete shapes
commensurate with those situations. This requires that the situations be
correctly, i.e., rationally, cognized. Though in a different way, cognitive
reason, too, must depend on conative reason which is morality, for to know
anything properly we must cleanse our mind of all egocentricity and this is a
moral act.
Exactly how what I truly am is freely realized or concretized step by step into
shapes commensurate with different orders of `natural' situations--the so-called
logic of morality--has not often been studied systematically. The process is
similar to that in the cognitive field. Different stages of moral concretization
are likely to correspond to cognitive stages, from transnatural cum mental reason,
through different forms of traces and dispositions, to imagination, memory,
immediate awareness of absence, perception and serially to different forms of
sensation down to the organic. Normally, of course, the study of cognition, as of
conation, must begin, not from the top, but from the lowest which is readily at
hand. Slowly, the study moves upward and uncovers regarding each higher stage both
the way in which its activity is involved in the lower and how it behaves as
uninvolved. Even there, though, once we detect the trans-natural Reason as
freedom-in-itself and grasp it with any degree of conviction, we can begin anew
from the top and see how it operates freely at and through the lower stages.
Nonetheless, it must be recognized that we are faced with an almost insoluble
problem, whether we begin from the lowest in terms of the unfolding of freedom or
from the highest in terms of the stages of free self-concretizations. In either
case, we have not shown whether or how the natural mental and bodily behaviors as
such come out of that freedom. Nor have we shown whether man's own nature stands
there in its own right, faced only by freedom which, as negative resists it, and
as positive in the present cases is concretized, through stages, into forms which
look very much like those natural contents. In any case, such concretization after
resistance is not a form of succumbing, which would result rather in private
behaviors centering round individual egos. The concretization in question, quite
as much as the parallel cognitive movement, consists rather in freely constructing
behaviors through the use of those traces which were responsible for `natural'
behaviors, thus making the constructed behaviors look quite `natural' though
actually they are not so.
Whether and how far this account is tenable depends on two considerations: first,
whether and how far freedom, once grasped, can succumb to traces, seeing that once
freedom is attained the `natural' individual and, therefore, the traces he carries
have ceased to exist; and second, whether and how far there could be any such
traces for freedom to fall upon and become bound to, seeing that a child is not
born with such traces.
One possible reply to the first consideration is that since the freedom in
question is grasped by one who is still alive his mechanical mind and body, and
therefore the traces also, continue to exist as actively as before. This reply is
not satisfactory because one cannot grasp freedom till these traces are rendered
inactive. True, they are not rendered inactive all at once: the grasp of freedom
and the inactivization of traces progress together. Still this implies that with
the complete grasp of freedom there is no question of return to Nature. All
depends, however, on what is meant by `return' here: it is impossible to succumb
once again to Nature, but what prevents a free return?
A similar imperfect solution has sometimes been offered for the second
consideration above. It has been said that every child is born with traces
accumulated in his previous life. But if this is understood as an empirical,
naturalistic account, it is highly controversial. It is not that the two replies
are altogether nonsense,15 but that they do not solve the problem raised. They are
naturalistic attempts to solve problems which cannot be solved naturalistically,
for the relation between Nature and freedom is trans-natural.
From this point of view, modern phenomenologists fare better. They hold that
freedom in its negative aspect is conscious resistance to or withdrawal from
Nature, and in the process consciously getting installed in or recovering itself.
They call this `bracketing Nature'. At the same time they hold that in its
downward--or in their language `forward'--movement it "intends" that Nature
progressively or, as withdrawing, regressively--through all its a priori strands.
The two processes, negative withdrawal16 and positive intention, are in effect one
and the same, constituting two moments of one and the same process: insofar as X
is withdrawn from, it is "intended" phenomenologically. This is exactly what we
have meant by `free construction'. Phenomenologists hold in effect that man
constructs the pure strands of his own nature freely and, through them, of Nature
outside.
Even this phenomenological account is inadequate, however, for it fails to explain
how freedom could construct all the perceivable details either of one's own nature
or of Nature outside. Nature, whether with small `n' or capital `N', cannot be
constructed in such full detail except through free construction out of itself of
traces. This would be possible only if one could consciously withdraw even from
traces, and this could be done only if, even in `natural' life, one could be
conscious of such traces. In section one above, we have shown how that could be
done: whatever is consciously apprehended can be consciously withdrawn from, and
whatever can be consciously withdrawn from can be freely constructed.
Reason and Norms
Up to now, we have treated reason as the only tangible form of freedom, as much in
the practical as in the theoretical field. Reason is freedom because, in both
fields, it enables us to detach ourselves from various `natural' pressures whether
of physical nature and physiological needs, of instincts, emotions and passions
and even of mechanical social norms. These factors, which normally are `natural'
determinants, grow into pressure as soon as they act upon the living body,
including mind, that is, the mind-body complex. In so acting they, in effect,
cater to the `natural' needs of the individual ego by way of desire and aversion
or, in the theoretical field, by way of mistaking belief for knowledge. In both
the theoretical and the practical fields, Reason frees man from these `natural'
needs.
In the theoretical field physical and physiological pressures are epitomized in
the claim of perception to be the only reliable avenue of knowledge. Theoretical
reason frees us of this claim; by doubting and questioning perception it prohibits
one from accepting the perceptual verdict until it is rationalized. There is no
question of rejecting perception wholesale for, after all, we are creatures of
Nature. Perception must be accepted to the extent that it is tested by reason and
rejected to the extent that it is distorted by the blind use of freedom, viz.,
through its unconscious identification with egoistic instincts, emotions and
passions. Of themselves, instincts, emotions and passions are not unholy; they are
made so by our egoistic attachment to them quite as much as to other things of
Nature. There is, however, this difference: our attachment to these through our
own natures generates `traces' which facilitate further involvement, and so on
increasingly.
Similarly in the field of conation reason aims to free us from `natural' pressures
of various kinds. Instinctive and other biologically needed actions are not taken
as final but are questioned and tested by reason, as are actions prompted by
various emotions, passions and desires. As in the theoretical field, none of these
`natural' forces are intrinsically unholy, but are made so through our egoistic
attachment to them. Often, too, this attachment and the `traces' generated
therefrom work in a vicious circle continually to strengthen each other until
reason supervenes.
In both the theoretical and practical fields, Nature is to be accepted only
insofar as it stands the test of reason. In the theoretical field this testing is
by logical principles, while in the practical field it is by another set of
principles appropriate to that field; in both, however, the fundamental principle
is the same: detachment from the ego. This entails a sort of universalization,
translating `natural' pressures, through one's freedom, into forms that are
acceptable to all. As in the theoretical field the universalized forms are
progressively concrete theorems as they concern increasingly concrete situations,
so in the practical field they are progressively more concrete social norms.
Social norms themselves very often constitute a kind of pressure, but only when
one tends toward succumbing to them as to pressures from outside. This happens
even in the case of logical principles and theorems when, for example, a child
learns mathematics or in cases where the common person is overawed by Science.
Social norms, like different theorems, are to be understood as developing through
conscious rationalization of our behaviors in different sets of contexts.
Conscious rationalization, we have seen, is trans-natural Reason operating
appropriately in different, and increasingly concrete contexts. Such
rationalization is effected by wise men in the societies concerned; this seems to
happen unconsciously because of habits formed by those wise men or even by people
at large. A wholly naturalistic account of social norms or of logical principles
and theorems is not feasible here.17
In this light, neither logical nor social norms are pressures of any sort, except
insofar as, not having been traced to their rational origin, they are taken merely
as impositions. Initially, indeed, they often are imposed, but those which are
accepted gladly or as right are those which are those which are traceable or
believed to be traceable to Reason.
The above has been said from the phenomenological point of view. There is another
attitude, however, in which norms that are consciously understood as coming from
outside may yet be gladly accepted and even submitted to. Norms of conduct and
exegesis laid down in orthodox religions are accepted in this way by many in
faith. Faith is here the saving feature which softens the aggression of norms by
generating genuine respect for them and for their promulgators. Faith here is a
good enough substitute for the phenomenological experience of freedom, i.e.,
reason, in that it is as much distant from mechanical pressure as that experience
and yet is human throughout. This aspect will not be treated here.
What we have tried to show in this section is that, in our concrete life in the
midst of Nature, Reason that is freedom realizes itself in behaving according to
norms and that the norms themselves are traceable to it. Reason as such is trans-
natural, howsoever it operates as and through progressively concrete norms.
Although the norms themselves have always to be rationalized, this is not required
of Reason. It stands self-validated; logical principles need not be derived
logically. The minimum that is needed everywhere, and what in effect constitutes
the very life of rationalization, is the elimination of egocentricity, of which
another name is communicability. This is why even in perception it is immediately
accepted without any rational test so long as I am sure that it has been vitiated
by no personal equation. Even where I find that what I am now perceiving, whether
or not I have cleansed my mind of unholy egocentricity, is being perceived by
others present exactly as I am perceiving it, no rationalization is required, it
being presupposed that we are sure that nothing of physical Nature has
unauthorizedly intervened. Any demand for rationalization would appear forced in
both cases, especially if this were a mystic experience which one might have at
times in all clear conscience and with full knowledge that there is no vitiating
factor.
The same thing is true of conation. Where a norm according to which I act is
accepted unquestioningly by all in my society, there is no need rationally to
justify it, unless, of course, the entire social structure is questioned by some
other competing or wider social structure. Equally unchallenged by reason should
be whatever my `clean conscience' dictates, especially the rare mystic ordinances
that one's `holy' mind receives.
What we have said so far on freedom and norms in theoretical and practical fields
is true mutatis mutandis of freedom and norms in the aesthetic field and its
religious equivalent, viz., the field of faith, love and devotion.
Freedom and Nature Once Again
The entire mental life, beginning with sensuous perception and rising to
mechanical thought, belongs to Nature and constitutes one's own nature. Each
stage, as we have seen, can also be consciously experienced in the
phenomenological attitude, first as freedom intending it a priori in broad outline
and then more concretely, as that freedom intending the content. This is
accomplished through conscious or half-conscious manipulation of `traces'.
`Intention' means positing something out of itself and apprehending this as
posited rather than as already there in its own right, though not denying also
that they somehow coincide. This is what in epistemology is called `construction',
and in ethics `making a new situation' or `re-arrangement'. All this is but
another way of saying that when what is already there as `natural' is consciously
apprehended from within oneself, this consciousness is produced neither by it nor
is it mere consciousness, rather it is a forward-looking and self-generated mode
of that consciousness itself, in which the mode is not altogether divorced from
the `natural' content. If the mode were as natural as that content, even if of a
new order, the two would have to be taken in an angelic attitude as entitatively
different and yet coinciding.
Since consciousness18 and its modes, are had, not as `natural', but as free, there
are two self-sufficient alternatives. We could proceed in the way of free
consciousness and understand everything of the so-called Nature as its free mode.
We could equally proceed as absolute naturalists and understand both consciousness
itself and its modes as `natural', even if of a special type. The difficulty with
this form of naturalism, however, is that at some point one must recognize an
ambivalent character moving in Nature without being one of its permanent citizens.
Consciousness which doubts, questions, rearranges and rationalizes Nature is as
much a part of Nature as one which views it as a whole and seeks to manage it from
that total point of view. This strange character, which moves in Nature but must
be recognized as free, has been dealt with in previous sections only in the form
called reason. It has other forms as well. It includes whatever is
phenomenologically capable of dissociating itself from the `natural' or, where it
remains in Nature, freely intends the content it withdraws from as a form of
freedom. In that manner, all reflective consciousness, which is the prerogative of
man, is free.
This means that, much like thought, it is possible to turn into free
phenomenological processes moral will, aesthesia, faith, religious love and
devotion, and even lower forms of mentalities down to perception, whether in the
cognitive, conative, aesthetic or religious dimension. As the phenomenological
prius of all that is Nature, Freedom is not Reason only; Reason is merely the form
of freedom that corresponds to thought or reason, though it may have jurisdiction
over a large number of mental behaviors. Freedom as reflection, that is, as pure
consciousness, which is self-evident and self-certifying corresponds to, and
comprehends, every form of mental behavior. To a naturalist studying Nature,
including his own nature, this Freedom is only `shown', for in that type of study
an examination of Freedom is not only not an obligation but an impossibility. One
may choose, however, to be a phenomenologist and then would study this Freedom
through all its modes and nuances.
Whether there could or could not be a general Freedom common to different forms of
freedom is not a difficult problem for the phenomenologist. Phenomenologically,
every man is conscious that he is a unity as his naturalistic behaviors also
`show'. This is the so-called unitary Freedom which, in its experienced unity,
ramifies into different forms, modes, nuances, etc. If this sounds mythical, one
must not forget that the complete picture is discovered through systematic
regressive detachment, every step of which exhibits in abundant light the
corresponding `intention'.
No phenomenological experience is possible at any step unless one has learned to
detach himself from the form of bondage of his egocentric nature peculiar to that
stage. We have seen that at the highest stage of nature, viz., at that of
reason,19 the phenomenologist must detach himself from the last form of aggressive
ego, that is, he must see that what he knows or does20 is not for himself alone
but for everyone who has the eyes to see.
At this point, however, there is no total denial of ego; what is denied is the
aggressive ego that speaks only for itself, or at most for those who hang onto it.
At this stage Freedom consists in being impartial to everyone including oneself.
We have just seen that Freedom which refuses to be bound to nature is experienced
as a unity. Two factors explain this: First, when the last stage of nature has
been transcended and the ego has ceased to be aggressive, the unity of Freedom
obviously cannot be that of the aggressive ego; second, because at this stage it
concerns all possible ego its unity must be that of all egos. Here, as with the
transcended aggressive ego, these other souls are no longer aggressively
individual. The grand unity to which Freedom is ultimately to belong must,
therefore, be the unity of all trans-natural pure souls. In other words, it
ultimately belongs to a Grand Soul which is related to the individual pure souls
in the same way that any unity stands related to its elements.
In its original status, Freedom is said to be outside Nature. This transcendence
of nature must be properly understood. It is not spatial or temporal because
Nature comprehends all space and time. `Outside space or time' should mean simply
not being in space or time. The whole of space is not in space nor is the whole of
time in time. What, therefore, is not in space or time may well be in the whole of
space or of time, or in both, each considered merely as a whole, for property may
be predicated of a whole in two different ways: either of the whole as a whole, or
of any or every element of its elements. The two ways of predication are mutually
exclusive except that predication concerning any or every such element sometimes,
though only nominally, appears as predication concerning the whole. Freedom, thus,
may be outside the whole space and the whole time, each considered as a whole,
without being outside any of their parts, even the most remote.
Further Consideration of the Relation Between Freedom and Nature
The relation between Freedom and Nature may be understood in two broad ways. In
the first, Freedom wholly transcends Nature and constitutes non-spatial-temporal
region which is wholly its own; it is a metaphysical region of non-spatial-
temporal eternal truths. In the second, Freedom is autonomous in itself and yet
operates within Nature. It is not bound by the conditions of that Nature as are
all `natural' contents, but freely views these contents as they should be, that
is, in themselves and apart from distortion by individual predilections. Equally
as conative freedom it rearranges them as they ought to be so that no one reaps
the benefit only for himself and for his confreres.
In which of the two ways freedom should be understood can never be decided once
and for all. The way in which freedom should move cannot be determined by anything
else, for its movement is also free; freedom is but free movement. The two broad
ways stated above are, therefore, absolute alternatives.
The first alternative is for transcending Nature, including one's own nature,
altogether and living a life of pure Freedom. This would be a sort of filtered
spiritual life, which need not be a mere mass of homogeneous indefinitude, bright
though that may be. The mystics who claim they have lived this transcendent life
often describe it as consisting of different stages of progress and exhibiting at
each stage all sorts of subtleties and nuances, though some, it is true, have
claimed that their experience when they transcended Nature was from the beginning
a single, indivisible, self-luminous mass. In either case, that beyond which one
cannot go is the Divine or the Absolute and nowhere in transcendent spiritual life
is there any one-for-all cleavage between subjective experience and the object
experienced as we have it in `natural' life. Some testify that there is no
cleavage at all, but that the truth is found in every experience. Others hold that
there is some cleavage, but that it operates in the very bosom of a unity, the
unity being either of the experience itself or of the object experienced, each
being alternatively an adjective of the other. Those theists who appear to insist
on clear cleavage hold, at the same time, that between the experience at that
stage and the object experienced there is a sort of communion qualitatively
different from any in `natural' life. In all the cases, however, it is some sort
of relationship of the Absolute with itself.
Let us ask now if there are similar conative moments in spiritual life? There are
none if conation, as we find it in nature, can operate only through mental and
bodily movements, for at this level there is neither mind nor body. Some mystics
have, therefore, held that transcendent spiritual life is non-conative. Others,
however, have claimed that at the spiritual level, quite as much as cognition can
dispense with object which is indispensable at the level of Nature, conation, too,
can dispense with bodily and mental movements which were absolutely necessary for
it at the level of Nature. At the transcendent level of spirit, it is but that
spirit narcissistically turning upon itself with a view to accelerating, or even
decelerating as the case may be, its spiritual progress. One element of this
spiritual experience supplicates another that stands ahead and represses or
reorients itself insofar as it stands behind or, as the case may be, plays with
the advance element and whatever remains behind in an attitude of equality.
Here, we need only add that every stage of such spiritual life, be it cognitive or
conative, has a ring of joy and, in rare cases, a type of suffering which on the
path of spiritual progress one may turn as a lever. This would constitute a kind
of spiritual life which is love, devotion, surrender or even fear.
Thus far, we have been considering transcendent freedom; the other type of freedom
is immanent, and has two broad sub-types. It is either transcendent-and-immanent
or merely immanent. `Transcendent-and-immanent freedom' means that one has first
experienced freedom as transcendent, wholly in itself and apart from everything
that is `natural'. Then, not satisfied with sheer eternals and not finding
anything wrong with Nature as such, for Nature goes wrong only as man misconstrues
and misuses it, he returns to that Nature. In this case, free of all `natural'
interest, he views Nature as it truly is, reorganizing it as he should, namely,
according to the principles of freedom, in order that he attain the fullness of
spiritual life and others, too, are uplifted to proper vision and action. There is
also another kind of transcendent-and-immanent freedom according to which
spiritual experience is not first attained, followed by one's turning to Nature.
Instead, freedom is realized, but only as possibly autonomous, that is, as capable
of having a life of its own apart from Nature without ever actually having it so.
It is similar to universals which cannot be had apart from the corresponding
particulars though these latter may have to be understood as organized according
to that universal. Or it is like a moral precept which never has an ontological
being of its own, but is considered as that according to which our actions have to
be determined or considered, in other words, as only functionally rather than
entitatively autonomous. To these transcendentalists freedom is only functionally
autonomous, which means that its relevance lies only in organizing Nature in
accordance with itself, not in seeking a special being of its own. All the being
it has is that of Nature which it reshapes. No doubt its realization is
autonomous, but this is merely a function which never actually goes beyond Nature.
There is another way of understanding freedom, different from all those we have
described so far and of momentous importance for man today. This is the view of
freedom as wholly immanent in Nature. In no acceptable sense of the term does it
transcend Nature, of which it constitutes only a new dimension. It is never apart
from Nature nor has it even functional autonomy as though it were somehow superior
and expected Nature to obey its orders. In status it is rather subordinate to
Nature, which carries it all through the story of evolution as its own driving
principle. Progressively in its ever-increasing explicitness it is shown as
constituting the depth-dimension of Nature, whose main objective is to rearrange
itself in such a way that, not only does this depth-dimension stand out as
explicitly as possible, but it is then permitted to react on its own initiative
and rearrange that very nature so as to make itself increasingly explicit. It does
this with a speed never found before. The whole process is thus `natural', and
freedom at its maximum explicitness is only Nature itself at its best. With the
emergence of man at the last stage of Nature's evolution, for the first time this
freedom-depth stands out explicitly. Through progressive correction of Nature's
aberrations--which either constitute its unaccountable dark side or which, once
man emerges, are created by freedom itself experimentally going awry--this freedom
as the depth-dimension of Nature asserts itself more and more distinctly and
speedily. Throughout, the ideal of Nature is the establishment of the best form of
human society which, itself `natural', realizes that `natural' freedom at its
highest.
As noted above, there is nothing to determine which of these different ways of
understanding freedom is right and which is wrong. Each offers a self-sufficient
account of man and his status vis-a-vis Nature. Possibly there is no external
criterion. Any such criterion would have to be rational, existential or pragmatic,
anthropological, etc. But reason itself is a form of freedom. Hence, just as by
means of reason one cannot justify reason itself, neither can one determine how
freedom shows itself. Further, such criteria as rational, pragmatic and
anthropological are relevant only for the study of `natural' behaviors vis-a-vis
one another. In studying the behavior of Nature as a whole, it is really a
question either of assuming or not assuming a new attitude. The question is
whether to continue in a naturalistic attitude, assume a new one, viz., the
attitude of freedom, or somehow combine the two. The choice is final, in the sense
of existential. The only further consideration is whether the particular attitude
assumed accounts for all that can be accounted for. But in none of these attitudes
need everything be accounted for because the choice of any one attitude has
already taken as data many things which for other attitudes are problems. Data,
obviously, differ from choice to choice.
Visva-Bharati University
Santiniketan, India
NOTES
1. When a man sleeping for an hour dreams a seven days' dream that seven-day time
is illusory.
2. This is in contrast to "of."
3. Though in an enlightening or ennobling attitude it may also return to Nature
and comprehend it anew.
4. This is not true at the infra-atomic level.
5. As freedom is, by definition, self-conscious we need not append this adjective
except where we distinguish it from other forms of indeterminate behavior. Nor
need we be particular about whether we should call it self-conscious or conscious.
The choice of either or none does not change the meaning which is always clear.
6. Later on we shall show how it accompanies the sub-conscious and the unconscious
of psycho-analysis, and even what is called pre-conscious.
7. Freedom is only the modus operandi of the activity called `lording over', or
just another name for that activity. To call it a cause of that activity would be
as meaningless as to say that an empty pocket is one which is full of emptiness.
8. This is true except where consciousness transcends the individual person round
which it normally centers. More of this impersonal consciousness later.
9. `Bodily behavior' in the present context has always to be understood as living
bodily behavior.
l0. Where a behavior of mind appears to determine causally one in my mind, or vice
versa, this, we shall see, is a function of freedom, not causal determination;
this is so with regard to any of my mental behaviors appearing to determine
causally a behavior of my body.
11. For these mystics, the negation in question is not a `hole' in Nature, nor
such holes somehow connected with one another as holes. It is the region where the
natural and the trans-natural meet. Even as negation, this region is alternatively
natural and trans-natural, though even as trans-natural it is nothing more than
negation.
12. Shortly it will be shown that reason is as much mental as trans-mental.
13. The apologetic view that logic and its cousins are only analytic language-
systems, exaggerates the distinction between perception and reason. Reason may not
assert a perceivable content; but, first, it cannot be said that it never does so,
and secondly, no language-system, unless it is deliberately artificial, is merely
analytic.
14. We shall soon turn to this.
15. The two replies are not only not nonsense, but, from another point of view,
perhaps the best possible solutions. If the problem of the relation between Nature
and trans-natural freedom is not a naturalistic problem because one term of the
relation is not `natural', neither is it a trans-natural problem because the other
term is not trans-natural. One might, therefore, choose to proceed to offer a
naturalistic account, however inadequate that may be. From this point of view, the
two replies are quite intelligible.
16. This withdrawal is a form of negative trans-naturality mentioned in footnote
11, p. 22.
17. Out of question here. Whether, and how far, it is possible from some other
angle of vision we shall see in a later section.
18. By this time it must have become clear to the reader that the terms `freedom',
and `consciousness' are on!y different names for one and the same trans-
naturality, which is often more generally called `spirit'. Reason, as will
presently be shown, is only one form of freedom.
19. This is true not only of reason, but equally of aesthesis and faith.
20. In a similar manner, this is true of his art and religious love and devotion.
CHAPTER X
A TOUCH OF ANIMISM
S. C. THAKUR
THE SEMANTIC PREAMBLE
Since in an obvious and fundamental sense man is a part of nature, and a very
small one at that, any conjunction or disjunction of `man' and `nature' would seem
to involve a category-mistake. We do not speak of `the legs, the arms and the
body' nor of `apples, oranges and fruits'. It is evident, therefore, that in
talking about `Man and Nature' we are using `nature' not in this first but in what
is regarded as its second primary sense, namely, that in which `nature' denotes
everything excluding man and his creations. It is in this sense that man's
creations are termed `artificial' as against the other objects and processes of
nature which are considered natural.
This use of the word is very simply a matter of convention; to quibble about it
would be idle, if not mischievous. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that
only men create things. A bird's nest, a spider's web or a beaver's dam, though
very complex and sometimes beautifully pieces of work, are still considered
natural: these do not seem to deserve the distinction of being set apart from the
rest of nature. The temptation to regard this convention as nothing but a product
of human chauvinism may be hard to resist. We shall return to the role of this
chauvinism later. At the moment, however, let us reflect briefly on some of the
other factors that provide the foundations of this convention.
One reason why we set ourselves and our artifacts apart from the rest of nature is
simply that we are interested in discovering the secrets of nature for ourselves
and in understanding our relations with them. The beaver's or, for that matter,
Humpty Dumpty's picture of the world may be very interesting, but it can have only
an academic interest for us. Our primary and pragmatic interest must lie in our
picture of the world revealed to us through our own concepts, theories, judgments
and meanings. One does not have to be a rabid instrumentalist to accept that there
is no getting away from this. The primacy of the human perspective in our talk
about and dealings with nature is not just a methodological convenience, though it
certainly is that, too; it is a `constitutional' and practical necessity.
Without dwelling on this theme for too long, let us look at one other very
important and obvious point of contrast between ourselves and the rest of nature.
While the beaver's or the spider's works may be complex and admirably beautiful,
they are all the same results of instinctive action rather than of conscious
thought and planning. Only humans have the gift (or the burden?) of rational
thought and, therefore, the power of abstraction and the ability to visualize and
adopt distant goals, to have ideas and ideologies and, above all, the concepts of
right, wrong, good and evil. These observations, while commonplace in a certain
way, bring us to what, in the long run, must be the only genuine sense in which
humans constitute a world of their own: the world of values.
As far as we can tell, there is no other species in nature which shares this
world, apart, that is, from fairies, angels and science-fiction visitors from
other planets. It is not difficult to see that while in the world of facts we are
on a par with the rest of nature since we obey its laws, in the world of values we
are sovereigns. This, as we shall see later, is a mixed blessing. There is little
doubt, however, that but for this peculiarity there would have been no question of
our getting together to discuss and evaluate what we have, or should have, done to
nature or how we must regard her in future.
Having thus argued that the second sense of `nature' is well-grounded, I must
hasten to add that the first sense is no less so. In fact, the latter needs no
arguing. That we are creatures of nature and must in most basic ways submit to its
dictates, is so painfully obvious that even the contemplation of doing otherwise
verges on stupidity, if not lunacy. Yet, it is neither often nor strongly enough
emphasized, particularly in the West, that we are part of nature, that we have no
destiny independent of nature. This theme is left to be sung feebly and
intermittently by poets, mystics, aesthetes as well as by drop-outs, freaks and
fringe-cults of various sorts. I believe that a proper appreciation of this sense
will have important consequences for our attitudes towards, and interactions with,
nature.
A QUESTION OF COMPETENCE
As I leave the relatively secure shores of semantic observations, my confidence
seems to ebb decidedly. What can a philosopher have to say on either man or nature
that could be of interest or value to anyone? Partly as a result of our choice,
but largely no doubt due to the phenomenal progress of the sciences, we may have
been condemned into uttering mere inanities on subjects that have been rapidly
appropriated by the various areas of science. At least, that is how things look.
Even if we decide to recast our role and start philosophizing on substantive
issues, as presumably some would wish to do, there is a danger that we may fail to
carry conviction for, as philosophers, we do not have first-hand knowledge of all
the facts relating to either man or nature. That task rests with biologists,
psychologists, physicists, ecologists and other `experts'.
The philosopher can, however, take courage from at least two features of the
situation. One is that the experts are not all agreed on what the facts are, much
less on their wider significance. For example, some scientists--mainly, though not
exclusively, ecologists--tell us that our destruction and despoilment of nature
and our heedless disruption of its processes have reached such crisis proportions
that unless we radically alter our attitudes and ways, not only the survival of
our own species is in peril, but possibly that of all living organisms. This view,
however, is dismissed as alarmist by other scientists who have what the authors of
The Homeless Mind call `the engineering mentality'.1 They believe in the infinite
malleability of nature as well as in the limitless ingenuity of man, particularly
their own kind, to solve any problems that we may have created for ourselves--and
some do accept grudgingly that there may be problems!
These are only two, albeit the two main, sets of scientific opinion on the
subject; both have their supporters, though certainly not in equal measure,
outside their own ranks. Whatever the truth of these claims, the issues involved
are so vital and of such immediate relevance that not even a thoughtful man-in-
the-street, far less a philosopher, can afford to be indifferent. To wait until
the facts are beyond dispute may well mean waiting forever and might constitute
dereliction of duty as a human being, for even a casual acquaintance with the
arguments in the debate makes it abundantly clear that the so-called facts are so
heavily laden with questions of priorities, goals and values that it would be
wrong, and dangerous, to leave the choice of these to scientists, economists or
bureaucrats. Each man must decide for himself; and the philosopher surely is at
least as well-qualified to do so as any ordinary man.
The issue of values is the other reason why a philosopher's opinions, if well-
reasoned, may be of special interest; indeed, we may ourselves be the `experts'
here, if only because there are no others to claim the mantle. The facts in the
dispute between opposing groups of scientists are heavily laden with questions of
value and when it comes to the world of values man is quite independent of nature.
What we should make of those facts, how we must regard nature, what attitudes are
appropriate--these are important questions of value on which the philosopher, more
than anyone else, can and should have a say for, as far as I can tell, there is no
recognized science of values.
THE CRISIS
Having given my reason for doing so, I proceed to declare my position in the
dispute concerning man and nature. I am firmly on the side of the `alarmists', or
ecologists, to use a non-pejorative name. Let us refer to the opposition in the
dispute as the `engineers'. It is my opinion that the ecologists' assessment of
the contemporary situation and of the future prospects for man is substantially
correct. As one of their well-known documents, A Blueprint For Survival, declares,
The principal defect of the industrial way of life with its ethos of expansion is
that it is not sustainable. Its termination within the lifetime of someone born
today is inevitable--unless it continues to be sustained for a while longer by an
entrenched minority at the cost of imposing great suffering on the rest of
mankind. We can be certain, however, that sooner or later it will end (only the
precise time and circumstances are in doubt), and that it will do so in one of two
ways: either against our will, in a succession of famines, epidemics, social
crises and wars; or because we want it to--because we wish to create a society
which will not impose hardship and cruelty upon our children--in a succession of
thoughtful, humane and measured changes.2
Rhetoric aside, the main conclusions of this document are, I believe, sound and
well-supported by scientific, sociological and statistical data. As it would be
pointless and painful to reiterate the details of a published and readily
available document, I will refer only briefly to some of the important factors
that have brought the crisis upon us. The most obnoxious of these, of course, is
the notorious fact that the human population of the world is staggeringly large
and growing at an alarming rate. According to the Blueprint, the world population
in 1972 was 3,600 million and increasing at the rate of 2 per cent or 72 million
per year. The rate of population growth in the so-called `developed' countries was
between 0.5 and 1.0 per cent, and in the `developing' countries between 2 and 3
per cent per year. This means that even if the world's population stabilizes by
the year 2000, which is not at all certain, the earth will then have to support a
population of 15.5 billion.
Equally damaging, if not more so, is the ever-increasing per capita use of energy
and raw materials. The main culprits here are the advanced industrial societies
which, with one-third of the human population, account for nearly 80 percent of
the energy and raw material consumption. Since their current level of consumption
is so inordinately high, even as small an annual growth as that of 4 per cent
results in mammoth demands on the world's total resources. Taken together, these
two facts lead to one simple conclusion. The world cannot cope with this continued
increase in ecological demand. By ecological demands is meant a summation of all
man's demands on the environment, such as the extraction of resources and the
return of wastes. Needless to say, if the ecological demand grows exponentially,
as seems to be the case, it will be quite simply impossible to meet.
These two factors, combined with widespread individual ignorance and avarice, are
causing large-scale disruption of ecosystems, failure of food supplies and
exhaustion of resources, and thereby threatening chaos and the collapse of
society. This is strong language indeed, but the situation demands nothing less.
Even Passmore, in his thorough and erudite, though somewhat complacent work, Man's
Responsibility for Nature,3 admits the immensity of the problems. The ecological
problems of pollution, conservation, preservation and multiplication are, he
accepts, serious enough. But his general optimism, I fear, reflects what I earlier
called the engineering mentality: given the infinite ingenuity of our scientists
and the solid base of Western institutions, every problem can be solved; it is but
a matter of time. Mary Midgley's disappointment at Passmore's failure to convey
the real urgency of this situation in which time may be running out is well-
founded. She is absolutely right: the situation does call `for Heaven's cherubim
horsed upon the sightless couriers of the air, to blow the horrid deed in every
eye, that tears may drown the wind',4 and not for Passmore's attitude, `Send for
the fire brigade . . . they are far more efficient than you imagine. Keep calm.'5
RENOUNCING THE `ROGUES'
The situation leaves no room for complacency; as the quotation from the Blueprint
declared, the present state of affairs must end. The only question is: shall we
let that happen `against our will, in a succession of famines, epidemics, social
crises and wars' or through `a succession of thoughtful, humane and measured
changes'?6 The answer is, of course, the latter. But what changes are required?
Since the malaise is deep, pervasive and has many facets, clearly many things will
have to be done in a planned and orderly way; some, at least, will have to be
radical. In this short paper I can mention only some of the changes which appear
to be required and treat one or two in relative detail.
The need to curb and stabilize world population without delay is, of course, the
first step to be taken. This seems to be generally well-recognized. Efforts are
being made to bring it about speedily, though success is still limited to small
pockets of the world. What has not been so well-recognized, perhaps, is that the
rocketing ecological demand is a direct outcome of our industrial-technological
way of life, ably supported by the philosophy of progress now defined as economic
growth. The other change that must be made, therefore, is the emphatic
renunciation of both of these. The former, besides creating, nurturing and
multiplying ecological demand, creates in society widespread depression,
alienation, anomie and compartmentalization of life. All are components of what
Berger, Berger and Kellner have called the state of homelessness in modern,
affluent societies. The industrial-technological revolution may have been one of
the best things that happened to mankind, but it appears to have outlived its
utility. In this case, the inevitable stock-taking that occurs after every
revolution seems to show that the price paid for ushering in the industrial era
may have been too high.
However, this huge and complex machinery neither can nor ought to be stopped
overnight. That would be neither reasonable nor humane. Caution and discrimination
are needed, sorting out problems of production from those of distribution and both
from the lack of moderation. To take but one example, the United States of America
cannot be said to have a problem of production; what it needs is a more equitable
distribution of the abundance it already enjoys, coupled with moderation in
demand. This is also the case, in varying degrees, for most of the affluent
nations whose need is not to step up industrial activity. On the contrary, they
need to de-industrialize and rationalize their social structure and life-style in
the light of what is already known about the deleterious social effects of the
urbanized, industrialized way of life. Neither does the solution to the problems
of the developing, poorer countries lie in the industrial-technological-
bureaucratic complex. Problems of production and of equitable distribution to keep
their rapidly growing populations reasonably well-fed do exist and I intend to
discuss later how their problems could be approached.
Any attempt to renounce the industrial-technological way of life, however, is
doomed to failure unless it is preceded or accompanied by the rejection of the
underlying philosophy which regards growth as a value. It takes little reflection
to see that growth, except in a specified context, is not a value at all. Were
one's eighteen-year-old son to be only four feet tall, he might be justified in
worrying about his growth and consulting a physician. But were one's eighty-year-
old grandfather to remain at five feet eight inches, his height throughout his
adult life, it would be foolish to give this another thought. Likewise, if after
five years one's willow tree is only a few inches high, something may need to be
done, but not so if a dwarf plant is at that height after only a few weeks.
Growth can be a value only in certain contexts, in the light of certain norms and
possibilities. The philosophy of economic growth seems to be misconceived and
dangerous insofar as it is advocated for its own sake alone. Generally, this is
done irrespective of any context of genuine need and in the face of the awesome
fact that the world's resources will not permit it much longer. Consuming and
throwing away ever-increasing amounts of various goods is a product of greed and
faulty education, not of need and deprivation. The Club of Rome has already argued
powerfully against the desirability and feasibility of further economic growth.
The expressed hope that a rapidly growing society will create some large surplus
of goods to be shared by all sections of that society is a delusion. The most
affluent societies still have large pockets of relative poverty; in most of them a
small percentage own the bulk of the land's resources. Their problems are
political and philosophical, not those of economic growth.
PEOPLE-ORIENTED INDUSTRY AND SENSITIVE TECHNOLOGY
The above argument against any further expansion of the industrial way of life,
with all its attendant problems and perils. raises the question: How are the
developing, poorer countries to raise their standards of living or even feed their
populations, if not with the aid of industry and technology? In answer one must,
first of all, distinguish between the industrial-technological way of life and the
use of industry and technology. Renouncing the former does not, to my mind, entail
the rejection of a judicious and careful use of industry and technology of a
limited size and for limited purposes. Adopting the former involves a blind,
slavish imitation and importation of a life-style that is foreign to the culture
and genius of most developing countries. But that is not the case with every use
of industry and technology; some sort of traditional and small-scale use of which
has been part of almost every stable, viable community. A reasonable enlargement
and modification of such indigenous industry and technology, where necessary to
cope with new demands, will not threaten the stability of a society by exposing it
to the ills of the centralized, urbanized monoculture which the logic of
industrial society creates and encourages.
For example, since the most pressing problem for the developing countries is the
control of their exploding populations and since prayer alone will not stop
children from being born, they must ensure an adequate supply of various
contraceptive devices. These should not be produced in one or two large, heavily
automated industrial complexes, however. That would require an additional infra-
structure for storage, transport and distribution; it would also limit the
employment opportunities created. Would it not be possible to create a chain of
small factories, distributed as evenly as possible around the whole country, each
supplying the needs of its neighboring community? Given the will, the same could
be done for steel, cement, fertilizers and other essential goods. This sort of
distribution of small-scale production centers would provide jobs locally, instead
of sending every job seeker off to the big cities. The worker would still remain
part of the society to which he is accustomed, instead of becoming an anonymous,
unwilling and uncooperative citizen of a metropolis. This way of doing things
would mark a radical departure from the centralization implicit in the industrial
way of life. The aim of such a decentralized society would be the attainment of
self-sufficiency for every basic unit of its population, e.g., the village. This
has been ably argued by Schumacher in the book, Small is Beautiful,7 and, of
course, by Gandhi in many of his writings.
Recently, it has been widely recognized, though not often enough in the corridors
of power, that the introduction of heavy industry and highly sophisticated,
capital-intensive technology into developing countries has a very disruptive,
almost counter-productive effect on the indigenous population. Consequently, much
has been written on what sort of technology would be appropriate. The suggestions
have included `Intermediate Technology', `Appropriate Technology', `Alternative
Technology' and `Low Impact Technology'. All of them share certain features,
notably the need to avoid unnecessary disruption of nature and natural and
ecological processes; all of them can be applied outside the developing world.
There are, however, certain differences among them, if only of emphasis. For
example, intermediate and appropriate technologies emphasize a change from
capital-intensive to labor-intensive technology. While they take into account the
natural resources of a given region, their primary stress is on the creation of
jobs for people. Low impact or alternative technologies, on the other hand, are
mainly concerned with minimizing the impact of technology on the environment.
Hence, they involve the use of such energy sources as solar, wind and tidal power.
These types of technology, however, are less likely to create greater employment
opportunities, which is a central concern of intermediate technology.
There is need for a technology which can combine the significant features of both
these types of technology. The creation of jobs as well as the preservation of the
environment are equally important, especially in the developing world. This new
kind of technology could perhaps be called sensitive technology and would be
sensitive to:
(i) the ecological balance of a given region, and not unduly disruptive of the
`food chain' in the region;
(ii) the needs of the people in that region, and conducive to the goal of self-
sufficiency for the region;
(iii) the pattern of distribution of natural resources in the region, and
committed to the use, as far as possible, of local raw materials and forms of
energy.
In short, the technology must be sensitive and responsive to nature, including
man. Such technology cannot be a simple tool of production, it must also have
aesthetic properties. It will not aim at controlling or exploiting, but rather at
`encouraging' nature to provide for man what he must have for care-free and
reasonably comfortable living. While this must be done, because man's basic needs
can only be met in and through nature, man must also learn to minimize his need
for goods.
A PLEA FOR PARTNERSHIP
These suggested changes are radical and far-reaching; they cannot be effected
overnight or without tremendous effort. Their successful implementation will
depend upon a massive program of education, or re-education, at all levels. This
must create and foster in people a deep and continuing awareness of the
interrelatedness and interdependence of all things and processes in nature. Here
again, there is a huge obstacle to be overcome: the well-entrenched Western
attitude that nature is a wild beast to be tamed, overcome, controlled and
exploited at will. This human chauvinism, the attitude that nature is for human
control and exploitation springs directly from the reigning Western philosophy. It
holds that nature was created for man's use; that at best it is to be cajoled into
subservience, at worst it is to be pillaged and raped according to human needs and
passions. The industrial-technological way of life may or may not have been born
out of this philosophy, but surely it could not have prospered without it. Though
Passmore may be right in maintaining that in the Western tradition there have been
other models of the relationship between man and nature such as stewardship, the
most dominant trend has been that of control and mastery over nature.8 The
insensitivity in this respect of some of the greatest minds in history is fairly
evident. The notion of stewardship, too, is plainly chauvinistic; it suggests that
we are superior to the rest of nature, so should look after it. Even a grudging
acceptance that man, by his folly, has brought himself and nature to near ruin
suggests a search for better models for the relationship between man and nature.
In the first sense, wherein man is an integral part of nature, the whole idea of
control or mastery seems quite absurd. This can be illustrated by the following
allegory from a child's reader. Noting that the stomach was inactive, the more
active members of the human organism, the arms, the legs, the mouth, the eyes,
etc., decided to teach the lazy stomach a lesson by going on strike. The arms
would not accept anything, the legs would not move in the direction of food, the
mouth stopped chewing and the eyes stopped seeing and giving the relevant
information. It is not hard to imagine the consequence: the striking members soon
realized that, without food going into the stomach they no longer had the energy
to continue on strike. They had learned their lesson and, with the apologies to
the lazy stomach went back to their respective chores. The apparently inert
stomach was crucial to their own health. To the question of whether man can have a
duty to nature this story gives an unambiguous answer. As a part of nature,
cooperation with, and care for nature are quite obviously his duties; he can fail
to discharge them only at his peril.
Does the second sense of `nature' also admit the model of cooperation or
partnership between man and nature? I think it does. In the Sankhya system of
Indian philosophy purusa and prakrti which can be translated without too much
distortion as man and nature, are likened to two men, one lame and the other
blind, whose mutual cooperation is a prerequisite for the evolution of nature. The
lame man (man, in our context) needs the energy, activity, resources of the blind
man (nature, in our context). The latter, in turn, is helpless without the sight
or consciousness of the former. In an outbreak of fire, let us say, the lame man
rides on the shoulders of the blind man; the latter does the walking, the former
the pointing, and thus both are saved. Whatever the appropriateness of this
analogy, in the metaphysical perplexities of the Sankhya system--and I have my
doubts on that count--it seems particularly apt for our purposes.
Nature is rightly seen, I think, as blind, that is, as without rationality. But a
blind man is a man all the same; he is sensitive and would retaliate if not
treated properly. Ecology leaves us in no doubt that nature is an extremely
intricate and sensitive nexus of means and ends. The slightest tampering with it
is `noticed' and acted upon. Does it matter if it does not look intelligent or
sensitive all over? Do our hair and nails look intelligent, sensitive, or even
useful? Nature is `intelligent' in its own way, as a system; and we certainly need
it for our life, our actions, our creations. But does nature `need' us? After all,
any partnership worthy of the name must be based on reciprocal need and, if
possible, love. The answer, though contrary to the dictates of our chauvinism and
therefore difficult, must be affirmative. Nature would be poorer without man for
no other species can write poetry, create music, embellish or enrich nature with
its art and sculpture or even have science. That is the positive side. Looked at
negatively, the simple truth is that we must be partners. That nature can destroy
us, we have known all along. Now we also know that, thanks to such discoveries as
the nuclear bombs and germs we can hatch, we can destroy it too. There can be no
better prudential motive for a partnership than the knowledge that both parties
are capable of destroying each other.
This, I suppose, is `animism'. Passmore notwithstanding, we do need a new (or is
it very old?) morality, philosophy or attitude towards nature. The above analogy
does seem to hold. But even if the suggestion that nature is intelligent or
sensitive were materially false, we would, for our own good, have to adopt a
methodological animism; we would have to behave as if nature were intelligent. A
`touch of animism' could hurt no one, and could do us a lot of good. There is no
need to worship; an attitude of simply caring should be sufficient and salutary.
University of Surrey
Guildford, Surrey, England
NOTES
1. P. L. Berger; B. Berger; and H. Kellner, The Homeless Mind (New York: Pelican
Books, Penguin, 1974), p. 13.
2. "A Blueprint for Survival, The Ecologist (1972), II, 2.
3. John Passmore, Man's Responsibility for Nature (New York: Scribner, 1974).
4. Mary Midgley, Review of Passmore's Man's Responsibility for Nature in
Philosophy (1975), L, 108.
5. Ibid, p. 107.
6. Tbe Ecologist. op. cit.
7. E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful (New York: Harper and Row, 1975).
8. Passmore, op. cit., Chapters 1 and 2, pp. 3-40.
CHAPTER XI
THE NATURE OF MAN AS TAO
CHANG CHUNG YUAN
According to Chinese Taoist philosophy the highest attainment of man is the
identity of man himself with the reality of things. This identity is not a concept
of mediation nor a rational synthesis of the subjectivity of man and the
objectivity of things. It is the direct, spontaneous, unimpeded, mutual solution
which takes place in the absolute moment. Identity, here, is no longer a principle
or a statement about identity. It is, as Professor Martin Heidegger says, and as I
noted previously, "a spring into the essential origin of identity."1 This
"essential origin of identity" is conceived by Taoist philosophers as the real
nature of man.
In our daily life we are constantly drawing distinctions between things. There is
movement and quiescence, high and low, life and death, yin and yang, and so forth.
These polarities are infinite in number. Taoist philosophers traditionally ask in
what way are these opposites related and whether there is any possibility of unity
within their diversity. To answer these questions, Lao Tzu in his work, Tao Te
Ching. says the following:
When beauty is universally affirmed as beauty, therein is ugliness. When goodness
is universally affirmed as goodness, therein is evil.2
This idea of mutual opposition also has been pointed out by Hegel: "In every
distinguishing situation each pole is for itself that which it is; it also is not
for itself what it is, but only in contrasting relation to that which it is not."
"Position and opposition contain both their mutual affirmation and negation. Each
finds itself in its opposed other."3 This "opposed other" formulated by a thing
itself, is maintained also by Lao Tzu, who says:
Being and Non-being are mutually posited in their emergence. Difficult and easy
are mutually posited in their contemporaries. Long and short are mutually posited
in their positions. . . .4
Although the dialectics of Hegel and Lao Tzu seem to be one and the same, the
goals of the two dialectic processes are different. In The Central Philosophy of
Buddhism, T.R.V. Murti says that the movement of Hegel's dialectic is a passage
from a lower concept with lesser content to a higher concept with a greater
content. It begins with the idea of pure Being which has least content and
culminates in the idea of the concrete absolute which is "the most comprehensive
unity of all."5 In Lao Tzu's dialectic there is no elevating movement towards the
fixed goal of a comprehensive, rational absolute. Rather, there is a further step
which Professor Kitaro Nishida, a leading philosopher of Japan, calls "the self-
identity of contradiction."6 In "the self-identity of contradiction," the
opposites: Being and Non-being or beauty and ugliness are mutually identified
within themselves and not in any higher synthesis. Thus, there is no progression
toward an absolute beyond all contradictions, but contradiction exists
simultaneously with identity. Nishida illustrates this in his work Fundamental
Problems of Philosophy:
At the depth of life there is something which is both negation-qua-affirmation and
affirmation-qua-negation. We usually think that something to be physical matter,
but mere physical matter can only have the significance of negation in opposition
to life. If we understand the ground of life to an ultimate point in such a sense,
we must conceive that there is an absolute affirmation-qua-negation and absolute
negation-qua-affirmation in the very depth of life.7
This absolute affirmation-qua-negation indicates the simultaneous occurrence of
difference and identity. In the second chapter of "Identity of all things," in the
work of the 4th century B.C. philosopher Chuang Tzu, we have:
Construction is destruction.
Destruction is construction.8
Between construction and destruction there is a difference, but simultaneously
construction and destruction are identified. This This idea is further developed
in the philosophy of Chou Tun Yi, the pioneer of Neo-Confucianist philosophy of
the 11th Century.
When moving it is without quiescence and when quiescent there is no movement, such
are material things. When moving yet it has no movement, when quiescent, it yet
has no quiescence, such is the spiritual reality. But movement which thus lacks
movement and quiescence which thus lacks quiescence does not mean non-movement or
non-quiescence. For whereas material things do not interpenetrate one another,
spiritual reality is the most wonderful of all things.9
Therefore to see movement as movement, and quiescence as quiescence is to see the
one-sided aspect of nature. But when we see movement in quiescence and quiescence
in movement, this is to see the deeper nature of things.
The deeper level of nature is not limited to the identity of opposites; it also
applies to the transitional process of affirmation and negation within the
polarities, which is a continuous sequence of continuity and discontinuity. As
Nishida says, the world of reality contains self-negation within itself. It is the
world of reality which both affirms and negates itself, and it is this true world
which contains the continuity of discontinuity. In Chapter 18 of his work, Chuang
Tzu applied this idea of dialectic transition to a rough sketch of a theory of
biological evolution. He points out that there is a constant transition in the
origin of living things from the germ to plants, from plants to animal creatures,
with man finally emerging. Whether this is any real scientific contribution to the
theory of evolution need not be discussed here. The illustration does indicate,
however, an awareness of the development of living things in nature through the
constant dialectic process of affirmation and negation. Thus the real world is the
constant continuity of discontinuity.
The dialectic process of constant interaction of continuity and discontinuity was
originally conceived by Lao Tzu as a creative one. As he says in Chapter 42 of the
Tao Te Ching:
From the Tao, One is created;
From the One, Two;
From the Two, Three;
From the Three, ten thousand things.10
The numbers used here are simply to indicate the creative process of affirmation
and negation or the continuity of discontinuity. To see creativity result from the
dialectic process of affirmation-negation is to see nature in action, says Lao
Tzu.
For Taoists, nothing in nature exists isolated by itself. Rather, all things are
interdependent. Thus, no phenomenon in nature can be truly understood by
separating it from other things. However, the interaction of these things as we
have pointed out previously is not limited to polar entities. Taoists also apply
their organic concept of unity and multiplicity, or oneness, to all things. In
Chapter 25 of the work of Chuang Tzu, it states: "When we point to see different
parts of the horse's body, we don't really have a horse. But when we conceive the
integration of all parts of the body, then we have a horse in front of us."11 This
organic concept of unity illustrates the formation of the whole through the
interrelation of all the parts, that is, discordant parts unite to form an
harmonious whole. When all the parts unify themselves into an organic whole, each
part breaks through its shell and interfuses with every other part, each
identifies itself with every other one. Thus, one is in many and many are in one.
ln this way, all particularities dissolve into one and all the parts of the whole
disappear into every other part of the whole. Each individual merges into every
other individual; it is through this unity in multiplicity that the interfusion
and identification of each individuality senses its function in the creation of
the whole. This idea has been illustrated by Lao Tzu in Chapter 11 of his book.
Thirty spokes joined at the hub
From their non-being arises the function of the wheel.
Lumps of clay are shaped into a vessel
From their non-being arise the function of the vessel.12
The wheel is the unity of the spokes, and the vessel is the the unity of the clay.
In Lao Tzu's sense, the wheel can function as a wheel due to the organic
relationships among the spokes. ln other words, the interfusion and identification
of the parts create a functioning wheel, a whole.
The Taoists, however, did not stop there. Although they applied this organic
concept to the construction of things, they also went a step further and entered
into a realm of the pre-ontological experience through a dialectic negation. As
Chuang Tzu once said:
Heaven and earth and 1 live together,
And therein all things and I are one.13
This oneness is the product of his pre-ontological experience, which is invisible
and unfathomable. This invisible and unfathomable oneness is called the realm of
the great infinite. Here there is neither space nor time. It is, in fact, the
realm of non-being, which is absolutely free from limitations and distinctions. We
have Chuang Tzu's own description of the realm of non-being:
Being is without dwelling place, continuity is without duration. Being without
dwelling place is space, continuity without duration is time. There is birth,
there is death. There is issuing forth, there is entering in. That through which
one passes in and out without seeing its form--that is the Gate of Heaven. The
Gate of Heaven is non-being. All things spring from non-being.14
Non-being is the highest unity of all things. In Heidegger's expression this is
'the Being of beings in its unconcealedness and concealment."15 This Being of
beings is in the Eastern sense Non-being which is the invisible and unfathomable
absolute reality of all potentialities and possibilities of the universe.
Therefore, Lao Tzu calls it great, which means infinite, boundless and
immeasurable. When we think of this immeasurableness, it gives us some sort of
insight into the timelessness of time and the spacelessness of space. It is the
absolute moment which opens the secret to the existence of all things, and frees
us from previous rational conditioning and limitations. When Lao Tzu called Tao
the mother of all things, he referred to the realm of non-being as the primordial
source of every beginning, the ultimate reality from which all birth issues forth.
Thus Heidegger says in his essay "What is Metaphysics": "We assert: `Nothing' is
more original than the Not and negation."16
However, this primordial non-being cannot be conceived of as one-sided. Its
highest affirmation is both absolute negation and absolute affirmation. It is both
non-being and being, and, as such, is self-determining both as particularity-qua-
universality and as universality-qua-particularity. This basic concept of Taoist
philosophy can be illustrated by the notion of creativity and sympathy.
When all the potentialities of the absolute realm of non-being or infinity
penetrate into every diversity, one embraces all particularities and enters into
each. Such a process indicates the great creativity. On the other hand, when all
the potentialities of every diversity unite into one, each particularity embraces
all the other particularities, together penetrating into the realm of non-being.
This process indicates the activity of the great sympathy. From the point of view
of sympathy, we see Tao as the synthesis of infinite possibilities and
potentialities. This is the unity of particularities or multiplicities. From the
viewpoint of creativity, we see Tao as a radiative dispersion into the infinite
multiplicities and particularities. Thus, creativity goes in the opposite
direction from sympathy. In short, "sympathy moves from all to one, creativity
moves from one to all. Without sympathy there is no ground for fulfillment of
potentialities to support creativity. Without creativity there is no means of
actually revealing sympathy."17 Since sympathy and creativity move hand in hand,
each represents an aspect of the process between one and all, which is the
fundamental phenomenon of Taoist organic philosophy.
The metaphysical structure of this sympathy is revealed in the realm of absolute
reality in which everything breaks through the shell of itself and interfuses with
every other thing. All the multiplicities and diversities of the universe
interpenetrate with one another and enter into the realm of absolute reality. ln
the Taoist ideal community, man makes no artificial effort toward morality, but
his self is merged with other selves and all other selves are, in turn, merged
into his self. Neither the individual nor the group is consciously aware of, or
purposefully directed toward, this. Chuang Tzu's description of this manner of
living appears in Chapter 12 of his work:
They loved one another without knowing that to do so was benevolence. They were
sincere without knowing that this was loyalty. They kept their promises without
knowing that to do so was to be in good faith. Thus, their actions left no trace
and we have no record of their affairs.18
What Chuang Tzu means by "no trace" is an explanation of the character of
identification in the realm of non-being. Men in the realm of non-being maintained
their original nature. As he says further:
In the days of perfect nature, men were quiet in their movements and serene in
their looks. They lived together with birds and beasts without distinctions of
kind. There was no difference between the gentleman and the common man. Being
equally without knowledge, nothing came between them.19
This world of perfect nature is a world of free interfusion and unification among
men and between men and all things. Between all multiplicities and diversities
there existed no boundaries, men could work with men and all could share
spontaneously. Each identified with others and all lived together as one. Man
lived an innocent and primitive life, yet there was no conceit nor selfishness. In
this simplicity and purity we see the free movement of the real nature of man. We
cannot expect this in a world of artificial morality and intellectuality, full of
distinctions and differentiations. Only in the world of absolute free identity
does there exist the great sympathy, the universal force of nature which holds
together man and all things.
When we regard the realm of non-being as the pre-ontological basis for the
fulfillment of the great sympathy, it is to see Tao as the interfusion and
identification of infinite potentialities and possibilities. Thus, the realm of
non-being serves as the unification of multiplicities and diversities. However,
when we approach Tao from the reverse direction, we see Tao as having penetrated
into infinite multiplicity and into the manifold diversities of existence. Thus,
it is the dispersion of potentialities and possibilities from universality to
particularity, and fulfillment of the process of the great creativity. In the
process of creativity each particularity reveals the potentiality of all
universalities. Chuang Tzu illustrates the idea for us accordingly:
Those who rely upon the arc, the line, compass, and the square to make correct
forms injure the natural construction of things. Those who use cords to bind and
glue, to piece together, interfere with the natural characteristics of things. . .
. There is an ultimate reality in things. Things in their ultimate reality are
curved without the help of arc, straight without lines, round without compasses,
and rectangular without right angles.20
When inner reflection takes place, it fulfills the process of manifesting ultimate
reality in nature. The process is direct, immediate, and spontaneous. The curve
simply reflects its curves, the line its straightness. The flower blooms in the
Spring and the moon at night shines upon the lake. To see unity within
multiplicity is to see infinite potentialities manifested in each particularity.
This insight is the Taoist contribution to the understanding of creativity.
Chuang Tzu gives us an illustration of this idea in his example of the centipede.
From the relative point of view, the insect, of course, does have its hundred or
so different legs. But from a higher point of view, there is a unity of
multiplicity. The coordinated movement of all the legs is a manifestation
of unity. From this unity we see the centipede as a whole creature. All has
penetrated into one and the movement of all, the legs, is an interpenetration of
the one into all.
Lao Tzu says:
Obtaining the One, Heaven was made clear.
Obtaining the One, Earth was made stable.
Obtaining the One, the Gods were made spiritual.
Obtaining the One, the valley was made full.
Obtaining the One, all things lived and grew.21
The One which is possessed by Heaven, Earth, the Gods and all things is the same
One, the Tao. In other words, they all embrace the same One, the Tao; and the same
One, the Tao, embraces and pervades them all. What is this Tao? According to James
Legge, the first English writer who endeavored to give a distinct account of
Taoism was Archdeacon Hardwick, while he held the office of Christian Advocate in
the University of Cambridge. He thought that "the center of the system founded by
Lao Tzu had been awarded to some energy or power resembling the `Nature' of modern
speculation."22 However, according to tradition we often contrast nature with man.
Nature in one sense is conquered by man and in another sense conquers man. The
dichotomy of nature and man implies their opposition (and mutual destructiveness).
Yet, according to Taoist philosophy, while separating himself from nature, man is
identified with nature. Instead of considering man objectively in opposition to
nature, the Taoist task is to make man retreat into himself and see what he finds
in the depths of his being. Thus, the problem of nature is to search for the truth
within man himself. In Chuang Tzu's expression it is the return to p'o or the
uncarved block. He says: "It is because they had the quality of the uncarved block
that they did not lose their original nature." In this uncarved simplicity we see
the free movement of nature."23 In the remote past in China there was an old poem
which may serve to illustrate this:
When the sun rises I work in the field.
When the sun sets I have my rest.
I dig a well and I drink.
I till the soil and I eat.
What has the imperial power to do with me?24
The author of this poem is unknown, but things with him are just as natural as the
water murmuring in the stream and the wind passing through the trees. His
experience of pure objectivity is pure subjectivity; they are totally identified.
As Nishida says:
To experience means to know events precisely as they are. It means to cast away
completely one's own inner workings, and to know in accordance with events. Since
people usually include some thought when speaking of experience, the word `pure'
is here used to signify a condition of true experience itself without adding the
least thought or reflection. . . . Thus pure experience is synonymous with direct
experience.52
This kind of direct experience may be related to a traditional Chinese Buddhist
saying:
Do not think of good, do not think of evil, when no
thoughts arise, let me see your primary face.26
This primary face indicates the mind before the emergence of the dichotomy of good
and evil. It is pure subjectivity, free from the duality of active and passive. It
is called the "original mind" by Chinese Buddhists and Neo-Confucianists. When one
is aware of one's original mind, one sees one's own nature, or in Chinese: ming
hsin chien hsing. To be aware of one's original mind and to see one's own nature
has been the task pursued by Chinese philosophers for more than a thousand years.
Hui-neng, the sixth patriarch of Ch'an Buddhism, once said:
The person who sees into his own true nature is free when he stands as well as
when he does not stand. He is free both in going and coming. There is nothing
which retards him, nothing which hinders him. Responding to the situation he acts
accordingly, responding to the words, he answers accordingly. He expresses himself
taking on all forms, but he is never removed from his self-nature. . . . That is
called seeing into one's true nature.27
What has been said by Hui-neng, that we are to see the nature of man through self-
identity and contradiction, also is, as I have pointed out in this lecture, the
real essence of Taoist philosophy.
University of Hawaii
Honolulu, Hawaii
NOTES
* The essence of Tao was first discussed by Lao Tzu (6th century B.C., China), in
the Tao Te Ching or Canon of the Way and its Attainment. This ancient Chinese
script was first introducedto the Western world in 1788. This was in the form of a
Latin translation which was brought to the Royal Society in London. In 1816, when
Hegel lectured on the History of Eastern Philosophy he mentioned that he himself
had seen the text of the Tao Te Ching in Vienna. According to him the meaning of
Tao `is nothing, emptiness, the altogether undetermined, the abstract universal,
and this is called Tao or Reason . . . it is the highest existence, all
determinations are abolished, and by the merely abstract Being nothing has been
expressed excepting this new negation only in an affirmative form.' (Hegel's
Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Vol. I, p. 124, translated by E.S. Haldane)
Hegel's interpretation of the meaning of Tao was based upon the Western
philosophical tradition, according to which Tao is Reason or abstract Being. In
this paper the interpretation of Tao is different from that of Hegel. This paper
is a further development of the meaning of Tao which was originally presented at
the International Congress of Philosophy in Venice and later expounded in my
works, Creativity and Taoism and Tao: A New Way of Thinking, both of which are
published by Harper and Row.
1. Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), p.
40.
2. Chung yuan Chang, Tao: A New Way of Thinking (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), p.
7.
3. G. Hegel, Encyclopedia of Philosophy, trans. by G.E. Mueller (New York:
Philosophical Library, 1959), p. 118.
4. Chang, Tao, p. 7.
5. T. Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism (London: G. Allen & Unwin, Ltd.,
1970), p. 302.
6. Kitaro Nishida, A Study of Good, trans. by V.H. Viglielmo (Japan: Printing
Bureau Japanese Govt., 1960), p. iii.
7. Kitaro Nishida, Fundamental Problems of Philosophy, trans. by David Dilworth
(Tokyo: Sophia Univ., 1970), p. 204.
8. The Works of Chuang Tzu, Chuan 2.
9. Chou Tun Yi, Explanation of the Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate.
10. Chang, Tao, p. 118.
11. The Works of Chuang Tzu, Chuan 25.
12. Chang, Tao, p. 35.
13. The Works of Chuang Tzu, Chuan 2.
14. Ibid., Chuan 23. See also C.Y. Chang, Creativity and Taoism (New York: Harper
& Row, 1963), p. 35.
15. M. Heidegger, On Time and Being (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), p. 79.
16. M. Heidegger, Existence and Being (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1949), p. 331.
17. Chang, Creativity, p. 77.
18. The Works of Chuang Tzu, Chuan 12.
19. Ibid., Chuan 9.
20. Ibid., Chuan 8.
21. Chang, Tao, p. 109.
22. James Legge, The Texts of Taoism (New York: Julian Press, 1959), p. 59.
23. The Works of Chuang Tzu, Chuan 9.
24. Chang, Creativity, pp. 171-72.
25. Nishida, A Study of Good, p. 1.
26. Hui-neng, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch.
27. Ibid.
CHAPTER XII
HEIDEGGER: THE MAN-NATURE PROBLEMATIC
THOMAS A. FAY
The formulation of the problematic as `Man and Nature' would appear to rest upon
some very large assumptions; hence, care must be taken lest it prejudice the
question. Various suggestions have been made towards a more adequate formulation.
Professor Chen noted four different senses in which nature has historically been
understood; Professor Deutsch suggested that `Man-Nature' (hyphenated) might be
more adequate; Professor Smith spoke of `Man in Nature'; and Professor Parsons,
`Nature standing over against man'.
As a way of reflecting on this galaxy of problems, I shall take as my point of
departure the phenomenological perspectives of man as they appear in the thought
of Martin Heidegger, and this for two reasons. First, whether we agree with it and
find it stimulating to our own reflections as even Wittgenstein did,1 or regard it
as nonsense as did Carnap,2 it represents one of the most powerful analyses of
man-in-the-world which has emerged from twentieth century thought. My second
reason for choosing Heidegger is that, of Western thinkers, his thought represents
one of the most promising starting points for dialogue with the East. For example,
his analysis of das Nichts, the Nothing, is very close to the Buddhist conception
of emptiness as well as to the Taoist concept of non-Being, so excellently
explored in the paper of Professor Chang.
The problem on which we are reflecting then, is man and nature and we are using
Heidegger's thought as the heuristic device with which to probe it. Now Heidegger,
for his part, would attempt to cut completely across the lines which allow this to
become a problem at all. He attempts to do this by the phenomenological analysis
of man which was undertaken especially in Sein und Zeit.3 The result which this
phenomenological analysis of man yielded was to disclose man as Dasein, that is,
the `There of Being' and also as in-der-Welt-Sein, to-be-in-the-world. In terms of
our problematic of man and world these two notions have consequences of the very
greatest importance. But why should this be so? The basic thrust of Heidegger's
thought, at least since Sein und Zeit, has been an implacable struggle against the
subject-object dichotomy introduced by Descartes,4 from whose time man has been
regarded as a subject.5 Descartes had sought for an indubitable foundation upon
which to erect his philosophic structure, the fundamentum inconcussum veritatis,6
which he located in the cogito-sum. As a consequence man was conceived purely from
the perspective of subjectivity; he was primarily a res cogitans7 or thinking
thing who, as subject, stands apart from a world now composed of objects which are
his diametric opposites, res extensae.8
Heidegger has been locked in a struggle against the conception of man.9 No remedy
such as humanism or a revamped anthropology applied to man ab extra can adequately
ameliorate the situation of contemporary man. For this, he must so conceive of
himself and his relationship to his world that he will find an appropriate
dwelling place.11 Heidegger attempts to re-think the nature of man12 from the
standpoint of his involvement in Being. `The essence (Wesen) and the manner of
human being (Menschseins) can only be determined from the essence (Wesen) of
Being.'13 To characterize this involvement he chose the term Da-sein, the `There'
of Being, the scene of disclosure, openness to Being.14 To break away from the
Cartesian tradition which had split man off from his world, he also designated man
as being-in-the-world, in-der-Welt-sein.15 According to Heidegger, the Greek
definition of man as rational animal16 is not incorrect, but is totally
inadequate.
The Greeks . . . in the pre-philosophic as well as in the philosophic Dasein
interpretation defined the essence of man as zoon logon exon. The later
interpretation of this definition of man in the sense of rational animal, rational
living being, is indeed not false, but it covers up the phenomenal foundation from
which this definition of Dasein is taken.17
It defines man in terms of animalitas rather than by the prerogative which is
uniquely his, his comprehension of being. `The characteristic feature of the
Dasein which man is, is determined through the comprehension of Being.'18 It is
this comprehension of Being (Seinsverstandnis) which constitutes Dasein's
ontological structure. `The comprehension of Being, in which we always
antecedently move, belongs in the final analysis to the essential constitution of
Dasein itself.'19 This is the foundation of all further knowledge.20 Even the most
casual dealings with beings must somehow presuppose that we have grasped what
Being is, else we would not know that they are.
We move always within an antecedent comprehension of Being. . . . We do not know
what Being means. But already when we ask, `What is "Being",' we hold ourselves
within a comprehension of the `is', although we cannot conceptually fix what `is'
means.21
This first comprehension of Being, however, is vague and undermined;22 it is not
grasped by a concept.23 Somehow man has a pre-ontological comprehension of Being24
which, though vague, is still an indisputable fact.25 It is implied in every
statement, even in every word we utter.26 It is not, however, for all of its
primordiality, grasped in a clear concept; if it were so grasped, it would then be
a being, rather than Being itself.27 In addition to being nonconceptual and
prelogical (pre-ontological), the truth of Being thus comprehended is also pre-
predicative,28 that is, it must first have been achieved before any judgments or
propositions can be formulated.29 Every assertion, then, from the standpoint of
ontological priority is strictly speaking, derivative.30 Thus, the proposition
with which logic is concerned may be one seat of truth, but it is certainly not
the only one or even the most basic.31
But could one not object that in all of this insistence on a pre-logical, pre-
conceptual grasp of Being in order to interpret Being Heidegger has been
flagrantly guilty of the logical fallacy of the circulus vitiosus, that he
presupposes a knowledge of what he is attempting to explain.32 He anticipates this
objection33 and concedes that in an existential analytic the circular movement can
never be avoided34 for the very good reason that the ontological structure of
Dasein itself is circular.
The `circular' character of understanding belongs to the structure of sense and
this phenomenon is rooted in the existential continuation of Dasein, in
understanding which interprets. A being, which as to-be-in-the-world, is concerned
with its own Being, has an ontologically circular structure.35
Because of its very structure, or to be more precise forestructure,36 Dasein is in
its ontological constitution, a radical capacity for Being. `Comprehension,
according to its existential sense, is Dasein's capacity for Being. . . .'37 The
circularity, far from being an imperfection, is the very essence of Dasein's
radical capacity to comprehend Being.38 In the final analysis Dasein's grasp of
Being is an irreducible fact, but certainly not a gratuitous assumption.39
What Heidegger is attempting to do here is to overcome the scission of subject and
object, of man from world; thus he conceives of man as existing in a profound
unity with the truth of Being.40 Being is not to be reduced to a product of his
reason (Vorstelhung), or produced by his activity as a subject. `Comprehension of
Being, as here understood, never means that man, as a subject, possesses
representation.'41 Dasein's nature is to stand in the truth of Being, to be a
field of openness for the clearing of Being. `Comprehension of Being means to say
that man according to his essence stands in the openness of the project of
Being.'42
Being addresses a command which is an evocation43 to authentic thought, to which
Dasein responds, or with which he enters into dialogue. `From ancient times in our
history thought has meant: to respond (entsprechen) to the hail (Geheiss) of
Being. . . .'44 This is not thought in the sense of a calculation of possible ways
of manipulating objects,45 but rather a letting be of Being, as allowing of Being
to reveal itself.46 Being needs its Da if it is to be illumined in such a way that
it can appear.
But man is pressed into such a manner of being (ein solches Dasein), cast into the
need of such Being, because the overpowering as such, in order to appear as
prevailing needs a place of openness. The essence (Wesen) of human being
(Menschseins) only reveals itself to us when it is understood from the standpoint
of this need which is the need of Being itself.47
Dasein is needed by Being in order that the voice which Being speaks48 and which
Dasein alone can comprehend be expressed and heard in authentic language which
will hold it in openness.49 Being deputizes Dasein to work, especially through
authentic thought and solicitude for language, on the building of a world that
will be a suitable dwelling place for human beings. This dwelling place which man
needs is a place in which he can exist. It is a clearing, an open place; and since
he is an `ex-isting' being it is a clearing where Being can manifest itself. But
Dasein is, as it were, `co-sent' (Beschickten) with Being. Being clears a place
for itself through Da-sein. Da-sein is the `there' or the field where, and by
which, Being is `dis-closed'. Dasein is, then, Being's deputy (Beschickten), in
that Dasein helps bring to pass a clearing for Being. All of these notions are
expressed in the very rich text which follows.
As the deputies co-sent (Beschickten) by Being in the destining of Being (Geschick
des Seins) we stand, and indeed according to our essence (Wesen), in the clearing
of Being. But we do not just stand around idly with no claim on us in this
clearing; rather we stand in it as ones claimed by the Being of being. As standers
in the clearing of Being we are deputies of Being (Beschickten) set into a space
freed for temporal activity (Zeit-Spiel-Raum). This means: we are needed in this
field (Spielraum) and for it, needed to build and cultivate the clearing of Being,
and this is to be understood in the manifold sense of: to preserve in trust.50
It is, then, Dasein's nature to stand in the truth of Being and by `co-responding'
to the voice of Being to help to bring to pass the truth of Being which is held in
the openness of its disclosure by language. Hence, language is the only
appropriate abode for man, wherein as an existing being, i.e., a being who can
grasp Being in its truth, he may dwell. `Rather language is the house of Being and
only by dwelling in language can man ex-ist (eksistinert) since in caring for the
truth of Being he also belongs to it.'51
Being sends itself to Dasein, and in sending itself clears52 and sets in order the
place of its clearing.53 But for the clearing to be such it requires a being who
can perceive the light of the clearing, protect and care for it; following
Heidegger's own metaphor, it stands in need of forest guardians (Waldhuter).54
According to his conception, man is not the despot, but the shepherd, of Being.55
He is claimed56 and needed to Being: `The essence of man is assigned to the truth,
because the truth needs man.'57
Without Being's sending itself and clearing for itself a place of manifestation,
there would be no revelation of truth, language, or history. Without a being
uniquely open to the reception of Being's sending of itself, capable of being
attuned to its silent voice and, have grasped it, of holding it in openness in
language,58 there would also be no revelation, language or history. Being and
Dasein stand in need of each other.59 Still in the sending of itself, in the
revelation of itself as truth, the initiative is always Being's.60
In this conception it can be seen that man has a unique dignity. He is not one
entity among many, albeit different from the animal in virtue of his power of
ratio. Rather he alone of all beings is open to Being, is the place where the
truth of Being is revealed,61 and can comprehend Being in its truth. `If the
comprehension of Being did not come to pass man could not be the being which he
is, even though he were fitted out with other powers, however wonderful.'62
Thus, he no longer views his relationship to Being, to language, to thought, to
the world in terms of so many instruments of exploitation.63 From this perspective
he is the guardian of Being's clearing,64 rather than a despotic and sometimes
capricious master. He has, to use Heidegger's expression, gained the poverty of
the shepherd.65
In conclusion, the phenomenological analysis of man which Heidegger has
undertaken, which resulted in his conceiving of man as Dasein and in-der-Welt-
sein, is most helpful to the Man-Nature problematic with which we are concerned.
By these two related insights Heidegger attempts not only to bind man and nature
so closely together that the `and' in `Man and Nature' becomes superfluous, but to
undercut completely the position which makes possible the development of the
problem.
St. John's University
New York, USA
NOTES
1. On this point see the very interesting remarks of Wittgenstein in Friedrich
Waismann: Wittgenstein und der Wiener Kreis, ed. B.F. McGuinness (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1967), pp. 68-69.
2. For what is perhaps the best known of Carnap's criticisms of Heidegger see
especially his article in Erkenntnis, II (1932), pp. 219-241.
3. The following editions of Heidegger's works and symbols will be used. Sein und
Zeit (8th ed.; Tubingen, Niemeyer, 1957), SZ. Holzwege (3rd ed.; Frankfurt:
Klostermann, 1957), HW. Einfulrung in die Metaphysik (2nd ed.; Tubingen: Niemeyer,
1958), EM. Uber den Humanismus (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1947), HB. Kant und das
Problem der Metaphysik (2nd ed.; Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1951), KM. Vom Wesen der
Wahrheit (3rd ed.; Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1954), WW. Was ist Metaphysik (7th ed.;
Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1949), WM. Identitat und Differenz (Pfullingen: Neske,
1957), ID. Vorträge und Aufsätze (Pfullingen: Neske, 1954), VA Der Satz vom Grund
(2nd ed.; Bern: Franke, 1953), SG. Was heisst Denken (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1961),
WD.
4. Johannes Hollenbach, S.J., Sein und Gewissen (Baden-Baden: Grimm, 1954), p. 22.
See especially the excellent study by Paul Ricoeur on the meaning and scope of
Heidegger's critique of subject-ism in the essay, "The Critique of Subjectivity
and the Cogito in the Philosophy of Heidegger," in Heidegger and the Quest for
Truth, ed. with Introduction by Manfred Frings (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968),
pp. 62-75.
5. SZ, pp. 22, 45-46; HW, pp. 91-92. Cf. also William Richardson, S.J., "Kant and
the Later Heidegger," Phenomenology in America (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1967),
p. 132.
6. SZ pp. 24.
7. SZ, pp. 24, 25.
8. SZ, pp. 66, 89-101.
9. William Richardson, Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought (The Hague:
Nijhoff, 1963), p. 59, note. Cf. also Werner Marx, "Heidegger's New Conception of
Philosophy: The Second Phase of Existentialism," Social Research, XXII (1955),
451-474.
10. Heidegger makes this point clear in a lecture given during the winter semester
1937-38. The fundamental perspective from which man must be viewed is in his
relation to Being. This is contained in his letter to Richardson, Though
Phenomenology . . . , p. xxi.
11. HB, p. 19.
12. SZ, pp. 196-197.
13. The translations are my own. I have provided the German text for comparison
and this has also allowed me to handle the translation more freely, rendering what
seemed to me to be the best sense of the text. `Das Wesen und die Weise des
Menschseins kann sich dann aber nur aus dem Wesen des Seins bestimmen.' (EM, p.
106).
14. SZ, p. 12; HB, pp. 15, 24, 35.
15. SZ, pp. 63-89, 102-130, 350-367.
16. SZ, p. 25.
17. `die Griechen . . . in der vorphilosophischen sowohl wie in der
philosophischen Daseinsauslegung das Wesen des Menchen bestimmten als zoon
logonexom. Die spatere Auslegung dieser Definition des Menschen in Sinne von
animal phanomenalen Boden, dem diese Definition des Daseins entnommen ist.' SZ, p.
165. Cf. also SZ, p. 48; HB, pp. 12, 13, 19, 21-22; VA pp. 72-74, 91, 94-95; SG,
pp. 79, 126, 210; WD, pp. 24-28, 30, 66, 95-96; ID, p. 24; HW, pp. 60-61; EM, pp.
108, 134.
18. `Der Grundzug des Daseins, das der Mensch ist, wird durch das Seinsverstandnis
bestimmt.' SG, p. 146.
19. `Seinsverstandnis, in dem wir uns immer schon bewegen, und das am Ende zur
Wesensverfassung des Deseins selbst gehort,' SZ, p. 8 (Heidegger's emphasis).
20. SZ, p. 333.
21. "Wir bewegen uns immer schon in einen Seinsverstandnis. . . . Wir wissen
nicht, was `Sein' besagt. Aber schon wenn wir fragen: `was ist `Sein?" halten wir
uns in einem Verstandnis des `ist' ohne dass wir begrifflich fixieren konnten, was
das "ist" bedeutet.' SZ, p. 5; see especially SZ, pp. 6, 7, 51, 152; KM. pp. 204,
205.
22. SZ, p. 5.
23. SZ, pp. 4, 8, 315.
24. SZ, p. 197; see also SZ, pp. 15, 150, 196, 197, 314.
25. `Dieses durchschnittliche und vage Seinsverstandnis ist ein Faktum.' SZ, p. 5
(Heidegger's emphasis).
26. SZ, pp. 6-7; EM, p. 62; KM, p. 205. See also Fridolin Wiplinger, Wahrheit und
Geschichtlichkeit (Freiburg/Munchen: Alber, 1961), p. 151.
27. SZ, pp. 4, 5, 6; EM, p. 67.
28. SZ, p. 359.
29. SZ, p. 157; WG, pp. 12-12.
30. SZ, pp. 153-154. See also WW, pp. 12, 15, 16, 17, 25.
31. SZ, pp. 32-34, 153-160, 213-219, 223-326; WW, pp. 11-12; WG, pp. 11-15; N, II,
pp. 74-75.
32. SZ, p. 152.
33. SZ, pp. 5, 7, 152, 153, 314.
34. SZ, p. 315.
35. `Der "Zirkel" im Verstehen gehort zur Struktur des Sinnes, welches Phanomen in
der existensialen Verfassung des Daseins, im auslegenden Verstehen verwurzelt ist.
Sciendes, dem es als In-der-Welt-sein um Sein selbst geht, hat eine ontologische
Zirkelstruktur.' SZ, p. 153. Cf. also Albert Chapelle, L'Ontologie
phenomenologique de Heidegger (Paris: Editions Universitaire, 1962), pp. 132-133,
151-152; Hans Georg Gadamer, `Vom Zirkel des Verstehena', Martin Heidegger zum
Siebzigsten Geburtstag (Pfullingen: Neske, 1959), pp. 24-34.
36. SZ, pp. 152-153.
37. `Verstehen seinem existenzialen Sinn nach das Seinskonnen des Daseins ist. . .
.' SZ, p. 153.
38. SZ, pp. 12, 314, 315, 337.
39. SZ, p. 5.
40. EM, p. 89.
41. `Seinsverstandnis meint hier niemals, der Mensch besitze als Subjekt eine
subjektive Vorstellung vom Sein und Dieses, das Sein, sei eine blosse
Vorstellung.' SG, p. 146.
42. `Seinsverstandnis besagt dass der Mensch seinem Wesen nach im Offenen des
Entworfes des Seins steht. . . .' SG, p. 146.
43. Following the very suggestive translation of the word `heissen' by Richardson,
Through Phenomenology. . . . SG, p. 596.
44. `Von altersher besagt unserer Geschichte Denken so viel wie: dem Geheiss des
Seins entsprechen. . . .' SG, p. 147.
45. G, pp. 14-15; WM, pp. 47-48.
46. WW, pp. 14, 15, 18; VA, p. 211; WD, p. 123.
47. "Der Mensch is aber in ein solches Da-sein genotigt, in die Not solchen Seins
geworfen, well das Uberwaltigende als ein solches, um waltend zu erschcinen, die
Statte der Offenheit fur es braucht. Von dieser durch das Sein selbst ernotigten
Not her verstanden, eroffinet sich uns erst das Wesen des Menschseins." EM, p.
124.
48. N, II, p. 484. Cf. also WM, p. 50; WP, p. 36.
49. HH, p. 29.
50. `Als die im Geschick des Seins vom Sein Beschickten stehen wir, und zwar
unserem Wesen mach, in einer Lichtung des Seins. Aber wir stehen in dieser
Lichtung keineswegs unangesprochen herum, sondern stehen im inr als die vom Sein
des Seienden in dessen Anspruch Genommenen. Wir sind als die in der Lichtung des
Seins Stehenden die Beschickten, die in den Zeit-Spiel-Raum Eingernaumten. Dies
sagt: Wir sind die in diesem Spielraum und fur ihn Gehrauchten, gebraucht, an det
Lichtung des Seins zu bauen und zu bilden, im weiten vielfaltigen Sinne: sie zu
verwahren.' SG, p. 146.
51. `Vielmehr ist die Sprache das Haus des Seins, darin wohend der Mensch ek-
sistiert, indem er der Wahrheit des seins, sie hutend, gehort.' HB, pp. 21-22; cf.
also HH, pp. 19, 25.
52. HB, p. 25; WM,pp. 14-15.
53. "Sein schickt sich dem Menschen zu, idem es lichtend dem Seienden als solchem
einen Zeit-Spiel-Raum einraunt." SG, p. 129. On the meaning of Being's sending
itself and clearing a place for itself see SG, pp. 108-109: 'Dem "schicken" besagt
ursprunglich: bereiten, ordnen, jegliches dorthin bringen, wohin es gehort, daher
auch einraumen und einweisen; ein Haus, eine Kammer beschicken heisst: in der
rechten Ordnung, eingeraunt und aufgeraumt halten.'
54. HW, Prologue.
55. `Der Mensch ist nicht der Herr des Seienden. Der Mensch ist der Hirt des
Seins.' HB, p. 29.
56. N, II, p. 484.
57. `Das Menschenwesen ist der Wahrheit ubereignet, weil die Wahrheit den Menschen
braucht.' G. p. 65.
58. HW, pp. 60-61.
59. G, p. 65.
60. HB, p. 19. Cf. also Ingeborg Koza, Das Problem des Grundes in Heidegger's
Auseinandersetzung mit Kant (Ratingen bei Dusseldorf: Henn, 1967), pp. 24-25.
61. WM, p. 14. Cf. also HB, p. 20; ED, p. 23.
62. `Geschanhe das Verstehen von Sein nicht, der Mensch vermochte als das Seiende,
das er ist, nie zu sein, und ware er auch mit noch so wunderbaren Vermogen
ausgestattet.' KM, p. 205.
63. HD, p. 35; WM, p. 49; G, pp. 19-20. Cf. also The Later Heidegger and Theology,
ed. James Robinson and John Cobb (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), pp. 20, 29.
64. WD, 85. Cf. also EM, p. 108.
65. HB, p. 29.1.
CHAPTER XIII
MAN AND NATURE
IN CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM
MASAO ABE
MAN, NATURE AND `NATURALNESS'
`Has man as man and the finitude of man in its positive aspect ever been taken
seriously into consideration by Buddhist scholars? The extension of shujo
(sentient being-hood) to man, animals and even to everything, as it is found in
Dogen, makes this doubtful.'1 This question raised by Hans Waldenfels leads us to
an examination of the problem of `man and nature' in Buddhism and of the Buddhist
idea of `Naturalness' or jinen.
In the Buddhist way of salvation it is true that man is not simply or exclusively
taken as `man'. Man is rather taken as a member of the class of `sentient beings'
or `living beings' and further, as clearly seen in Dogen, even as belonging among
`beings', living and non-living. This presents a striking contrast to Christianity
in which salvation is almost exclusively focused on man as `man'. In Christianity
it is taught that man alone, unlike other creatures, was created in the imago dei
and thereby he alone can respond to the Word of God. The fall and redemption of
nature takes place through and with that of man. This homocentric nature of
Christian salvation is inseparably connected with Christian personalism in which
God is believed to reveal himself as personal and in which man's encounter with
God in terms of the I-Thou relationship is essential.
In Buddhism, however, there is no exact equivalent of this homocentrism and
personalism of the Christian sort. The problem of birth and death is regarded in
Buddhism as the most fundamental problem for human existence and its solution is
the primary concern in Buddhist salvation. However, birth-death (shoji) is not
necessarily taken up as a problem merely within the `human' dimension. It is
rather dealt with as a generation-extinction (shometsu) problem within the total
`living' dimension. This indicates the Buddhist conviction that, without
transcending the generation-extinction nature common to all living beings, man's
birth-death problem cannot be basically solved. Thus, it is in a non-homocentric
dimension, the dimension common to all living beings, that the Buddhist ideas both
of birth-and-death, i.e., samsara and emancipation from birth-and-death, i.e.,
nirvana, are to be grasped.
Further, by going beyond the `living' dimension to that of `being', Buddhism
develops its non-homocentric nature to its utmost limits. This dimension of
`beings', including both living and non-living beings, is no longer only that of
generation-extinction but of appearance-disappearance (kimetsu) or being-nonbeing
(umu). The `living' dimension, though transhomocentric, is of a `life-centric'
nature that excludes non-living beings. The `being' dimension, however, embraces
everything in the universe, transcending even the wider-than-human `life-centric'
horizons. Thus, the `being' dimension is limitless, beyond any sort of `centrism',
and is most radical precisely in terms of its non-homocentric nature. It is this
most radical non-homocentric and cosmological dimension that provides the genuine
basis for man's salvation in Buddhism.2
According to Buddhism man's samsara, i.e., succession births and deaths, is
understood to be inescapable and irremediable unless one transcends homocentrism
and bases his existence on the cosmological foundation. In other words, not by
doing away with the birth-death nature peculiar to man nor by doing away with the
generation-extinction nature common to all living beings, but only by doing away
with the appearance-disappearance nature, i.e., the being-nonbeing nature common
to everything, can man's birth-and-death problem be properly and completely
solved. Herein one can see a profound realization of that transitoriness which is
common to man and to all other beings, living or non-living. This realization,
when profoundly grasped, entails a strong sense of solidarity between man and
nature. The story of a monk who, looking at the fall of a withered leaf from a
tree, awakened to the transiency of the total universe, including himself, and
entered the priesthood, bespeaks the compelling power of such a realization.
When transiency, as such, is fully realized and is thereby transcended in the
depths of one's own existence, then the boundless dimension of jinen or
`Naturalness', is which both man and nature are equally enlightened and
respectively disclose themselves in their original nature, is opened up for him.
It is for this reason that referring to such familiar Buddhism phrases as `All the
trees and herbs, and lands attain Buddhahood' and `Mountains and rivers and the
earth all disclose their dharma-kaya (their essential Buddhahood),' I wrote
earlier: `Indeed, unless all the trees and herbs and lands attain Buddhahood
together with me, I shall not have attained Buddhahaood in the true sense of the
world.'3 Here, the non-homocentric, cosmological emphasis of Buddhism is very
conspicuous.
The non-homocentric nature of Buddhism and its idea of jinen, however, do not
imply, as is often mistakenly suggested, any denial of the significance of
individualized human existence. In fact, it is precisely the other way around. The
very act of transcending homocentrism is possible only to a human being who is
fully self-conscious. In other words, it is impossible, apart from self-
consciousness on the part of human existence, to go beyond `human' and `living'
dimensions and to base one's existence on the `being' dimension. Man alone can be
aware of universal transitoriness as such. Accordingly, the facet of
transitoriness, common to all beings, turns into a problem for him, though not for
other beings, and one to be solved by him as man. Now this self-consciousness is
actualized only in an individual self, in one's own self. Further, the problem of
birth and death is in its very nature the subjective problem par excellence with
which everyone must cope by himself, alone. In this sense Buddhism is concerned in
the deepest sense with the individual self, with the person, i.e., man as man.
In Mahayana Buddhism, as a preamble to the Gatha `The Threefold Refuge' the
following verse is usually recited:
Hard is it to be born into human life,
We now live it.
Difficult is it to hear the teaching of the Buddha,
We now hear it.
If we do not deliver ourselves in this present life,
No hope is there ever to cross the sea of birth and death.
Let us all together, with the truest heart,
Take refuge in the Three Treasures!
The first and second lines express the joy of being born in human form during the
infinite series of varied transmigrations. The third and fourth lines reveal
gratitude for being blessed with the opportunity of meeting with the teaching of
the Buddha--something which very rarely happens even among men. Finally, the fifth
and sixth lines confess to a realization that so long as one exists as a man he
can and must awaken to his own Buddha nature by practicing the teachings of the
Buddha; otherwise he may transmigrate on through samsara endlessly. Herein it can
be seen that Buddhism takes most seriously into consideration human existence in
its positive and unique aspect. Thus, in this sense one may say that Buddhism also
is homocentric.
However, for man to transcend homocentrism within his own individuality means for
him to `die' in the death of his own ego, for only through the death of his own
ego is the cosmological dimension, the dimension of jinen, opened up to him. Only
in that moment does he awaken to his true Self by being enlightened to the reality
that nothing in the universe is permanent.
As regards the above discussion someone may raise this question: Does doing away
with the distinction of birth and death, for instance, in the liberated
consciousness actually `do away' with these `realities' themselves? By realizing
impermanence as the essence of everything whatsoever is one thereby freed from its
bondage, not only psychologically but also ontologically? To answer this question
leads us to the crux of the problem. `Doing away' with the distinction of birth
and death means overcoming the dualistic view in which birth and death are
understood as two different realities. From what position does one understand
birth and death as two different realities, from the standpoint of life or death?
Since it is impossible for one really to distinguish life and death as two
realities by taking one of the two as his own standpoint, it must be done from a
third position which is somewhat transcendent of both life and death. But such a
third position is unreal because it is a position made by conceptualization
through looking at life and death from a position external to them. Rather, one
comes to Reality only by overcoming such a third position and its outcome, i.e.,
the `realities' of life and death. In this overcoming, realizer and the realized
are not two but one. Ultimate Reality is realized only in this way.
Strictly speaking, however, to attain Reality one should transcend not only the
duality of life and death but also the wider dualities, i.e., the duality of
being-nonbeing does one attain Reality, because there is no wider duality than
that of being-nonbeing. Herein there is no `centrism' of any sort at all and the
limitless dimension of transitoriness common to all beings is clearly realized as
such. The oneness of realizer and the realized is attained only through the
realization of this universal transitoriness. Situating one's existence in the
boundless dimension of being-nonbeing one realizes universal transitoriness as the
only Reality, including himself in this realization. Reality is realized by him,
who himself is a realizer of the Reality. This is an ontological, not
psychological, awareness par excellence.
In Buddhism the non-homocentric and cosmological aspect is absolutely inseparable
from its existential and personalistic aspect. Indeed, in Buddhism, one can be
genuinely existential and personal only when his existence is based on the
boundless cosmological dimension which transcends the human one. But this
cosmological dimension is opened up, not objectively, but subjectively through
one's existential realization of the absolutely universal transitoriness. The
mediating point, or place of confrontation, of the cosmological and the personal
aspects is the death of one's ego.
Buddhist salvation is thus nothing other than awakening to Reality through the
death of ego, i.e., the existential realization of the transiency common to all
things in the universe, seeing the universe really as it is. In this realization
one is liberated from undue attachment to things and ego-self, humanity and the
world, and is then able to live and work creatively in the world. `Awakening' in
Buddhism is never even for one instant ever so slightly other than, or separated
from, the realization of universal transitoriness. The so-called Buddha nature,
which in Buddhism is said to be inherent in everyone and everything as well, is
simply another term for the realization of universal transitoriness or jinen in
which every one and every thing disclosed itself as it truly is in itself. It is
from this realization of jinen that the Buddhist life of wisdom and compassion
begins.
MAN'S FINITUDE AND FAITH IN GOD
The above-mentioned question, raised by H. Waldenfels, concerning the Buddhist
understanding of man and his finitude is, I hope, answered in the preceding
section. `The extension of shujo (sentient being-hood) to man, animals and even to
everything,'4 as Waldenfels expresses it, should not imply a mere one-dimensional
expansion of one's standpoint beyond the human sphere, but, as stated above, a
transcendence of homocentrism in the direction of the cosmological dimension
through the realization of absolutely universal transiency. Moreover, this kind of
transcendence can be achieved only by man, who alone of all beings is self-
conscious. The transiency common to everything in the universe is clearly
apprehended as what it is by man along through his uniquely subjective
realization, In this sense, `The extension of shujo to man, animals, and even to
everything' does not obscure the finitude of man but, on the contrary, makes it
clear and unambiguous.
However, Father Waldenfels' question concerning the Buddhist understanding of
man's finitude seems to me to be intrinsically related to another important aspect
of our subject, namely, the issue of the direction of transcendence in Buddhism
and Christianity.
In Christianity man's finitude is realized over against divine justice and divine
love. `No human being will be justified in his (God's) sight by works of the law'5
and `they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in
Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by
faith.'6 Man's finitude in the light of God's righteousness is realized as `death
which is the wages of sin.'7 Accordingly, faith implies the death of the `old man'
as well as the birth of the `new man' in Christ.
Insofar as the death of the human ego is essential to salvation no distinction can
be made between Christian conversion and Buddhist awakening. In Christianity,
however, because death is `the wages of sin' it is grasped within the context of
man's personalistic and responsible relationship to God; due to his own injustice
and sin, man can never be saved by his own efforts but only through faith in
Christ, as the redeemer, i.e., the incarnation of God. The divine-human
relationship in Christianity is thus essentially vertical, with Christ, the
mediator, originating in God as the transcendent or supernatural reality. Thus, in
the last analysis it is an irreversibly vertical relationship with God as the
superior. Even the unio mystica in which the soul of man joins to God in an
indescribable experience is not altogether an exception. This irreversible
relationship between man and God is inseparably connected with man's deep
realization of his own finitude.
Viewed from this Christian standpoint the Buddhist understanding of man's finitude
may not appear to be clear enough. In Buddhism man's death is not seen as the
result of `sin' in relation to something transcendent or supernatural, such as
divine justice, but only as one instance of that transiency which is common to all
things whatsoever in the universe. Again, because Buddhism emphasized that
everyone can attain Buddha nature without a mediator, man's finitude seems not to
be properly realized.
Does this Buddhist position, however, indicate a failure in its understanding of
man's finitude? It is clear that Buddhism, especially its original form, did not
admit the supernatural in the form of God as creator, judge or ruler over the
universe. This is precisely because Buddhism is convinced that man's finitude is
so deep that it cannot be overcome even by the supernatural. Now this conviction
is a pivotal point for Buddhism, and in this connection Buddhists would put this
question to Christianity: Is man's finitude a kind of finitude which can be
overcome by faith in God? What is the ground for such a faith?
Dependent origination, a basic idea in Buddhism, indicates that there is no
irreversible relationship even between man and `God', nature and the supernatural,
the secular and the holy. This is especially clear in Mahayana Buddhism which
stresses soku as seen in its familiar phrasing `samsara as it is is nirvana'.
Accordingly, `Naturalness' or jinen is not something merely immanent nor a
counterconcept of the supernatural but implies the total negation of the
supernatural or transcendence. Thus, as I previously wrote:
It (Naturalness) does not simply mean naturalism as opposed to personalism. . . .
The naturalness meant by jinen is conceived to underlie both the natural and the
supernatural, creature and the creator, man and God, sentient beings and so-called
Buddhas, as their original common basis. In the jinen all things, including man,
nature and even the supernatural, are themselves, and as they are.8
Only in the realization of this kind of jinen can one become a real person, i.e.,
an awakened one who has compassion and wisdom for all things in the universe.
Christianity transcends man and nature in `God' who, being the God of love and
justice, is understood to be supernatural. The Christian loves his neighbor as
himself, in accordance with the first commandment to love God who is his saviour
from sin, with his whole heart. Buddhism, on the other hand, transcends man and
nature in the direction of `Naturalness' or jinen which is identical with Buddha
nature or suchness. Thus, the `direction' or `location' of transcendence is not
the same in Christianity and Buddhism, although the death of the human ego and the
realization of the new man are in each case essential to transcendence.
Nara University of Education
Nara, Japan
NOTES
1. Hans Waldenfels, "A Critical Appreciation," Japanese Religions, IV, No. 2
(1966), p. 23.
2. For more detailed discussion in this connection see Masao Abe, "Dogen on Buddha
Nature," Eastern Buddhist, New Series, IV, No. 1 (1971), pp. 28-71.
3. Masao Abe, "Buddhism and Christianity as the Problem of Today," Japanese
Religions, III, No. 3 (1963), p. 18.
4. Waldenfels, loc. cit.
5. 3 : 20.
6. Ibid., 3 : 24-25.
7. Ibid., 6 : 23.
8. Abe, loc. cit., "Buddhism and Christianity," p. 28.
A CHARACTERISTIC OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHIES
AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS
K. K. BANERJEE
This paper proposes to state and to interpret a characteristic of the philosophies
which flourished in India in ancient and medieval times and which are studied with
care even today, not only by orthodox scholars and Indologists, but also by avid
students of philosophy. The task is undertaken in the belief that it would make
the meeting of metaphysicians from different countries more meaningful and might
facilitate such dialogues as would be rewarding to those who study, teach and
write on these philosophies.
Two Misinterpretations
Students of these philosophies, though impressed by their astonishing richness,
find to their dismay that not infrequently they are either over or underestimated.
Some scholars seem to hold that almost all the interesting and intriguing
questions of philosophy were asked and finally answered by the ancient and
medieval thinkers of India, that the task today consists simply in understanding
them. Obviously, these scholars overestimate these philosophies. Others, in view
of the fact that science was either non-existent or in an incipient stage when
these philosophies flourished and also because they were heavily loaded with myths
and religion, think that they have ceased to be of importance and accordingly are
hardly worthy of being studied by the students of philosophy today. Clearly these
thinkers underestimate the philosophies.
An honest student of philosophy cannot accept either of these views. He cannot
fail to see that they not only are
not in keeping with facts, but are the results of a failure to appreciate the
critical character of philosophical activity that can exist and assume a form only
in a society. The thinkers of the first group are unrealistic in that the ancient
and the medieval philosophers did not do one kind of philosophy. Indeed, they
built mighty systems of philosophy, one of which was not compatible with another.
Accordingly, even if they had asked all the intriguing questions, they did not
give unanimous answers. There is no single philosophical system of ancient and
medieval India and the scholars who overestimate these philosophies are quite
aware of this. Nevertheless, it appears from what they say and write that the
system of philosophy they study, to which they subscribe and according to which,
in some cases at least, they govern their life even today is the only true
philosophical system, and that the other systems either articulate this truth in
varying degrees or are instrumental in understanding the glorious truth embodied
in the system they favor. In other words, in the opinion of these scholars, of all
the various systems of ancient and medieval times only one was a system of
philosophy, the others being just ideologies. No honest student of philosophy
should think in this way.
These scholars are also not quite aware of the fact that philosophizing is a
social phenomenon. Though it takes place in the superstructure of a society, it is
conditioned by the substructure. Hence, because in contemporary times the social
structure has changed, these philosophies, at least in the way in which they were
formulated in ancient and medieval days, do not have even a prima facie claim for
acceptance or careful consideration by students of philosophy. In other words,
reformulation and considerable critical analysis is required by this change.
Similar observations are applicable to the thinkers of the second group. They do
not seem to be aware of the fact that the philosophers of ancient and medieval
India did not do one kind of philosophy only and that one may find in ancient and
medieval India traces of the kinds of philosophies done in contemporary times.
This is not said in order to deny progress but only to assert that philosophical
thinking, whenever it functions freely, cannot be content with one kind of
philosophy. Depending on the experience and preferences of thinkers it may take a
multiple--if limited--number of forms. Again, some of these thinkers do not seem
to have a clear idea of the social character of philosophy. They identify the
substructure with the economically productive class and thus fail to see how the
entire society by its sanctions, approved and graded values, etc., functions as
the substructure conditioning philosophical activity. To a degree this
substructure, while evolving, retains an identity; accordingly the new is hardly
ever bewilderingly new and the gap between the past and the present is never
total.
One should not, therefore, either overestimate or underestimate the past
philosophies of India. An honest student of philosophy would do well to study them
and to link them up with the contemporary ones. If he be an Indian he should seek
his identity and a deeper understanding of his times and society in such a
critical, reflective and interpretative study.
When one peruses the works of the leaders of contemporary Indian thought and
culture like Bankimchandra, Tagore, K.C. Bhattacharyya, S. Radhakrishnan, Sri
Aurobindo, Swami Vivekananda, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi, etc., he finds
this to be precisely the kind of work they did or were seeking to do. Most of
them, however, were not university men and were hardly interested in seeking their
identity in a metaphysical enterprise. It is for us, therefore, who are actively
engaged in teaching and research in the universities to take up this task. We are
in need of a deeper understanding of the metaphysical ideas handed down to us from
the past by assimilating them with the ideas of metaphysicians from different
countries with different back grounds and traditions. Such an understanding
presupposes a dialogue which in the last resort is a give and take activity of the
rational side of our being. Accordingly, this paper proposes to state and
interpret one characteristic of the past philosophies.
Philosophy as System
The characteristic we propose to state and interpret is that in India philosophies
developed as systems. This is well-known but its import or the interpretation we
intend to give it may not be. Besides now-a-days philosophers are sceptical of
systems. They prefer to treat a concept in isolation; when they write they take
care that, like a short story, their paper have a beginning, a middle and an end.
That this is hardly satisfactory can be clarified by an analysis of the systematic
characteristic of Indian philosophies. Besides, Indian philosophers themselves
mislead us on this point. Every system-builder at first formulates a theory of
pramanas--a theoryon the estimation of evidences--and proceeds to found his
metaphysical theory upon that. This creates the impression that the theories of
evidences as formulated by the Indian philosophers are prior to, and independent
of, the metaphysical theories they hold. Actually, this is not the case. The
theory of evidence as formulated by one system differs from that of another
precisely because their metaphysical theories differ. This would be evident to
anyone who would read these theories, as it were, between the lines. As the author
has argued the point in another paper, it need not be dwelt upon here. Rather, in
order to spell out the point that metaphysics occupied the central position in
Indian philosophical thought, one question will be considered briefly.
The question concerns the nature of darkness. Obviously, one who has not read
Indian philosophy would not treat it as a
philosophical question. But Indian philosophers gave considerable attention to it
and their treatment makes it abundantly clear
that they held it to be an important philosophical question.
To make the point the Nyaya and the Advaita answers will be noted. Thus, while the
Nyaya philosophers consider darkness to be a negative fact, the Advaitins consider
it positive; and the
point of interest is that their views are integral parts of their
systems. Thus, a Nyaya philosopher cannot accept the proposition that darkness is
a positive fact for the following reasons:
(a) If it be a positive fact, it is also a perceived
positive fact having qualities.
(b) Accordingly, it is a compound substance which occurs, ceases to occur, and is
divisible.
(c) If it be divisible, then when divided it should
leave behind fragments.
(d) But it does not leave behind fragments.
(e) And so either the being of darkness is instantaneous, for as the Buddhist
philosophers argue an entity with instantaneous being may be destroyed but may not
leave behind any fragment, or it is not a divisible compound substance that occurs
and ceases to occur, i.e., it is not a positive fact.
(f) But the theory of instantaneous being is counter
intuitive and unacceptable.
(g) And so darkness is not a positive fact.
Thus, the Nyaya theory of darkness is an integral part of the
system.
The same can be said of the theory of the Advaitins,
though they would not argue the proposition that darkness is a
positive fact in such a direct way. Nevertheless, their philosophy would be
injured if they do not hold it to be so. They hold that ignorance is positive and
make attempts to bring out one of its aspects by comparing it with darkness. That
is, consciousness which is opposed to ignorance manifests its object by tearing
the cover of ignorance, just as light which is opposed to darkness illumines
objects by tearing the cover of darkness. They take the cover in both cases
literally and are quite clear that language or metaphor is not misleading them.
Their metaphysics does not permit them to understand the cover of ignorance
metaphorically, that would amount to the position that ignorance is absence of
knowledge or consciousness, i.e., a negative fact. But if ignorance be a negative
fact it would not play the role their metaphysics assigns it, for it would then
neither cover nor be a material cause of the empirical world. Hence, they take the
expression `covered by ignorance' literally. Similar considerations are behind
their taking the expression `covered by darkness' literally. In other words, of
the various evidences they produce in favor of the proposition that ignorance is a
positive fact, one is inferential, which in the opinion of the Indian logicians
requires an instance that yields and confirms the grounding proposition. In the
case of the inference under consideration such an instance is provided by
darkness. That is, light illumines an object by destroying the darkness that
covered it; so whenever an object is manifested, whether by light or by
consciousness, the manifestation is preceded by the destruction of the positive
cover. Thus, either darkness is a positive fact or the proposition on which the
inference under consideration rests is instanceless and so groundless. Thus, the
Advaitins' treatment of darkness is an integral part of their general
philosophical or metaphysical system. In other words the question of the nature of
darkness is philosophical as the answers to this question are integral parts of
the metaphysical views held by the Indian philosophers. Their treatment of the
being of darkness was not that of the scientist but of the metaphysician.
System and Metaphysics
Thus, the philosophies in India developed in the form of systems in which
metaphysical doctrines occupied the central place. Why did they develop in this
manner? The obvious answer seems to be: its subject matter. That is, the subject
matter of metaphysics may be said to be all that is; and in view of that fact they
form a system. Hence, the science of metaphysics cannot but be a system. It should
be noted that Indian philosophers would have stated the subject matter of
metaphysics in a slightly different way. Instead of saying that metaphysics is the
science of all that is they would have said that it is the science of all that is
man. In other words, for them man epitomizes the universe, or the microcosm is the
macrocosm. To know man is to know all that is. The purpose or prayojana of
philosophy was said to be liberation, and an essential condition for attaining
liberation was thought to be knowledge of the proper being of man. To know man
fully one should know what he is in essence and also in relation to the universe
in which he is, so to say, thrown and where he suffers. In short, the science that
seeks to know all that is man also seeks to know all that is, and metaphysics is
primarily this science of the proper being of man. This being the subject matter
of philosophy, philosophy cannot but be cultivated in the form of a system.
Though the above answer is quite reasonable, I would propose a different, though
not incompatible answer which in my judgment is equally reasonable. In brief, it
lies in the nature of a philosophical belief. In other words, whenever we have a
philosophical belief we have a cluster of such beliefs, and they are of diverse
kinds: some logical, some epistemological, some ethical, some religious, some
ontological, some of no exclusive type, and others such that they cannot be
labelled. This can be corroborated by an immanent inspection of such beliefs.
Beliefs forming a cluster are not unrelated, but are, so to speak, parts of a
whole or system. The system, however, has a character of its own. It is not
deductive; one cannot hope to exhibit the character of the system by picking up
one or two beliefs to be treated as axiomatic and then, by some accepted or
formulated rules of deduction, obtain the other beliefs forming the system. This
should be evident to anyone who would peruse any such system and to one who does
not accept a particular system it appears that the arguments of its advocates move
in a circle. Thus the critics of the Vaisasika system argue that their theory of
universals presupposes their theories on inherence, substance, qualities and
action; that their theories on substance, quality and action presuppose their
theory of universals; and that their theory on inherence presupposes all these
theories. In short, philosophical reasoning is i a way circular. This cannot be
cited as a basis for denouncing metaphysics and embracing scepticism, though it
substantiates the result of immanent or phenomenological inspection of
metaphysical beliefs, namely, that the beliefs form a cluster with a structure
though the structure is not deductive.
What precisely is the structure? That the beliefs are closely connected is beyond
reasonable doubt, but what precisely is this connection? To answer that question
it is necessary to consider of what sort these beliefs are and how they obtain
their structure.
These beliefs are not of the ordinary kind, but are firm convictions or dogmas in
the original Greek sense of the word, as Professor Zahner states in another
context. They are as sure and certain for the individual who holds them as is
knowledge; for him the distinction between such belief and knowledge ceases to be
real. Further, one acts according to these beliefs and this action in some sense
lends structure to these beliefs. Hence, it cannot be the case would one hold a
set of philosophical beliefs and not live in accordance with them. If his actions
are not in keeping with his beliefs, if the relation of vyaghata, as the Indian
logicians put it, obtains between his beliefs and his actions, then he really does
not hold the beliefs, though he may say that he does. At any rate, unless
philosophy be in a reciprocal or dialectical relation with life,which it shapes
and by which it is shaped,it does not deserve to be called philosophy.
Because Indian philosophers were quite aware of this, for them philosophy was not
a mere intellectual pastime or adventure. Read carefully, the conclusion is
irresistible that they philosophized as they were in quest for identity--their
philosophies represented what they were.
Today we find that they do not satisfy our quest if we take them literally or
exactly in their original form. We feel the need to reformulate them and hence to
be in dialogue with the types of philosophy that flourished elsewhere and are more
closely associated with the recent developments in science, technology and the
social economy. It is our hope that such a dialogue can take place in today's
troubled world where we are desperately in search of our identity and that we can
find at least the path along which we should move.
Jadavpur University
Calcutta, India
CHAPTER XVI
SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE
AND METAPHYSICAL INTERPRETATION
W. NORRIS CLARKE, S.J.
The aim of this paper is to reflect, on a meta-level, upon the basic intellectual
process in traditions of thought which draw upon spiritual experience as immediate
evidence for metaphysical affirmations about reality and man's relation to it. By
`spiritual experience' I mean in general the experience, at its deeper levels, of
the inner life of the human psyche, spirit, soul, or self--however this be
expressed--where, beyond the dimensions accessible to ordinary sense experience,
reflective thought and rational argument, it experiences or claims to experience
various modes and levels of intuitive awareness of reality and its own relation to
it. The most intense level of such experience is, of course, what in both East and
West has traditionally been called `mystical experience' or its equivalent. What
follows will concern this level particularly, since it has always been one of the
most profound inspirations and challenges to metaphysical interpretations of
reality.
SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE AS EVIDENCE FOR METAPHYSICS
In order to avoid sterile technical disputes about the exact nature and limits of
mysticism I have chosen the more general term of `spiritual experience', to
distinguish it from both sense experience and the process of reflective thought
and rational inference carried out through abstract concepts and conceptual--
linguistic frameworks. In a word, then, I am concerned with a thought process
which is common to certain great traditions of thought, of which not a few are
represented here. It passes directly from a profound--and, let us concede,
authentic--spiritual experience to metaphysical articulation and interpretation as
part of a total metaphysical framework or systematically articulated world view.
Reflecting on this process is relevant to the theme, `Man and Nature', for
solutions to its problems at any level will frequently be commanded by the
dominant spiritual experience that lie at the roots of a metaphysical tradition.
The thought process directly from spiritual experience to metaphysical
articulation is found to some extent in certain traditions of the West, such as
Neoplatonism in both its non-Christian and its Christian strands, and various
existentialist such as Kierkegaard, Marcel, Buber and possibly others. It is not,
however, the more usual path in Western thought, which ordinarily draws its
evidence from the more publicly available dimension of man's relations with the
material cosmos and human social community, and argues to the ultimate conditions
of possibility or intelligibility of such data. The more characteristic, though by
no means exclusive, path of the great Eastern traditions has been from inner
experience to a metaphysical articulation and interpretation of reality flowing
from and commanded by such evidence.
This has been one of the glories of the Eastern traditions, especially those of
Hinduism and Buddhism. I do not in the least question the validity and
fruitfulness of these traditions for what might be called `spiritually grounded
metaphysics.' What I would like to do is to call attention, for common critical
reflection, to the special problems in the use of such a method either by Eastern
or Western thinkers. The central problem might be phrased as follows: Can any
spiritual experience, however profound and authentic, guarantee any particular
articulation and interpretation of this experience in metaphysical terms, so as to
appeal to it as conclusive and incontrovertible evidence for the truth of such
metaphysical affirmations?
As one example let us take as our point of reference some of the great Upanisadic
spiritual experiences of the identity (or non-duality) of the self with the Atman
and the Brahman. These experiences reach metaphysical formulation in the Upanisads
themselves, in such expressions as `The Brahman is all this and all that,' `The
Brahman is One without a second,' and `That art Thou' (Tat twam asi). There are
similar expressions in the later Advaita or Non-Duality Vedanta tradition. Others
insist that the above Upanisadic statements do not have metaphysical, but only
practical spiritual significance. Another example would be the thought of Sri
Aurobindo, perhaps the outstanding philosopher-mystic of India in the twentieth
century, who claims to have experienced the higher states of consciousness of the
Over-Mind or Super-Mind and from this experience draws metaphysical affirmations
about the unity of all things. His followers stress that his is a metaphysics
drawn, not from abstract speculation, but from direct spiritual experience.
One could draw similar examples from Buddhist literature, which so often affirms
that the one Buddha-nature is in, or actually is, all things. Hence, our distinct
limited selves as they appear to us on the level of unenlightened experience
already are one Buddha-nature, except that we are not yet aware of what we are.
Further, such appeals to spiritual experience are relevant to discussions in
comparative metaphysical traditions. The Judaeo-Christian inspired creation
metaphysics views creatures as having their own distinct being, though received
from God as Creator. The Upanisadic inspired non-dualist metaphysics views all
finite entities as held within or reducible to the one being of the Brahman, who
alone truly is. In comparing the two the experience of Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita
can be cited as the basis for arguing that for someone in this spiritual tradition
who had experienced his oneness with the Brahman, as had Arjuna, the experience
rules out a creation metaphysics maintaining the distinct being of creatures
outside of God. The non-duality metaphysics is stated as a direct fruit of this
profound experience and supported by the latter as convincing evidence, so that to
reject the metaphysical conclusions drawn from it would be to cast doubts on the
experience itself.
ALTERNATIVE METAPHYSICAL FRAMEWORKS
ALWAYS POSSIBLE
This is the thought process with which I am concerned here. It has been called `a
metaphysics of spiritual experience,' that is, a process of thought which passes
directly from inner spiritual experience to metaphysical affirmation, based on the
latter as evidence.
Now the position to be defended here is the following. On the one hand, authentic
spiritual experience, especially at the most profound and intense mystical level,
can indeed be a most rich and fruitful source of inspiration and evidence for
metaphysical propositions and for a metaphysical world view. This has been shown
so clearly in certain of the great spiritual-metaphysical traditions of both East
and West that there is no need to argue it further here. On the other hand--and
this is the main point of the paper--no direct passage is possible from an inner
spiritual experience, no matter how authentic and profound, to a metaphysical
affirmation such that the experience can provide conclusive evidence to ground
this metaphysical affirmation as opposed to all others. In a word, there is no
direct and unambiguous passage from inner experience to metaphysical articulation.
My reason for this assertion derives from one of the most decisive contributions
of contemporary epistemology, the theory that there are always alternative
conceptual-linguistic frameworks for expressing any human experience of reality.1
By this I mean, first, that no immediate or unmediated one-to-one correlation is
possible between an experience of reality and a linguistic term or proposition
taken by itself. The meaning of any term or proposition is always dependent on,
and hence mediated by, a whole interrelated conceptual-linguistic system or field
of meaning. This is true for an ordinary language statement; it is the more true
for a statement in a metaphysical sublanguage. A proposition can thus have meaning
and truth--or falsehood--not nakedly by itself but only within such a field or
framework of meaning. Accordingly propositions can agree with or contradict each
other only if they are situated within the same conceptual-linguistic framework,
although it is possible to translate them more or less perfectly from one
framework to another. Neither contradiction nor agreement is possible between
propositions in different frameworks unless they are first translated into some
common framework.
The second implication of such a framework theory of meaning and truth is that
there is always in principle, either existing or possible, some alternative
framework for expressing any given experience or contact with reality. Such
alternative frameworks as a whole are neither true nor false but only more or less
adequate for expressing the experience of those using them. Reality itself is
inexhaustibly rich, if not infinite, in depth, fineness of differences, and
complexity of interrelations. A human conceptual-linguistic scheme which can be
learned and useful must be so limited in what it can explicitly notice and
distinguish at any one time, that no human classification or scheme of categories
can ever claim to be the only valid way of articulating either the seamless robe
of reality or even the richness of our direct experience thereof.
One can indeed argue rationally over the adequacy of a given framework in terms of
some larger common framework, nevertheless such questions of adequacy are not
simply reducible to questions of truth or falsity. Further, and this is the
crucial point, such questions of the adequacy, either of the framework as a whole
or of the choice of terms within a framework, cannot be settled directly by an
appeal to the experience itself, since they involve the complex interdependence of
so many concepts and terms in a unified field of discourse. Mediation by the
critically reflective rational and discursive mind is indispensable.
From this it follows that what is in itself roughly the same or a very similar
inner experience can be validly expressed in two quite different metaphysical
frameworks, even within the same general ordinary language system and even at
times using the same words. Since the experience itself genuinely supports and
provides good evidence for, while at the same time transcending in richness, each
of the metaphysical articulations or interpretations in which it has been
incarnated, appeal to the experience alone cannot settle the issue between them.
Thus the supreme mystical experience of oneness of the soul or of deeper self with
the ultimate Ground of being, however one expresses it, seems very similar in most
of the great Eastern and Western spiritual traditions. Yet it would appear to be
validly expressed in several different, irreducible, and even apparently
irreconcilable or contradictory ways, either as unqualified oneness in both
consciousness and being, or as oneness in consciousness with duality in being, or
as non-duality in being, or in other irreducible ways, some undoubtedly not yet
specified. The same should be said in the case of the relations in depth of human
selves to one another and to cosmic nature as well.
DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS
Having said this much, I would hasten to add certain clarifications and
qualifications to avoid misunderstanding. First, I am not merely saying that all
deep inner experiences contain an ineffable element that defies any adequate
positive expression in language. Most traditions agree on this; there is no
argument here. But this does not deter them from drawing from their experiences
both some very definite negative metaphysical conclusions such as non-duality or
non-identity, and some positive conclusions as to the relation of other things to
Ultimate Reality. My application of the alternative framework theory would
partially relativize, not merely positive metaphysical articulations of the nature
of Ultimate Reality and our relation to it, but all metaphysical interpretations,
whether negative or positive. The so-called `negative theologies', in order to
give meaning to their negations, involve framework decisions outside of the
experience no less than do the positive theologies for what may seem to others
their incautious affirmations. All are together in this.
Second, my position does not imply that spiritual experiences can provide no good
evidence at all for metaphysical affirmations. On the contrary, I believe that
they can be very powerful guides in illuminating and supporting metaphysical
conclusions. In certain cases appeal to the experience itself can effectively rule
out some metaphysical assertions or a whole framework of expression as to ill-
adapted or alien to the type of experience that it could not help but betray it.
But from the fact that experience can serve as a touchstone to rule out certain
metaphysical interpretations it does not follow that it can unambiguously,
exclusively and positively guarantee any one metaphysical articulation against all
others.
Third, it does not follow that it is impossible for the human mind to transcend
all conceptual-linguistic frameworks or that it is always imprisoned within its
own frameworks and thus inescapably trapped in the relativity of all frameworks.
The mind certainly can and does transcend any and all frameworks in flashes of
intellectual or spiritual intuition or insight, and a fortiori in the deeper
states of mystical ecstasy. It is this power which enables the mind to know its
own self as the source of its actions, to judge the limitations of the very
frameworks it creates or uses to express itself, to improve and correct them when
necessary and to translate from one to the other when passing from culture or
language system to another. Yet, despite this power of transcending its own
frameworks by intellectual insight, the mind is still bound to clothe or incarnate
these insights in some particular cultural framework of expression and
interpretation. This at once becomes limited and perspectival and, therefore, in
principle allows of alternative modes of expression.
It remains true that the mind can, by imbuing whatever framework it uses with the
living and transcending act of insight, control and correct the inadequacy of the
expression through its own inner lived understanding of what it intends when it so
expresses itself. Moreover, by employing various non-linguistic devices, it can
attempt to set up a spiritual resonance in others which will evoke in them also a
similar act of insight transcending the limitations of the framework used as a
vehicle for expression. The shared insight or experience can then safely use the
same framework of expression and metaphysical articulation. But the fact that the
experience does unquestionably guide and inspire the expression does not thereby
give one the right to impose this particular articulation or interpretation on
everyone else as the only possible one allowed by the experience.
Therefore, I would venture to say that no metaphysical term or proposition can be
uniquely and incontrovertibly dictated by an experience itself as an immediate and
uninterpreted transcription of that experience. All such expressions must pass
through the mediation of their relation to a whole interrelated network or
framework of meaning and language before they can take on any precise meaning of
their own. Hence, they are subject to criticism at this level without in any way
impugning the authenticity of their experience.
This introduces a further question. Does this experience exist first in its own
purity and then seek expression through some framework of meaning and belief? Or,
on the contrary, is the experience in which the person lives, so that the
experience itself and the framework mutually influence or condition each other. In
a word, might there be no pure pre-framework experience? There is much truth in
this proposal although it should not be over-extended. The mutual influence must
be left as a flexible and growing relationship, not taken as a rigid and fixed
one. This is another reason why it is not possible for a spiritual experience to
provide an incontrovertible guarantee for a particular metaphysical expression of
that experience. The framework of expression may have already modified somewhat or
creatively entered into the texture of the experience itself, predisposing one to
notice or be open to certain facets while overlooking or underplaying others so
that they even sink below explicit consciousness.
This raises the fascinating and difficult epistemological question of the so-
called `myth of the given'. Is there ever any pure given in human experience or
are not all experiences and so-called immediately given facts always in some
degree `theory-laden', that is, already enveloped in some prior theory or
theoretical horizon? We will not enter further into this forest here. In any case,
the position developed above would still hold even if there were a pure pre-
theoretical or pre-framework experience. I suspect that one comes close to this in
the most profound mystical experience, though this, too, is very open to
discussion.
When I first expressed these ideas in the Oriental Seminar at Columbia University,
New York, they awakened considerable resistance from a number of scholars from
different traditions as excessively relativizing and emasculating the power and
validity of any expression of religious experience on experiential metaphysics.
The strongest opposition, however, came not from the Hindus but from the Buddhists
present. They claimed that the whole point of Buddhist spiritual training was
finally to break through and get beyond all conceptual-linguistic frameworks in
order, as they put it, to `see reality as it is in itself,' that is, as the `pure
Thatness permeating all things.' Yet, that precisely illustrates my point. I have
no wish to question that at a certain level of spiritual development one can break
through all frameworks to a kind of direct contact with reality; I accept such an
experience as authentic and somehow communicable or able to be evoked in others
indirectly. What I am insisting upon is that any metaphysical expression of such
an experience immediately takes on the relativity of some conceptual-linguistic
framework. Hence, it cannot impose itself as a uniquely authoritative expression
or interpretation of what it means to `see reality as it is in itself' (note how
theory and framework-laden are the terms of this very statement) or what the
content of such a vision is. Hence, neither the somewhat elusive expression `pure
Thatness or Suchness' nor even the phrase 'to see reality as it is in itself' can
be metaphysically innocent transcriptions of the experience. Therefore, neither
can they impose themselves on all who accept the authenticity of that experience.
This leads us finally to the inevitable paradox. On the one hand, it is quite
possible for two serious and spiritually sensitive scholars in different
traditions to recognize intuitively in a flash of intellectual insight the
profound similarity if not unity behind two spiritual experiences, or religious
traditions (usually only in their deeper experiential dimensions, rarely in
doctrines or theology), or even metaphysical doctrines. On the other hand, they
could still find it impossible to clothe this common insight in any form of
expression acceptable to both. This is the fatal flaw in all the attempts such as
that of Aldous Huxley in his Perennial Philosophy, of Frithjof Schuon in his The
Transcendent Unity of All Religions,2 and other similar efforts, to actually
formulate the unity that transcends all the existing frameworks of expression. Any
such formulation inevitably slips over into a veiled form of some already existing
framework (which usually turns out in fact to be a Hindu formulation).
Understandably, such tradition-transcending formulations will not be acceptable on
all points to all of the groups being thus transcended, and a truly new framework
of expression almost certainly would not be acceptable in some way to any of the
participants. The point is, therefore, that such underlying unities can be seen as
one, but cannot be said as one. Even the truth of such a statement could be seen
by the mind, but probably could not be said in any way acceptable or satisfactory
to all. The bridge to the unities beyond frameworks can be crossed only by
sympathetic insight, not by language itself, save in indirect and evocative ways.
Such a situation may seem to some a surrender to radical scepticism and relativism
with regard to all metaphysical formulations and interpretations. To me, it seems
rather an invitation and indeed a condition of possibility for a truly positive
and fruitful dialogue between thinkers from different traditions.3 If there were
an immediate passage from a spiritual experience to one privileged metaphysical
expression or interpretation of it, metaphysical differences purporting to stem
from such experience would constitute radical impasses beyond which further
discussion could not go. It is not possible to argue with someone's experiences;
one either does or does not accept them.
If there is no such direct passage from experience to metaphysical expression,
moreover, and if experience always allows for alternative metaphysical
expressions, then the way is left open: (a) to accept the great spiritual
experiences in different traditions as perfectly authentic, no matter how
differently expressed in apparently contradictory metaphysical terms; (b) to be
free, nevertheless, to argue and discuss the relative merits of the metaphysical
frameworks and expressions in which these experiences are clothed in each
tradition; and (c) perhaps even to creatively adjust and adapt the latter to
incorporate the strengths of each other, since there is no necessary link between
the experience and any one mode of expression.
It follows also, given this provisory and always revisable link between experience
and expression, that the mutual sharing of experiences at the deepest level by
those in different traditions who possess some metaphysical sophistication can
provide a dynamic stimulus towards the creation of richer metaphysical syntheses
on a higher level of generality. At least it could stimulate cooperative meta-
language analyses which would map out the analogous roles of certain metaphysical
structures of thought and expression which on the surface appear irreconcilable.
Finally, I do suspect, however, that there are a small number of basic ontological
situations or relations which can be experienced in depth but which resist in
principle any common metaphysical formulation or interpretation. My list would
include: (a) the relation between finite entities, or appearances if you will, and
their Ultimate Ground or Source; (b) the mode of ultimate union between the human
soul, spirit or deeper self, and its Ultimate Ground or Ultimate Reality itself--
this would include the relation between `divine' omniscience, omnipotence and
immutability, on the one hand, and human freedom on the other; and (c) the
relation between mind and reality. Whether one includes, as a function of one or
more of the above, the relation of man's self at its deepest level with other
selves and also with the material cosmos or cosmic nature as a whole is perhaps
the basic issue for this entire set of papers.
Fordham University
New York, USA
NOTES
1. Cf. my own Presidential Address discussing this problem, `On Facing up to the
Truth about Human Truth', Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical
Association, XLIII (1969), 1-13, with references to contemporary discussions.
2. (New York: Harper and Row, 1975).
3. Cf. the fine discussion by Jacques Cuttat, The Encounter of Religions (New
York: Desclée, 1961).
CHAPTER XVII
CAUSALITY AND CREATIVITY
ELIOT DEUTSCH
Most contemporary analyses of causation are based on, or at least take as their
starting point, Hume's analysis, and are thus carried out in terms of
understanding the nature of a "causal relation" that is thought to obtain between
discrete events, and with assumptions (e.g., about space and time) that are drawn
largely from mechanistic models of science. Hume's billiard ball hitting another
(presumably in a predictable fashion) is still rather typical of the kind of event
that is taken as paradigmatic for analyzing the meaning of causality. Changes are
thus seen by regularity theorists as isolable events interacting (efficiently)
with one another within the framework of lawlike relations or nomic
generalizations. Singular causal statements, in other words, are to be logically
related to general causal statements, with the latter in turn being regarded as
contingent generalizations unrestricted in their scope.1
Now few contemporary regularity theorists accept without qualification Hume's
rejection of necessity in nature in favor of just "constant conjunction," or his
accounting for our belief in power or necessity by reference to "custom" alone,
and in order to distinguish nomic from accidental regularity they analyze
causality in terms of conditionship relations. It is often thought by philosophers
in the Humean tradition that a cause is that set of conditions (among all those
present) each of which is necessary and jointly are sufficient for the occurrence
of a certain effect. In somewhat more elaborate and precise terms:
. . . a causal condition of an event is any sine qua non condition under which
that event occurred or any condition which was such that, had the condition in
question not obtained. that event (its effect) would not have occurred and the
cause of the event is the totality of those conditions. . . . Once one has
enumerated all the conditions necessary for the occurrence of a given event, that
totality of conditions will at once be sufficient for its occurrence or such that
no further conditions will be necessary.2
But it has been pointed out by many contemporary analysts of regularity theories
that on this account of conditionship relations it is no longer possible to
distinguish cause from effect. Georg Henrik von Wright writes:
. . . the fact that a certain state obtains is a sufficient condition of the fact
that a certain other state obtains if, and only if, the fact that the second state
does not obtain is a sufficient condition of the fact that the first does not
obtain.3
. . . heavy rainfall in the mountains might. under given circumstances, be a
causally sufficient condition of a flood in the valley; but we are not inclined to
say, at least not on that ground alone, that the fact that no flooding occurs is a
cause of the effect that there is no heavy rain.4
And Richard Taylor writes:
The expression `X is sufficient for E' is exactly equivalent to `E is necessary
for X" . . . .5
The analysis of the causal relationship [in terms of necessary and sufficient
conditions] has one strange consequence . . . namely, that it does not enable us
to draw any distinction between cause and effect.6
The main question which I propose to raise and treat in this study is: Can we
understand something more about the meaning of causality from the standpoint of
attempting to understand the nature of one of the most complex of human
experiences, namely of "creativity"? I propose, in other words, to take the
"creative act" as the primary example or event to be understood in our thinking
about causality, rather than one billiard ball hitting another (or a match being
ignited and starting a fire). This approach to the nature of creativity and
causality, will undoubtedly be resisted by many philosophers, for it is indeed
customary today in studies of creativity (especially psychological ones) to
approach creativity as something which is itself to be explained (reductively)--
e.g., by Freud, as a compensatory activity which feeds on wish-fulfillment and
substitute gratification.
Now it is also clear to many of us that this effort to reduce creativity to a
mechanistic-based model of efficient causality is rather fruitless, as it tends to
miss just what we understand to be some of the distinctive characteristics of
creativity (e.g., novelty, critical control and autogenetic development).7 The
inadequacy of applying the usual causal models to creativity, as well as.the many
difficulties that beset empirico-mechanistic models of causality, suggest the
possibility of our advancing in the other direction, namely from an analysis of
creativity to the meaning of causality.
THE NATURE OF CREATIVITY
Desiring, then, that all things should be good and, so far as might be, nothing
imperfect, the god took over all that is visible--not at rest, but in discordant
and unordered motion--and brought it from disorder into order, since he judged
that order was in every way the better.
(Timeaus, 30A Cornford trans.)
The theory of artistic creativity of a culture, it seems, is always closely
related to that culture's cosmology. Under the sway of Judaeo-Christianity
Romanticism sees creativity as a kind of creation ex nihilo, a spontaneous but
purposive bringing forth of something new into being, with the creative artist.
like the creator god, being a fit object of worship. Traditional Indian culture,
on the other hand, sees divine creativity in emanational terms as an overflow of
spiritual energy, a disciplined yet exuberant and purposeless play. It then sees
human creativity as a spontaneous but highly disciplined expression of joy and
adoration. For Plato, and the Greeks generally, creativity is seen essentially in
demiurgic terms as a rearranging of existing materials so as to bring about a
greater (and the greatest possible) measure of order into an otherwise chaotic
world of visible becoming. The artist, like the demiurge, is a craftsman, a maker.
Today, however, we do not have a received cosmology that recommends itself
axiomatically, as it were, to all educated minds--East or West. In its place we
have several competing scientific theories or models (with a general consensus
seemingly obtaining among scientists that they are all seriously inadequate) and
thus, although we bear the weight of an "historical perspective" on the matter, we
can enjoy a certain freedom from this traditional dependency on cosmology in our
thinking about creativity.
Nevertheless we are still bound today to a considerable degree to a quasi-romantic
view of creativity, for in ordinary language the term has come to be used rather
indiscriminately to apply to any activity that bears some mark of "expressiveness"
or "originality". In our more "progressive" schools children are encouraged to "be
creative"--but it is never made very clear just what that is supposed to mean--and
indeed the term is applied to the work of the gifted physicist equally as well as
to the play of the talented artist. Still it is artistic creativity that serves as
the model for what "creativity" means, and so in our analysis we will take
artistic creativity, the process by which an artwork is made, as the paradigm
case, realizing, of course, that it may contain some features which are not
present in any significant degree in other forms of what we accept as creative
activity.
One of the most striking features of artistic creativity (which I will hereafter
use synonymously with "creative act") is what we might call its immanent
purposiveness. Aiming at the fulfillment of only those ends which it itself
defines and articulates, the creative act answers to no other guiding need or
external telos. Its purpose is developed in the process itself; which is to say, a
sense of "rightness" or "appropriateness," within the context of the particular
creative act, governs the artist's bringing his work to fulfillment or completion.
I have argued elsewhere that when art achieves autonomy, as it assuredly has in
our age, the meaning of an artwork is not to be found as such in the conventional
symbols it might employ or in an independently formulated series of concepts which
it may be said or seen to embody, but that its meaning is inherent in the work. A
work of art is meaningful, I argue, to the degree to which it realizes the
possibilities that it itself gives rise to. This means the bringing of the artwork
to an appropriate conclusion and exhibiting the process by which that conclusion
is achieved.8
A poem, a play, a musical composition, sets up conditions of expectation and
anticipation which call for resolution and fulfillment. Now the progress towards
this fulfillment--the process which is in fact exhibited--is not mechanical; the
artist doesn't put down initial words, colors, sounds with everything else and
then following inevitably from this initial placement, as a conclusion might from
premises in a valid deductive argument; rather the "appropriateness" of a
conclusion or consummation of the work depends as well upon elements of surprise
or novelty. The artist is himself often surprised by the development of his work,
and sometimes appears--as Plato observed some time ago--the least able to explain
what he is doing. If explanation calls for lawlike generalizations and prediction,
then it is not difficult to understand the artist's "ignorance." Anyone else's
supposed knowledge would only be a gross pretension; for the creative process, by
its very nature, does not aim at a fixed, predetermined end that can confidently
be predicted, and does not admit entirely of relationships that can be generalized
into nomic statements or universal rules, rather it autogenetically defines
itself; its purposiveness is precisely immanent to it.
For a work of art to have the kind of integrity--of "wholeness" and "honest use"
of materials--that is appropriate to it, the creative act must involve what I call
interjective control. It is a rather fancy name for this fact, that the creative
act must involve a non-calculative, intuitive--if you will--grasp of the
structure, principles or "syntax" of a medium, be it of concrete materials or
abstract symbols, so that the act is one of working with these principles and not
one of exercising force over them. Any craftsman, from the woodcarver to the auto
mechanic--and all artistic creativity is craft in one of its rich dimensions--
realizes this need to be attuned, as it were, to his medium in such a way that he
contributes to, but does not impose an alien will upon its natural rhythm or
structure. This interjective. in contrast to coercive. control is very difficult
to analyze, but it is of considerable importance, I believe, in understanding
creativity in relation to causation. One of the reasons the usual models of
causation apply so poorly to creativity is just this intimacy between the creative
act and its object, the agent here being effective only insofar as he works with
the potentialities of his medium in a profoundly sympathetic and understanding
way. I can push a chair around the room with only a rudimentary knowledge of
practical physics acquired by experience; but I can create a work of sculpture
only by a highly disciplined understanding or how to work with stone.
In fulfilling the purposes which it itself articulates, the artwork, through the
creative act, stands then as a joint effort of its creator and the given medium.
It calls for cooperation, for a harmonious relationship, between the self and
nature; it calls for a special reverence, for a loving concern, of artist for his
material so that he may indeed bring to full articulation one of the many
possibilities of that which is given to him.
But this is not to suggest some one-sided passivity or abject obedience on the
part of the artist. The creative act is a kind of "letting be," but at the same
time it is a shaping, a formative act, which involves expressive power. Together
with immanent purposiveness and interjective control the creative act is an
infusion of power. an imparting of a felt life or vitality; it is a making of that
which is alive with the very spirit of natural life. The presence of power in
creativity is not, however, as I understand it, an expression so much of a
Nietzschean "will to power"--with its associated romantic emotion and sense of
radical achievement--as it is a manifestation of a rhythmic force which is
spontaneously exhibited. Life is rhythm, as the poet will tell us, and the
creative act is just that act which grasps this rhythm--what the classical Chinese
called "spirit resonance" (ch'i-yun sheng-tung)9 and manifests it as expressive
power. Hume might well have exorcised all powers from (efficient) causation--but
to do so for creativity would be to trivialize it and render it incomprehensible.
Closely related to the feature of power in creativity is that of form--its natural
complement. What oftentimes distinguishes genuine creativity from those acts of
"self-expression" enjoyed by the ardent young lover who writes what he is pleased
to call "poetry," or by the amateur painter who wants to share his pleasure of
pretty landscapes with others, is just this arduous task, namely, bringing the
created object to its right conclusion through the achievement of form. By "form"
in art we do not mean some kind of independently analyzable shape or structure,
but that blending of content and structure which appears then as inevitable. Form
is the artwork as a realized end which establishes those relationship which are
right for itself.
Creativity is formative. It is a making, a techne, which, when wholly successful,
results in a form which is radiant by virtue of the rightness of the relations
articulated and the appropriateness of the feeling and insight achieved.
No two creative acts are ever alike. Now it is assuredly the case that in some
important sense no two human acts of any kind are ever alike insofar as any act,
no matter how routine, takes place at a given time and place with all its
attendant particularities; but in asserting the unlikeness of creative acts we are
asserting something much stronger than this; we are asserting that a special kind
of uniqueness or singularity is one of the distinguishing features of this kind of
activity.
Creativity means, at least descriptively from the standpoint of the creative
actor, precisely that fusion of chance and deter-mination which allows of no
repetition. Constrained by all the limitations of one's character, of one's
history and experience, of one's capacities and talents, and yet having this
history--and present moment of insight--available to one, is the non-repeatable
opportunity that is at the very essence of the creative act. Creativity, in other
words, involves. having available to one an indefinite number of possibilities
which are related to one's history; and being singular at its heart, creativity
makes for unique objects. Works of art may be similar in many ways (by style.
genre, etc., and especially when from the hand of the same artist), but it is
always just this particular work as a particular work which commands our
attention; it is this realization of form infused with power that interests us--
and is in some way compelling for us.
Creativity, it has often been pointed out in both East and West, is a kind of
play; in Sanskrit designated as lila, as that sportive act of the god who, in
creating, admits of no purpose and whose activity is thus a spontaneous overflow
of his own superabundant nature. `Play', however, doesn't mean a lack of
seriousness or intensity; it means rather a kind of innocent, but not naive,
illusion-making; an innovative and hence unexpected ordering and shaping. In
creativity as play there is a felt voluntariness, which paradoxically perhaps is
nevertheless felt as inwardly necessary, as something that is required to be done.
Play, in short, is disciplined spontaneity. It is knowledgeable and insightful;
but it answers to no formulae. Spontaneity in creativity is not, on the other
hand, an uninhibited exhibition of emotion or feeling; it is not impulsive, a
blind response to the strongest force within one at the moment; it is rather a
natural extension of that harmony or that subtle tension which is there as part
and parcel of the creative act. Spontaneity, in other words, is utterly continuous
with all other elements or features of the creative act. Creativity is a free,
self-determining act; it is singular and unpredictable, and hence, in these terms,
defies usual causal explanation; but it is also disciplined and ordered and, in
these terms, is amenable to intelligent understanding. "Discipline" means ordering
relations, through experience, so as to achieve just that rightness in
relationship which is of the essence of form. Being formative the creative act is
necessarily a controlling of a medium--in play.
We have so far distinguished immanent purposiveness. interjective control, infused
power, formativeness, uniqueness or singularity, and playfulness as special
features of creativity. The last feature which I should like to call attention to,
and one which has a peculiar relevance for our theme of creativity and causality,
is the special transitivity or mutuality between creativity and what is created
that seems to obtain. In creativity the creative agent does not simply remain
untouched by his act, as we tend to believe an efficient cause is by its effect;
rather creativity, perhaps more than any other activity, is self-formative as well
as formative of an object. One is changed in the process of making; one discovers
oneself (more actually than one "expresses" oneself) in the creative act; one
achieves what Albert Hofstadter calls an articulation of self as well as of work,
by and through the work itself. The relation, in short, that obtains between human
creator and thing created is one of mutual conditioning. Something of oneself is
carried over into the work with the work, in the process of becoming what it then
is, going to influence one's own being.
Creativity, then, is that activity whose end or purpose is realized as such only
in the activity; which calls for a working with, rather than a coercive control
over, the principles or structure of a medium; which infuses a power or vitality
and is thoroughly formative in nature; which gives rise through its own
singularity to objects whose uniqueness is central to their definition; and which
is a kind of play or disciplined spontaneity which goes in turn to influence or
condition its agent.
CAUSALITY AND CREATIVITY
Georg Heinrik von Wright, in his interesting work Causality and Determinism is
extremely modest in his ontological claims. He doesn't believe that he is in a
position to articulate features of reality directly and states accordingly that it
is "legitimate to ask which requirements the facts (the world) must satisfy in
order that there shall exist a concept, roughly at least like ours, of nomic
causation."10 He concludes that on this basis "the world must to some degree
approximate to the model of logical atomism."11
But suppose we were to follow a somewhat different path and ask what model of
experience is most appropriately in accord with our understanding of creativity
and with the facts of our experience, and then from this model derive our concept
of causality. Rather than starting with "our notion of nomic causation" and asking
what the world must be like to satisfy that concept we start with an account of
experience and see what concept of causality is best in accord with it.
We start then with perception. And we may meet the issue directly by asking. Do we
actually experience mere states of affairs and atomic events or do we experience
processes, event-patterns to which. for a variety of reasons, we assign beginnings
and ends? Now it is not possible to elaborate here a theory of perception; it
should, however, be noted that differing psychologies of perception (gestaltist,
genetic) do seem to agree that our basic experience of the empirical world is an
active one of our purposive engagement with dynamic structural-unities; that what
we perceive are processes and not simply things frozen in space and time. We do,
of course, mark-off from continuous changes those aspects that are of special
interest to us and regard them as relatively isolable. We do not experience the
world as a Bergsonian pure dureé, rather we see things and events as "distinct"
insofar as they allow for individuality, for being identifiable ontically as
particulars; and it is this kind or measure of individuality rather than Humean
"distinct existences" which is the stuff of our experience. Let us look at this a
bit further.
J. L. Mackie argues that "distinct existences" are indeed required for the meaning
of causality. "For this purpose [of saying what causal statements mean]" he
writes, "it is sufficient to say that someone will not be willing to say that X
caused Y unless he regards X and Y as distinct existences."12 Now if all Mackie
means by "distinct existences" is that we recognize that a change has occurred in
a manner that calls for our recognizing an event and other consequences taking
place, then this is trivially true; in order for the claim to be of any
philosophic interest his meaning must be stronger ontically and, as with von
Wright, it must involve at least a model of the world as reducible to "atomic
events" of the sort that can only enter into "external relations" as "entities"
that are otherwise self-defined. But this account of experience neglects the fact
that events are histories. What we experience are not events corresponding to
(atemporal) logical entities, but events having their own direction and aim. or
what I shall call their "intentionality."
By the "intentionality" of an event or process I mean its aiming to be what is
natural and appropriate to it. The intentionality of a process is the "direction"
it takes, not spatially so much as ontically; we conceive of a process as tending,
in its normality, toward some state appropriate to it. Intentionality does not
imply a "final cause" or even a telological view as such. It means only that all
that we experience as process has for us, by virtue of our experience, a normal
state or becoming of its being. Normality is of central importance here. It is the
principle that unites the continuity of a process with what the particular process
is.
Now what makes for the specific normality of any given process is for the sciences
and other modes of inquiry to determine (the normality of a billiard ball in
motion with its particular velocity and direction may be articulated by
explanatory concepts of physics, perhaps even adequately for some purposes by
classical mechanics); it is enough for us to acknowledge it conceptually. The
reality of normality, however, is borne out for us by our understanding of
creativity as well as by the apparent facts of perceptual experience. We saw in
our discussion of interjective control and immanent purposiveness how a creative
act develops its purpose in the very process of its artwork-making; which is to
say that it does not have a fixed, predetermined end but one that emerges in the
activity through the artist's sense of rightness. This rightness, we argued, was
related to the nature of integrity and, accordingly, to the idea of interjective
control. The creative act is with and through a medium; this demands that the
artist work with the inherent structure or rhythm--the material and spiritual
potentialities--of his medium. Creativity is par excellence a process of altering
and bringing to realization potential normalities. As paradigmatic for an analysis
of causality, creativity is that process which controls, through active,
intelligent participation, the principles of a medium so as to establish an aiming
or intentionality of those elements which it selects, organizes, controls.
This understanding of creativity provides a major clue, I believe, to a meaning of
causality that is commensurate with the facts of our experience. The concept of
process--with processes rather than atomic occasions being the fundamental content
of our perceptual experience--involves that of aim and intentionality. We conceive
of an alteration in states of affairs or events as either disrupting some present,
relatively achieved state (e.g., an "inanimate object" at rest, whose aim it is
precisely to be at rest), or, as the case may be, of preserving, through
counteracting force, a given state of affairs; or of inhibiting the fulfillment of
the natural course of some event: or of bringing it to a fulfillment that would
not otherwise obtain (e.g., as when caring for--watering, trimming--a plant).
"Disrupting," "inhibiting". . . imply an otherwise normality--what the process is
in its essential character as the process which it is. As the psychologist A.
Michotte has pointed out:
. . . Psychologists of the Gestalt school (Wertheimer, Kohler, Duncker, and
others) have emphasized that, when certain processes are in course of taking
place, they `require' to be continued in a definite way. If they are halted, or if
their direction suddenly changes, this produces a feeling of deception, surprise,
or displeasure. This can be seen in particular in the case of rhythmic series,
melodies, the shape of the path traversed by an object, and even in the case of a
simple, fairly rapid movement when the object in motion suddenly ceases to move.
Conversely, when the process is continued without interruption, the result seems
satisfying or normal; it seems to develop `according to plan'. The same no doubt
also applies to the experience of causality; and this is probably one of the
characters which differentiates it in such a clear way from a simple impact in
which the moving object comes to a halt. It is difficult, however, to see here a
genuine necessity; it is rather an `invitation', and an invitation is neither an
obligation nor a decree of fate.13
The meaning of causation (at least as given to us initially in a single-case
experience) is, we argue, bound-up with the concept of normality. An event A is a
cause of another event (or object) B if and only if among all other conditions
present, relevant and necessary A alters the intentionality of B so as to
interfere, bring to a fulfillment that would not otherwise obtain, or inhibit that
intentionality.
Mary throws a stone through a closed window, shattering the glass. The thrown
stone, the causal event, alters radically the normality of the closed window. And
the causal meaning of the thrown stone is found precisely in this interference.
The determination that the thrown stone is the cause, the verification of
causality, might very well be had only by an analysis of conditionship relations
(daylight, Mary's arm being in the right condition for throwing a stone of a
certain weight . . .) and involve the assertion of an appropriate counterfactual
conditional that will ensure that the glass would not have been shattered if Mary
had not thrown the stone, but the meaning of the event, as causal, is found in the
radical alteration of the window's normality.
John turns on the heat under the pot of water and brings it to a boil. The
`boiling water' is a disruption in the accepted field of normality. The `heating,'
as cause, involves the counterfactual belief that the situation would have
remained as it was, the water not boiling, except for the extraordinary presence
of the heat.
Henry is driving along in his automobile but is suddenly disturbed by some unusual
sounds in the engine. He brings his car home and examines it closely, seeking to
find a way to eliminate the unwanted noise. He cleans the points and then
discovers that the car now rides smoothly and noiselessly. The event of cleaning
is the cause of the car now running properly (just as the dirty points may be said
to be the cause of the noise); the cleaning brings to fulfillment that would not
otherwise obtain in the circumstances, the intentionality of the engine to run
smoothly and noiselessly.
H. L. A. Hart and A. M. Honore in their interesting work Causation in the Law
write:
So we cause one thing to move by striking it with another, glass to break by
throwing stones, injuries by blows, things to get hot by putting them in fires.
Here the notions of cause and effect come together with the notion of means to
ends and of producing one thing by another. Cases of this exceedingly simple type
are not only those where the expressions cause and effect have their most obvious
application; they are also paradigms for the causal language used of very
different types of cases.14
They go on to state that
Human action in the simple cases, where we produce some described effect by the
manipulation of an object of our environment, is an interference in the natural
course of events which makes a difference in the way these develop . . . . Common
sense experience teaches us that, left to themselves, the things we manipulate,
since they have a `nature' or characteristic way of behaving, would persist in
states or exhibit changes different from those which we have learnt to bring about
in them by our manipulation. The notion that a cause is essentially something
which interferes with or intervenes in the course of events which would normally
take place, is central to the commonsense concept of cause, and is at least as
essential as the notions of invariable or constant sequence so much stressed by
Mill and Hume.15
It might appear, however, that we have placed ourselves on the circumference of a
vicious circle by maintaining that the meaning of causality has to do with the
alteration of normality, where the normality itself is defined in other lawlike
terms which presuppose causality. The answer, I think, is that we have different
kinds of analysis taking place: in the one, we are asking what is the fundamental
meaning of causality as this concept is based on our experience--and we find this
to be alteration of intentionality or normality; in the other, we are asking what
is the ground or basis of normality, and this second-order, albeit more general
question, we will argue, is not analyzable conceptually into more basic notions,
although answers in particular contexts may be given to it in the descriptive and
explanatory terms of various scientific inquiries. Von Wright has, I believe,
correctly noted that
The confidence which I have that the water in the kettle would have boiled if
heated is a confidence in the difference which the presence of a cause would have
made to the prevailing situation. . . . Confidence of the latter kind presupposes
confidence of the former kind, that is: confidence in the effects of causes (nomic
connections) presuppose confidence in the causeless continuation of certain normal
states of affairs.16
We assign priority to the sense of `cause' that is based on experience, then, as
this sense is precisely what is involved in our usual concern with "what is the
cause of" questions. Nomic generalization is experientially derivative. We know
about intentionalities and their alterations in experience before we know the
"laws of nature" qua laws. A young child knows what to expect when he throws a
wall against the wall without his knowing the laws of trajectory and impact. It
might also be argued that when science asks the `why' or `how' of the normality of
a given process it is not so much asking for causes as it is for reasons that are
expressible mathematically in functional terms. Laws are not themselves causes. In
the example of the boiling water, the "law" that certain liquids will boil when
brought to certain temperatures is not the cause of the water's boiling; rather it
expresses only the structure of normality of a given process. P. T. Geach is thus
able to write correctly that
Scientists do not describe natural events in terms of what always happens. Rather
certain natural agents . . . are brought into the description, and we are told
what behavior is proper to this set of bodies in these circumstances. If such
behavior is not realized, the scientist looks for a new, interfering agent . . .
.17
We are interested then, for the most part, in finding the cause for some event or
state of affairs when an alteration in what we take to be the normality of a
process occurs. Causal events of alteration (interference, inhibition. . . . ) of
an aiming or intentionality as such are thus always single-case; that is, it is
always a particular interference that takes place, albeit some single-case
situations may be seen as instances of causal uniformity or of nomic
generalization (e.g., the boiling of a pot of water at a certain temperature).
This particularity needs, I believe, to be part and parcel of our meaning of
causality for this reason, that a causal event implies spatial-temporal
determinations that are never exactly repeatable. It may very well be that for
certain kinds of physical causal events the factor of particularity is rather
unimportant in seeking the cause(s) of certain phenomena (e.g., in medical science
the search for the cause(s) of a disease is carried out with little, if any,
importance attached to the fact that it is Tom or Alice . . . , with their special
physical particularities, who is suffering from the disease), yet the dimension of
particularity seems evident for the meaning of causality (and even in modern
medical science there is a growing awareness that it is not enough to see a
patient as just an instance of a "disease," but rather as a particular organism,
whose particularity must holistically be addressed).18
The idea of causation as interference with intentionality also allows us to
appreciate the mutuality (or karma. if you will) that often clearly obtains in
cause-effect relationships--i.e., the effect in turn affecting the cause or the
cause simply being affected by its "experience" as a cause. Many causal relations
in our experience (especially in the domain of human action) are potentially
symmetrical in the sense that my doing something (talking to someone in a certain
way) in turn gives rise to activities directed toward me, which affect me in a
variety of ways. And all causes as events suffer some consequences of their
actions as causes. Events. as we have said, are histories, not logical entities.
In actual experience an event occurs in a context of processes, which is to say
that events do not just take place, appearing as it were out of a void. as self-
sufficient, self-defined things, they occur in, and are subject to, structures of
continuous change. The stone thrown into the glass window is not the "same" stone
it was before; it too is affected by the impact. The thrown stone as event has its
own little history.
This mutuality, which is exhibited to a pre-eminent degree in creativity, where
the very being of the artist is conditioned by his act, is also becoming
increasingly apparent in technology with the advent of many "self-regulating"
("feedback") systems. Contemporary technology in many ways, it seems, is working
from more organic models and away from simple, one-directional, one-dimensional
mechanical ones. Interdependence with intertwining histories--mutuality--become
the key terms of both animate and inanimate processes.
In sum: I have proposed that instead of taking as paradigmatic for the meaning of
causality those everyday events that seem to lend themselves nicely to explanation
by mechanistic causal accounts (billiard balls hitting one another; matches being
ignited) we start with one of the most complex forms of human experience,
creativity; that we seek to understand that experience as far as we can in its own
terms and that we then apply that understanding back to the question of the
meaning of causality. We want, in short, to see if an understanding of creativity
can enrich our understanding of causality.
We saw that creativity, as exemplified in the making of an artwork, may be
characterized as that activity `whose end or purpose is realized as such only in
the activity; which calls for a working with, rather than a coercive control over,
the principles or structure of a medium; which infuses a power or vitality and is
thoroughly formative in nature; which gives rise through its own singularity to
objects whose uniqueness is central to their definition; and which is a kind of
play or disciplined spontaneity which goes in turn to influence or condition its
agent.'
In answering the question--What concept of causality best accords with the nature
of creativity and the nature of experience?--we found, first of all, that the
notion of process must take precedence over atomic events as the content of
experience. "Process" means that events are histories; that we do not experience
events as corresponding to atemporal logical entities, but as they have their own
direction and aim--their intentionality. A process tends in its normality toward
some state appropriate to it. Causation may then be seen as an alteration of that
intentionality. We are concerned with causal explanation when an alteration in
what we take to be the normality of a process occurs. And thus causal events are
single-case; it is always a particular interference that takes place, albeit this
particularity (to which insufficient attention on the whole has been paid in
analyses of causality), while denying strict repeatability, does not rule out
universality. When causality is understood in terms of this somewhat more organic
model (which itself seems closer to contemporary science and technology, with its
self-regulating systems) the mutuality of cause and effect, the event as a
history, also becomes evident.
The meaning of causality, then, as related to creativity and our ordinary
experience, is to be found in alteration of intentionality--of the normality of a
process. While the normality of a specific process might call for nomic categories
the meaning of causality nevertheless may be kept distinct from questions of what
constitutes normality; the latter being answerable only in terms of particular
cases.
University of Hawaii
Honolulu, Hawaii USA
. NOTES
l. J. Ayer, "What is a Law of Nature," Revue Internationale de Philosophie, X
(1956), 144-65, in Philosophical Problems of Causality, edited by Tom L. Beauchamp
(Encino, California: Dickenson Publishing Company, 1974), p. 83.
2. Richard Taylor, "Causation," in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Editor in
Chief, Paul Edwards (New York: Macmillan, Free Press, 1967), II, p. 63.
3. George Henrik von Wright, Causality and Determinism (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1974), p. 13.
4. Ibid., p. 17. von Wright believes that the concept of causal necessity, which
is required to distinguish nomic from accidental regularities, is intelligible
only with reference to counterfactual conditionality; and that the latter in turn
makes sense only when seen in relation to a concept of action. "When saying that p
is a causally sufficient condition of q, we are not saying only that, as a matter
of fact, whenever p obtains, q obtains, too. We also claim that on all occasions
in the past, when p did in fact not obtain, q would have obtained, had p obtained
on those occasions. Only if the proposition that p is a sufficient condition of q
warrants the truth of the counterfactual conditional proposition in question, does
the conditionship relation here amount to a causal relation." (Ibid., p. 8). He
goes on later to ask: "Can a singular counterfactual conditional statement ever be
verified?" He answers: "ln order to verify it, we should have to substitute for a
state which obtained at a certain stage in the world's history another state which
did not obtain at that very stage. In any straightforward sense of `verification'
this is certainly not possible." Ibid., pp. 37-38.
5. Richard Taylor Action and Purpose (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall,
1966), p. 29.
6. Ibid., p. 32. In somewhat different terms J. L. Mackie makes this same point: a
simple regularity theory, a cause is both necessary and sufficient for its effect
in such a sense that it follows automatically that the effect is equally
sufficient and necessary for its cause: `Whenever an event of type B occurs an
event of type E has preceded it and whenever an event of type A occurs an event of
type B will follow." The Cement of the Universe: A Study of Causation (Oxford: At
the Clarendon Press, 1974). p. 160.
7. See Vincent Tomas, "Creativity in Art," The Philosophical Review. LXVII,
(1958), and Monroe C. Beardsley, "On the Creation of Art," The Journal of
Aesthetics and Art Criticism. XXIII (1965).
8. Cf. "On the Concept of Art," forthcoming in The Journal of Chinese Philosophy.
9. This is the first of the famous six canons of classical Chinese painting as set
down by Hsieh Ho in the fifth century.
10. von Wright, p. 55.
11. Ibid.
12. Mackie, p. 32.
13. A. Michotte, The Perception of Causality (London: Methuen & Co., 1963), p.
261.
14. H.L.A. Hart and A.M. Honoré, Causation in the Law (Oxford: At the Clarendon
Press, 1959), p. 27.
15. Ibid.
16. von Wright, p. 43.
17. As quoted in Mackie, p. 75.
18. The denial of strict repeatability in favor of particularity, in short, does
not rule out universality. It is quite possible, and indeed necessary, that we
recognize regularities in experience without our having to ascribe a sameness to
the particular events that constitute the regularities. The "law of gravity" may
happily obtain even though one could never `drop' the same object under identical
conditions more than one time. Non-repeatability of a strict kind and universality
are logically independent.
CHAPTER XVIII
AESTHETIC MEANING OF NATURE
AN INDIAN APPROACH
BISHNUPADA BHATTACHARYA
All art has its genesis in the confrontation of the artist's vision with the
material world, both organic and inorganic. These constitute respectively the
subjective and objective counterparts of an artistic creation. Just as artistic
intuition without its objective correlative is an empty form, so the objective
counterpart or content of an artistic production, however rich and varied by
itself, cannot lead to perfection without the aid of the penetrative vision of the
artist. This vision brings the great variety constituting the content of art into
a coherent whole, adding a new value to the otherwise discrete facts and imbuing
the dead matter with the glow of sublimity. For the attainment of knowledge, at
least on the mundane plane, neither pure consciousness nor objects as such are
enough, their interaction alone making the act of cognition meaningful. Similarly,
in the field of artistic creation it is the artist's spiritual vision working upon
the objective world, internal and external, organic and inorganic, that makes his
act of creation a success. Consequently, in ancient India, as in the West, great
importance was attached to these two essential factors of artistic creation, the
subjective and objective, the spiritual and material, relating to the major
divisions of art such as poetry, painting, sculpture, music and architecture.
Therefore, the pronouncements of great thinkers on these two factors and their
mutual interaction deserve to be studied with both care and respect.
In the present paper I shall attempt to analyze the findings of the ancient Indian
critics of art which bear on this particular field and bring them into a coherent
body of norms. Its intent is to assist the enlightened layman to grasp the
underlying mystery of the process of artistic creation and to compare the ancient
Indian approach with corresponding ones in the West. The present study is based
mainly upon observations in the masterly works bearing on Sanskrit literary
criticism, most of which are applicable also to other fine arts.
THE ARTIST
The two prerequisites that make up the personality of the artist or poet are
creative vision or imagination (pratibh-a) and wide knowledge of Nature
(vyutpatti). These correspond to the above-mentioned subjective and objective
counterparts of a work of creative art. As the second prerequisite is essential
for making the content of a work rich and varied we will treat it first. For the
attainment of vyutpatti or wide knowledge of organic and inorganic nature all
critics give priority to direct first-hand experience of the varied aspects of the
universe. Early critics like Da.n.din, Bh-amaha, V-amana and Rudra.ta have
unanimously stressed the importance of first-hand acquaintance of loka, loka-
v.rtta and loka-svabh-ava. Bh-amaha, the eminent poet of the 7th century A.D.
(circa), while enumerating the different subjects to be mastered by a poet,
includes loka in the list:
Sabd-as-chandobhidh-an-arth-a itih-as-asray-a.h kath-a.h/ Loke yukti.h kal-as ceti
mantavy-a.h k-avyagairhyam-i//
Vamana, again, gives the first place to loka:
loke vidy-a prak-ir.na-nca k-avy-ang-ani
What is loka? Amara, in his lexicon, gives loka as a synonym of bhuvan and jana.
Vamana, in his K-avy-ala.mk-ara-S-utra (1.3.2) equates loka with loka-v.rtta,
which has been explained as "lokah sth-avara-jangam-atm-a/ tasya vartana.m v.rttam
iti//." Thus, it is evident that by loka is meant not only the entire organic and
inorganic universe, but also their distinctive modes of living, their customs,
manners, and everything relating to them. The commentator Gopendra Tripurahara
justifies the priority attached to loka by V-amana in his gloss: "Loka iti/
var.nan-iyam antare.na ki.m var.nyata-iti loka.h prathamam uddi.s.ta.h/." There
can be no doubt that without the artist's acquaintance with loka in the widest
sense his creation becomes devoid of content or what is to be expressed and is
reduced to an empty form. Similarly, Rudra.ta in his K-avy-ala.mk-ara includes
loka-sthiti among the subjects of minute study and observation on the part of a
poet. As he says:
chando-vy-akara.na-kal-a-lokasthiti-pada-pad-artha-vij- ñ-an-at/
yukt-ayuktaviveko vyutpattir iya.m sam-asena//
Namis-adhu, in his gloss thereon, explains loka-sthiti as:
loka.h sva.hprabh.rtayas te.su car-acar-adisvar-upaniyama.h sthiti.h.
The poet has to move within the limits set down by loka-svabh-ava, and he can
transgress them only at his own risk. Nevertheless, he does have a type of poetic
license to go beyond the strict confines of loka for achievement of the desired
aesthetic effect.
Bharata, the eponymous author of the N-atvas-astra. attaches the highest
importance to loka as a valid source of knowledge (pram-ana), giving it pride of
place among the three pram-a.nas recognized by him: "Loka vedas tath-adhy-atmam
pram-a.nam trividha.m sm.rtam/." For dramatists and producers of dramatic
performances loka has the highest authority as, in Bharata's words, n-a.tya is
lok-atmaka. Loka has the greatest authority from the viewpoint of dramatic art as
the evidence of loka cannot be invalidated even by s-astra's. As Bharata says:
loka-siddha.m bhavet siddha.m n-a.tya.m lok-atmaka.m tath-a/
na ca sakya.m hi lokasya sthavarsya carasya ca/
s-astre.na nir.naya.m kartu.m bh-avace.st-a-vidhi.m prati//
n-an-a-s-il-a.h prak.rtayah s-ale n-at.ta.m prati.s.thitam/
tasm-allokapram-a.nam hi vijñeya.m n-a.tya-yokt.rbhi.h//
Commenting on these verses Abhinavagupta observes in his Abhinava-bh-arati:
Yat loke siddham tat siddham/ na tat kasyacit asiddham iti y-avat/ nahi
lokaprasiddhim apahnotu.m
kascit smartha.h/ Suvipratipannasy-api tadapahnave
k-a.s.thap-a.s-a.nat-apattiprasang-at/
The importance of loka, loka-sthiti, loka-y-atr-a, loka-prasiddhi, loka-v.rtt-
anata, is also duly emphasized not only in poetry and drama, but in other fine
arts as well, especially in the art of painting. A verse of Silparatna indicates
the broad scone of this art:
jangam-a sth-avar-a v-a ye santi (-tyatra) bhuvanatraye/
tattatsvabh-avatas te.s-a.m kara.na.m citra.m ucyate//
From the above citations, there can be little doubt as to the awareness on the
part of artists and critics of the importance of an intimate acquaintance with the
varied cosmic creation for their proper representation in works of art such as
poetry, drama, painting, etc.
THE WORLD OF NATURE AND THE ARTIST'S CREATION
At this point the question arises: What is the relation of the objective world of
Nature to the artist's creation? How is Nature to be represented in a work of art?
In the following section some representative Indian views bearing on this issue
will be discussed.
In the N-atyas-astra Bharata designates dramatic art as anuk.rti, which is
employed frequently as a synonym of n-a.tya: `tadante' nuk.rtirbaddh-a', on which
Abhinavagupta comments:
anuk.rtir iti `n-a.tyam'
Dramatic art is seen as a form of `imitation'. Dramatic art is seen as a form of
`imitation'. It is also called anuk-irtana. As Bharata observes with reference to
n-a.tya, `trailokyasy-asya sarvasya n-a.tyam bh-av-anuk-irtanam'. In drama this
anuk-ara or amu- k-irtana or representation is achieved through the four
recognized modes of acting (abhinaya)--viz., -angika, v-acika, -ah-arya and s-
attvika. In narrative poetry, either prose or verse, this is done by linguistic
expression known as varnana in the terminology of Sanskrit aesthetics. Therein
lies the main difference between these two principal art-forms, succinctly stated
in the following couplet attributed to Bha.t.tan-ayaka:
anubh-ava-vibh-av-an-a.m var.nan-a k-avyam ucyte/
te.sa-a eva prayogastu n-a.tya.m g-it-adi-rañjitam//
How is this var.nana or abhinaya related to the objects belonging to the organic
and inorganic universe? Are things, as found in the world identical with those
represented in works of art such as poetry, drama and painting? Is the Himalaya as
it appears to our perception the same as the Himalaya described by K-alid-asa in
the First Canto of the Kum-ara-Sambhava? It is obvious that objective reality
cannot be identical with aesthetic representation. The objective universe is
penetrated through and through by a continuous nexus of causality, some objects
being causes (k-ara.na), some effects (k-arya) and others concomitants (sahak-
arin). Somehow this nexus has to be broken by the artist in representing the
universe in his work of art. He has to choose some and discard others; he may have
to reverse the causal order that is apparent in the objective world; he may have
to introduce new elements that had no place in the historical sequence of events.
Thus the artistic representation cannot prima facie be an exact replica of the
cosmic universe that constitutes the material of the artist. It is this difference
between the two realities, namely, the objective and the aesthetic, that has been
stressed by Indian critics. To avoid any possible confusion between the two they
have made use of the terms vibh-ava, anubh-ava and vyabhicari-bh-ava in lieu of k-
arana, k-arya and sahak-arin. Thus realism, in the strict sense, as characterizing
the process of artistic creation is something of the sort of a misnomer. The
artist's world is distinct from the world of reality as popularly conceived. This
point has been very beautifully stated by Bhatta Tauta, a celebrated critic and
teacher of the great Abhinavagupta, in the following couplet cited in the latter's
Abhinava-bh-arat-i:
Kavisaktyarpit-a bh-av-as-tanmay-ibh-ava-yuktitah/
Yath-a sphurantyam-i k-aavy-an-na tath-a' dhyak.sata.h kila//
The things of the world that the artist perceives are the raw materials out of
which he builds up his own universe by a judicious selection of the vibh-avas,
etc., which from his point of view alone possess reality. Abhinavagupta, too,
stresses this point frequently in his Abhinava-bh-arati:
ete ca vibh-av-anubh-ava-vyabhic-arir-up-a eva/ na tu
tadatirikta.m jagti kiñcid asti prayoge//
IMITATION OF NATURE
If the artist's universe thus differs from the cosmic universe how can art be
regarded as imitation (anuk.rti, amuk-irtana)? What is the exact significance of
the term anukara.na as applied to a work of art? Is it mere simulation
(Sad.rsakara.na) of the external reality? How is it possible to imitate persons,
things and moods that are not present, that are spacio-temporally inaccessible to
the artist and as such not susceptible to his perception? Thus, the concept of
imitation is a basic theme that underlies the creative process of the artist and
constitutes its raison d'être. Its riddle must be solved before we can hope to
understand the relation of the artist's world with the objective world accessible
to our mundane experience.
Abhinavagupta in his masterly exposition of Bharata's N-a.tyas-astra, critically
analyzes the concept of anukara.na or anuk-irttana as applied to dramatic art.
After a thorough analysis of this concept he comes to the conclusion that
imitation, in the usually accepted sense of the term, is totally inapplicable in
art, for even in our day-to-day affairs, imitation is a source of ridicule and
laughter. `Parace.s.t-anukara.n-addh-asa.h samupaj-ayate.' In the ultimate
analysis, anukarana is a form of anuvyavas-aya or mental reconstruction that is an
entirely new creation by means of the artist's intensive mental concentration or
sam-adhi. Of course, the poet or artist collects his raw materials from his own
observations and other accessible sources. When these materials are represented in
art, they assume an altogether new complexion; the resemblance they bear to the
former is only apparent and not real. This apparent resemblance cannot be achieved
by means of imitation in the ordinary sense as the conditions of imitation are
available neither to the artist nor to the connoisseur.
As imitation in art is distinct from a mere reflection as in a mirror of things of
the world or of nature and man, the poet's world must be looked upon as a
completely novel creation and not a mere replica or projection of the world of our
ordinary experience. The rules that govern the objective world are altogether
ineffective with reference to the artist's universe. The laws of providence cannot
touch the process of artistic creation. As Mammata puts it, the poet's creation is
niyati-k.rta-niyama-rahit-a. The artist portrays, by means of words or other
media, things beautiful and ugly, attractive and repulsive, noble and mean, high
and lowly. Whatever be their real nature in the objective world, they are
completely transformed in the process of artistic creation and all of them serve
to achieve the sole purpose of the artist, namely, evocation of the desired
emotional states in the minds of the connoisseurs. It is precisely because the
poet or the artist has the unique gift of transforming the materials that he culls
from the objective world that he is called praj-apati or the creator.
-Anandavardhana, the celebrated author of the Dhvany-aloka, refers to this unique
creative power of the artist in the following memorable stanzas:
ap-are k-avya-sa.ms-are kavir eka.h praj-apati.h/
yath-asmai rocate visva.m tathedam parivartate//
S.rnagri cet kavi.h k-avye j-ata.m rasamayam jagat/
Sa eva v-itar-agas cen-n-irasa.m sarvam eva tat//
This power of evoking the emotions is not traceable to things as they are in the
objective world. It is conferred on them by the artist by means of the artistic
expression through the medium he uses, be it words, colours, stone or musical
notes. As R-ajasekhara puts it succinctly in a striking mnemonic verse of his K-
avyam-im-a.ms-a:
kukavir vipralambhe'pi rasavatt-a.m nirasyati/
astu vastu.su m-a v-a bh-ut kaviv-aci rasa.h sthita.h//
Also this power of evoking the desired emotional moods that the so-called real
things of the world acquire in works of art depends to a large extent on the
emotional mood of the artist himself, for it is this which governs his act of
selection and transformation of the raw materials of nature. A thing with no
emotional appeal to an indifferent and emotionally incapacitated onlooker may
serve as a symbol of deep emotional implication for a true artist with strong
emotional bent. The same object may even serve as the symbol of two diametrically
opposed emotional moods according to the difference in the artist's psychological
makeup. R-ajasekhara, on this point, cites the view of one P-alyak-irtti who
emphasizes this selective capacity of the artist and his gift for transformation
of the apparently intransigent things of nature in accordance with his inner
emotional urge:
Yath-a tath-a v-astu vastuno r-upam, vakt.rprak.rti-
vise.s-ayatt-a tu rasavatt-a/ tath-a ca yam artha.m rakta.h
stauti ta.m virakto vinindati madhyasthas-tu tatrod-aste/
iti P-alyak-irtti.h//
Moreover, the poet or artist does not observe the line of demarcation separating
the two broad classes of organic and inorganic nature in day-to-day experience. To
his vision these things are not divided into clear compartments; rather, each is
invested with properties of the other according to his emotional urge whenever
occasion demands it. This has been noted by -Anandavardhana in the following -ary-
a cited in his Dhvany-aloka:
bh-av-an acetan-an api cetanavac-catan-an acetanavat/
vyavah-arayati yathe.s.ta.m sukavi.h k-avye svatantratay-a//
Thus, he is completely at liberty (svatamtra) to deal with nature, animate and
inanimate, unfettered by the laws that govern the material universe. The same
thought has been expressed by the great Prakrit poet V-akpatir-aja in the
following g-ath-a of his epic Gaü.davaho. It was quoted also by -Anandavardhana in
support of his views concerning the fact that the endless variety and novelty of
things never grow old and commonplace even though they are viewed by artists of
every age and clime and incorporated in their works of art:
ataha.t.thie vi tahasa.n.thie vva hiaammi j-a .nivesei/
atthavisese s-a jaa-i vika.daka-a goar-a v-a.n-i//
This process of transformation of the inanimate into the animate and vice versa is
intensely evident in K-alid-asa's Clous Messenger where the cloud, rivers, hills,
trees and creepers are portrayed as if they are all sentient beings. K-alid-asa
tries to justify this apparently abnormal outlook from the standpoint of the love-
lorn Yak.sa with the observation:
`K-am-arta hi prak.rti-k.rpa.n-as cetan-acetane.s.u.' However not only lovers and
lunatics but poets and artists as well seem to ignore this dichotomy of Nature
into organic and inorganic, animate and inanimate, sentient and insentient, which
appears to be one of the basic and ineffable principles of cosmic creation. Though
this obliteration of the apparently inviolable principle of division underlying
the created universe is an affront to reason in genuine works of art this forms
the very quintessence of artistic creation itself. -Anandavardhana, with his keen
insight, unerringly points to this basic fact of artistic creation in the Second
Uddyota of his Dhvany-aloka in the course of his analysis of the nature of
rasavad-ala.m-k-ara thus:
Yasm-an-n-astyev-asau acetanavastuv.rtt-anto yatra
cetana-vastuv.rtt-anta-yojan-a masty-antato vibh-avatvena//
If a poet or artist portrays the objects of nature, whether animate or inanimate,
only as they are experienced by ordinary beings, he would be failing in the
primary duty of a true artist. It is not the task of an artist to hold a mirror up
to nature. In this connection the verses cited by Abhinavagupta in his commentary
on the N-a.tyas-astra (XIX. 130) and attributed to his preceptor (Bha.t.ta-Tauta?)
deserve to be quoted here as they incorporate the very quintessence of artistic
representation:
Yad yatr-asti na tatr-asya kavirvar.nanam arhati/
Yann-asambhavi tatr-asya tad var.nya.m saumanasyadam//
deso'dridanturo dyaurv-a ta.tit-ku.n.dals-ma.n.dit-a//
-id.rk sy-ad athav-a na sy-at ki.m kad-acana kutracit//
This transformation of nature in art is discernible in the art of painting also.
K-alid-asa gives expression to this basic principle in the Sixth Act of his
Abhijñ-anas-akuntala through an utterance of Dusyanta with reference to Sakuntal-
a's miniature portrait which he was painting.
yad yat s-adhu na citre sy-at kriyate tattadanyath-a/
tath-api tasy-a l-ava.nya.m rekhay-a kiñcid anvitam//
This principle of transformation of natural objects in painting is also traceable
in the Mah-abh-arata according to K.semendra, who cites the following stanza in
his Kavi-ka.n.th-abhara.na to show Vyasa's acquaintance with the principles of
governing the art of painting:
atathy-anyapi tathy-ani darsayanti vicak.sa.n-ah/
same nimnonnat-an-iva citra-karmavido jan-a.h//
Transformation of Nature
In every form of art this transformation, in a greater or lesser degree according
to the nature of the medium employed, is present as an indispensable element, a
sine qua non, without which it is not possible to portray nature in works of art.
There remains an argument against the validity and justifiability of this
apparently basic principle and it had to be answered by the great critics and
aestheticians of India as by philosophers of ancient Greece. As we have seen all
fine arts, such as drama, painting, poetry, etc., are imitations or
representations of nature, whether organic or inorganic. If the artist is free to
distort nature, to represent things of the objective world as what in reality they
are not, it is obvious that his work is unreal, not true to nature, a
falsification of the essence of things that are commonly apprehended by men of the
world. Drama, poetry, painting, sculpture, music and dance all become unreal
appearances; they are asatya or untrue, false. Thus, it is not morally justified
to encourage the practice of these arts and their study in a society that seeks
the moral edification of its members. That such an objection was actually raised
against the validity of artistic creation is evident from a reference to a similar
view against poetic art in particular and traceable in R-ajasekhara's K-avyam-im-
a.ms-a, namely, `asaty-arth-abhidh-ayitv-at nopade.s.taya.m k-avyam-ityeke.'
Is this charge against artistic creation valid? Should the artist's creation by
denounced as false because it is not a faithful representation or reflection of
the things of the world? The question is important and Indian thinkers have tried
to uphold the validity and truth of artistic creation by analyzing the nature of
the intuitive vision by the artist. This alone reveals to his mind the true nature
of things as represented in his work. The artistic intuition is called `divine'
(divya) and the artists and poets `divya-d.ro', i.e., endowed with the gift of
divine sight. No human eye can see the nature of things which is glimpsed by the
artist's imaginative intuition (pratibh-a) alone as if in a flash. It is the third
eye of Lord Siva which can probe into the mysteries of things irrespective of
their spatio-temporal determination. A thing has two aspects--one that is
universal (s-am-anya), and the other particular and individual (visi.s.ta), it is
shared by no other thing in the world. The first is amenable to the perception of
ordinary beings, but the second or the particular and distinctive nature of things
can be grasped by artistic imagination alone. Thus, if the things as portrayed by
the poetic intuition appear not to be in harmony with the way they appear to
ordinary mortals in their cognitive acts, they must not be denounced as false.
It might well be that the things as they are perceived by ordinary folk are
themselves false or mere appearances which hide beneath them the true intrinsic
essence of things. The poet's imaginative insight removes the variegated and
multiform veils covering the inner reality. For this reason artistic imagination
is ranked highest among all the possible cognitive faculties--perception,
recollection or reasoning--by ancient Indian thinkers. As poets and artists are
possessed of this rare faculty, they are regarded as supreme amongst wise men,
even above scientists and philosophrs. In this context, the observations of a
distinguished Western critic on the nature of imagination, particularly of the
Promethean type, may be quoted as they so closely resemble the findings of the
early Indian thinkers on the subject:
We have found the stolen fire identified with reason and knowledge, but it is
probably better to identify it with the symbolic imagination: We have not grown so
accustomed to the creative power of imagination as to think it common, in the
nature of the human case, like knowledge or reason. We think imagination a
wonderful power, unpredictable and diverse, and we are satisfied to call it divine
and to ascribe to it an early association with transgression. A Promethean says of
it that it is the most precious part of man, perhaps the only precious part, the
only respect in which man's claim to superior character is tenable.
This intuition of the artist is comparable, indeed almost identical, with the
Yogic intuition caused by intense concentration of the mind as defined by
Patanjali in his Yoga-S-utras. The poet is a Yogin and the creative process is a
form of yoga. He intuits the things entering his universe in a state of trance or
sam-adhi. Just as the Yogin finds endless transcendental bliss by probing into the
inmost essence of things that are the objects of his meditation, so the poet and
artist experience supreme bliss upon intuiting the nature of things represented in
their works of art. V-amana, in his K-avy-ala.m-k-ara-S-utra (I.3.17 and III.2.1),
stresses the importance of this essential factor of poetic creation, namely,
concentration of mind (avadh-ana or sam-adhi) by withdrawing inward the faculties
that tend to move outward towards external objects. This is also the view of one
Sy-amadeva, who is referred to by R-ajasekhara in his K-avyam-im-a.ms-a. It is not
true, therefore, that the objects revealed by artistic vision, be they vyakta or
s-ak.sma, are not true to their nature. Rather things as they are represented by
the artist in his state of supreme meditation are more real than their so-called
real counterparts in the objective world, which are mere shadows of the former.
Plato's censure of artists cannot stand the test of critical analysis; indeed, it
is quite the opposite. The verdict of the Indian critics is above reproach when
they boldly and unambiguously assert:
n-asatya.m n-ama kiñcana k-avye yastu stutye.su-arthav-ada.h/
sa na param kavikarma.ni srutau ca s-astre ca loke ca//
The artist tries to give expression to his inner vision attained by virtue of deep
meditation and trance through the medium proper to his art. Artistic
representation is not at all, as usually conceived, imitation or reflection of an
object. It may be regarded, however, as imitation or expression of the mental
image of the artist conjured up by his imaginative intuition. With this mental
image the impressions, feelings, sense of values and deep emotions are so
indissolubly associated that the mental image is an altogether new creation; the
resemblance that it apparently bears to things of nature is only superficial. The
artist's mental vision is but an idealized version of the original object that
gave the initial impetus to his act of intuition; by no means can it be equated
with it.
According to the views of some empistemological theorists, however, the nature of
artistic intuition has some correspondence with the perception which lies at the
root of all our day-to-day activities. Their theory is that the thing out there
which causes our perception is not identical with the object perceived. This is
but a mental image with some likeness to the object outside. Therefore, ordinary
acts of perception, too, are beset with the same problems of truth and validity
which appear to be inseparable from artistic intuition. In fact, there can be no
justification, at least technically, for an unbridgeable gulf between artistic
intuition and the ordinary perception of laymen.
The main points of difference between the two lie in the fact that in ordinary
perception, though the object perceived is a mental image, it is not enriched with
the subjective spiritual content that is present in the idealized vision of the
artist and marks it off as something sui generis. The image intuited by the artist
at the moment of his creative activity is dissociated from its empirical
determinants like space, time, personal relations, question of self-interest,
profit and loss and a multitude of other similar factors which are invariable
concomitants of our mundane experiences. As such, its intuition is always one of
pure bliss, howsoever ugly, abominable or frightening it might appear outside the
province of art proper. In art, however, the creative intuition that unravels the
inherent mysteries of things lifts them to a transcendental level that has no real
liaison with their counterparts in the world of ordinary experience.
As the personal factor is absent from the point of view of the artist and the
connoisseur, both feel the same supreme ethereal pleasure caused by all genuine
works of art. This total obliteration of all sorts of personal determinations is
the outcome of the process of tammay-ibhavana, along with the consequent s-adh-ar-
a.n-ik.rti of all the elements represented in a true work of art. These are the
ultimate results of the imaginative vision that lights up the very depths of their
being and as such is a source of transcendental bliss foreign to our day-to-day
experience. It is clear then that artistic truth cannot be judged by the
application of the same standards valid for our worldly experience. Rather, it is
the experience itself that is of prime importance and is the goal and substance of
artistic activity, be it of the artist himself or the connoisseur (sah.rdaya). In
truth, the objective reality (v-astavatva) of the thing represented in art is of
very little significance. Indeed, the desired experience and the state of
transcendental bliss is all the more delightful if it is the result of aesthetic
experience achieved by means of apparently objectively unreal (av-astava) things
conjured up by the artist's creative imagination (ap-urva-vastu-nirm-a.n-a k.sam-a
prajn-a); only aesthetically blind persons would condemn it as false and illusory.
Thus the world of art is not untouched by questions relating to validity which
invariably haunt the rest of experiences within the limits of the so-called
objective world. The great critic Mahimabha.t.ta, the author of the Vyaktiviveka,
declares unhesitatingly:
ten-atra gamya-gamakayo.h sacetas-a.m saty-asatyatva-vic--aro nirupayoga eva/ k-
avya-vi.saye ca v-acya-vyangya-prat-it-in-a.m saty-asatyavic-aro nirupayoga eveti
tatra pram-a.n-antarapar-ik.sopah-as-a-yaiva sampadyata--iti//
Mahimabha.t.ta, thus, gives expression to one of the eternal truths regarding the
secret of aesthetic activity in every sphere of art, whether it be poetry, drama,
painting, sculpture or music.
The Real and the Ideal
At this point it might be asked legitimately: If the artist is completely free to
create as he likes according to the dictates of his fancy and imaginary vision
(pratibh-a), if he is not in the least bound by laws of causality and similar
restrictions which rigidly govern the world of matter, why do critics and
aestheticians attach so much importance to his knowledge of loka, or Nature in the
broadest sense, as noted at the beginning of this paper? The early Indian critics
stress on every occasion the utmost importance of the poet or artist having the
most thorough and intimate knowledge of the external world, man and Nature; any
deviation from the ways of Nature or lok-atikrama is severely condemned by them.
An artist's ignorance or violation of the nature of external reality, due to his
insufficient acquaintance with it is noted as a serious flaw by all great critics
since all forms of art are mainly based upon loka. As Bh-amaha declares:
`tatra lok-asraya.m k-avyam'
Thus travesty of the facts relating to the external world of reality, a defect
(do.sa) called loka-virodhi, is as much to be avoided as desa-viroghi, k-ala-
virodhi, kal-a-virodhi, -aama-virodhi and ny-aa-virodhi. Not only has this
faithful depicting of the external reality been highly acclaimed by eminent
critics, Da.n.din in his K-avy-adarsa asserts with great force, though contrary
views are not wanting, that svabh-avokto, which consists in portraying Nature as
it is, is the foremost of all poetic figures. Rudra.ta, too, enumerates v-astava
as the first of the four principal classes under which all the figures of sense
(arth-ala.mk-ara) are comprehended. This v-astava has been defined by him as
vastusvar-upakathana, and it comprises twenty-three poetic figures in all.
Da.n.din, again, mentions k-anta as one of the ten poetic excellences (k-avya-
gu.na) which constitute the very soul of poetic composition of the Vaidarbha
school; its essence consists in the faithful representation of the nature of
things as they are viewed in the world, and this has been recommended chiefly in
cases of reportage as also of description. As he lays down:
k-anta.m sarva-jagat-k-anta.m laukik-arth-anatikram-at/
tacca v-art-abhidh-ane.su var.nan-asvapi d.rsyate//
According to Dandin the reverse of this, though much in favour in the rival school
of the Gaudas, is a positive defect designated as atyukti or hyperbole. Thus,
faithful representation of external reality or Nature is viewed as supreme
excellence in poetry and all other forms of art; any departure from it is severely
condemned.
It might appear from the pronouncements just quoted that Realism was recommended
by the critics and practised by artists and poets in classical India. But this was
not the case. Though conformity to Nature has been extolled by the ancient Indian
philosophers of art, this conformity must not be confused with blind imitation or
copying of external reality. The artist had the freedom to depart from the nature
of reality as it appears to our intelligence in the ordinary world.
The poet, even when dealing with historical themes, can introduce events that
never happened. The innovations, however, must always be made with a view to the
emotion (rasa) in question; they must have propriety (aucitya) in respect to the
emotion to be evoked (rasocita). -Thus from the aesthetic standpoint the only real
thing to be kept in view by the artist is the emotion and nothing else. If
description of external reality with scrupulous faith is not conducive to evoking
the emotion in question, the artist should not cling to such a procedure; he would
be fully justified in deviating from objective reality and introducing novelty
even by distorting the things as they are, provided the emotion can be evoked by
this departure. The poetic conventions (kavi-samaya), as they are called in Indian
literary criticism, are apparently flagrant violations of objective reality; yet,
as expedients to attain the aesthetic ideal, namely, emotional relish (ras-asv-
ada), they are much more real than the so-called naturalistic approach to the
external world. Thus, propriety (aucitya) was the basic principle governing the
process of transformation or reflection of Nature or external reality in art. It
was lack of propriety (anaucitya) that was to be condemned in a genuine work of
art, even if it was accompanied by a scrupulously faithful portrayal of the world
of reality.
From the standpoint of common sense, then, all representation of Nature in art was
idealistic. From the standpoint of the artist and art connoisseur, however, it
might be looked upon as the very essence of the most pure Realism, insofar as the
artist and the aesthete seek to realize through such representations, however
distorted they might appear to ordinary intelligence, the only real thing, the
rasa, of which the external reality is but a crude garb and embodiment. Art is but
the bodying forth, the sprouting of the seed of emotion, which is its very soul or
spirit. Similarly, according to Monists of the Advaita School of Vedanta, all this
universe is nothing but name and form (n-ama-r-upa); it has only illusory being
and conceals under its sheaths that core of endless bliss (-ananda) and
consciousness which alone is Real. Indian artists and art-critics, therefore,
while admitting the importance of the external universe and man as objects of
representation in works of art, did not consider Realism as an inviolable creed in
artistic creation. Realism or Naturalism, in the strictest sense of the term, was
but a misnomer.
To them, every object of the external world is transformed, modified and arranged
from an altogether new perspective in the course of the creative process under the
guiding spirit of the artist's soul. The artist's emotions, values, impressions,
reasoning, and every conceivable spiritual element are as if in a crucible only to
take new form and shape in the work of art. Thus, it is foolish to apply
dichotomies such as matter and form, words and meanings, poetic embellishments and
things embellished, and so on, which are the commonplace of every schoolbook on
art criticism. Indian thinkers, though scrupulously and monotonously maintaining
in their texts these methods of classification and abstraction, never lost sight
of the ultimate truth of artistic creation and aesthetic representation, both of
which were indivisible and unanalyzable to the artist and the connoisseur
respectively. This basic truth has found expression in a beautiful couplet of
Kuntaka's Vakroktijivita, which deserves to be quoted here:
ala.mk.rtir ala.mk-aryam apoddh.rtya vivicyate/
tadupayatay-a tattva.m s-ala.mk-arasya k-avyat-a//
Thus faar we have dwelt at some length on the `objective correlate' of a work of
art. As observed in the beginning, however, without the subjective aspect, the
poetic or artistic intuition, no creation is possible. In truth all works of art
are but objectifications or hypostatizations of the spiritual vision of the
artist, which is another name for pratibh-a in Indian aesthetics.
It is the ideal Truth, the ideal Beauty, the Reality that is ideal in all the
subtle nuances of that highly equivocal term which the poet or artist intuits by
virtue of his spiritual vision with the aid of his "mind's eye." It is that Truth,
that Beauty and that Reality which finds expression through the various media in
different forms of art. The essence of that inner reality lies in rasa or the
emotional experience of the artist and the connoisseur. Around that nucleus, of
course, throng the impressions, varied and multitudinous, inherited or acquired on
the basis of the artist's empirical experience, all of which undergo a sort of
catalytic transformation at the touch of the magic wand of his spiritual vision.
Thus, the creative Process is always selective and, as such, idealistic; it is
never realistic or imitative as is popularly conceived. The artist must, perforce,
be a keen observer of Nature, of the external reality, in all its infinite
multiplicity and minute details. His way of observation, however, his mode of
looking at things animate and inanimate, abstract and concrete, is always
determined by his emotional bias, which is but another facet of his spiritual
vision itself.
Thus, Realism and Idealism are inextricably blended in the creative act of the
artist. It is then, permissible to characterize artistic creation as a mode either
of Realism or of Idealism provided we are conscious of the essential reservation,
namely, that they refer respectively to the objective and subjective counterpart
of the artist's approach to Nature. Yet, taken in its entirety, the work of art
and the artist's creative act is basically transcendental; it cannot be touched by
these narrow concepts which are insufficient to explain satisfactorily even our
day-to-day empirical experiences. It is that inner vision, or pratibh-a, which is
the be-all and end-all of every genuine artistic creation. External reality, with
Nature and man as its constituents, is nothing but an indispensable element for
realizing the spiritual content of art, a helpful expedient towards suggesting
rasa which, according to the greatest lndian theorists of art and aesthetic
criticism, is identical with the Absolute or Brahman.
Sanskrit College
Calcutta. India
FOOTNOTES
l. All this has been profoundly expressed by Bhatta Tauta, the eminent preceptor
of the great Abhinavagupta, who have been cited in the Abhinavabh-arat-i on the N-
atyas-astra, Chap. XXIX. It is this transcendental aspect of art which has been
eloquently emphasized by Bharata, Abhinavagupta, Bha.t.tan-ayaka, and Mammata in
their celebrated Treatises on Poetics and Dramaturgy, by Bhoja in his Samar-
anga.na-S-utradh-ara with reference to the art of painting, and in such texts as
Hayas-ir.sa-Pañcar-atra and Is-ana-siva-Gurudeva-Paddhati relating to
architecture.
EPILOGUE
SANTOSH SENGUPTA
It is appropriate for two reasons that this international conference on `Man and
Nature' has been held at Santiniketan. Firstly, Visva-Bharati was intended by its
founder, Rabindranath Tagore, to be a meeting-ground of scholars from different
parts of the world: `This is the Visva-Bharati where the whole world makes a home
in a single nest.' Secondly, it is in the serene environment of this `abode of
peace', hallowed by the memory of his father, Maharshi Debendranath Tagore, that
the poet-philosopher mediated on the meaning of man and nature. These continued
reflections resulted in significant disclosures whose nature I shall indicate
briefly.
1. The fact of the internal or essential unity of man with nature is variously
expressed in Tagore's writings. He used the analogy of the bud and the blossom to
illustrate the internal character of the connection. For him, the Indian Mind has
never hesitated to acknowledge its kinship with nature, its unbroken relationship
with all. Tagore sought to support this thesis on different grounds. Of these the
most basic was ontic, for he was at pains to show that the unity of man with
nature has its source in the One: `Unity comes from the One.' This monistic
commitment was defended by the poet-philosopher throughout his life. The One from
which the different levels of unity are derived is God, the Supreme Person with
whom man and nature are in close union or harmony.
Tagore stressed this in a series of metaphors and similes. In turn, man and nature
are expressive of the divine Reality, the Supreme Person, on which they are
grounded. Rabindranath's characterization of the ultimate reality as person, which
is typical of theism, has support in the Vedas and the Upanisads. `Nothing is
better than the Person, he is the ultimate Goal,' says the Katha Upanisad.
Distinctively, this theistic conception of God provides the basis for the intimate
connection between God, man and nature.
It is experience or vision that testifies to the oneness of the Real or the
reality of the One. In his Religion of Man the poet claimed that he had this
experience at the age of eighteen: `When I was eighteen a sudden spring breeze of
the religious experience for the first time came to my life and passed away
leaving in my memory a distinct meaning of spiritual reality.' The experience was
an awareness of integration of the triad: man, nature, and God. It is significant
that this spiritual experience is not one of complete absorption into God. In God
man and nature are not merged, but preserved in their deeper meaning or
significance. Integration is not negation but the deeper affirmation of what is
related. Tagore consistently opposed the mystical and the pantheistic denial of
the distinctiveness of man and nature; the theism he affirmed can be characterized
as integral. One bond, one Truth, unites God, man and nature. `The world without
and the intellect within us--these are the manifestations of the same Sakti,' he
states in Dharma. Having known this, we experience the unity of nature with the
human mind and the unity of mind with God.
2. Tagore affirmed the unity of man with nature on the basis, not merely of their
having God as their source, but also of the relationship disclosed in their
actions. This relationship is of two kinds: communication and communion, each
having different levels. As this is not the place to discuss the modes of
relationship, I shall only highlight some essential points of Tagore's view. He
urged that the very possibility of communication between man and nature
presupposes that the one is not alien to the other. Broadly speaking, there are
two levels of communication--one cognitive and the other existential. The mode of
the development of human knowledge in interaction with the natural world indicates
the importance of the latter on the cognitive level. Similarly, what is in nature
acquires significance in relation to human consciousness. As Tagore put it in
Religion of Man, `What we call nature is not a philosophical abstraction but what
is revealed to man as nature.' He was consistently opposed to the realist's
positing of nature as external and unrelated to human consciousness. This sphere
of externality is meaningful only as related to consciousness. The human faculties
are so constituted that they admit of natural response to varied phenomena of
nature.
Tagore was at pains to show the nature and extent of the correlation between
changes in nature and the variation in the psychic life of man. Nature is as
varied as man's mental life, and there is a correlation between the unity of the
human mind and that of nature. The development of the human mind depends upon
participation in nature, which in turn conditions the nature of human development.
This second level of communication embodies significant insights into the bearing
which the relationship with nature has upon the development of man. It is not
merely the cognitive, but also the affective and the conative functions of man
which develop as a result of the regulating functions of nature. As one gazes upon
the starry sky or watches the vast expanse of the sea one invariably experiences
an expansion of consciousness with resulting development of feeling and will.
In view of this guiding influence of nature upon human consciousness the poet
initiated an educational experiment at Santiniketan. Nature, he consistently
maintained, can be the preceptor. The provision for open-air instruction and other
modes of contact with nature was not intended as a ritual, but as the necessary
preparation for the natural development of the human faculties. According to
Tagore children have a sub-conscious mind which like a tree has `the power to
gather fruit from the surrounding environment.' He consistently warned against the
imposition of rules and text books in dissociation from the surrounding
environment: `We teach the child geography but rob him of his earth.'
3. The second mode of relationship with nature, communion, unlike communication,
has the characteristics of depth, inwardness, and disinterestedness. This is in
evidence on the level of human relationship. Communion has two forms: sympathy and
love, which is complete communion. The emphasis on man's loving relation with
nature is evident especially in Rabindranath's later poetry. Love is not merely
attachment to the beloved, but also insight into his or her nature or uniqueness,
that is, it is both feeling and knowledge. In the love-experience of nature man
has a sense of attachment to, and also an apprehension of, the object of love.
Tagore considered possible a loving relation with nature although it neither is a
person nor has the qualities of a person. He opposed an animistic interpretation
of nature on the ground that it ignores the distinctiveness of natural phenomena.
While his writings employ metaphorical expressions indicative of nature's having
psychological levels, these are not to be understood as descriptions of natural
phenomena, but as indicators of deep affinity between man and nature.
Communion with nature, like communication, can be viewed on both the cognitive and
the essential levels. Patently, communion on either level has depth and meaning
which communication by the nature of the case does not evince. On the cognitive
level communion yields an apprehension which can be characterized as a depth-
experience of nature. What Tagore stressed throughout is that this experience or
knowledge is the source of insight into the selfhood or inner being of the person
who is in communion with nature. In one's love-experience of nature there is a
disclosure of the meaning of one's own being. This is in evidence on the plane of
human relationship where in man's communion with the beloved there is an unveiling
or unconcealing of certain dimensions of one's own being. Phenomenological
descriptions of love indicate how the same act of communion is the source of self-
knowledge and of disclosure of the other person. Self-discovery, through finding
oneself in the other, confers meaning on both: the meaning of one's personhood
enhances the significance of the person. This cognitive relationship is typical of
man's communion with nature. The way the secrets of one's being are revealed in
loving relation with the beauty of nature has been highlighted by the poet in some
of his significant writings.
Communion on the existential level is in evidence on the model of man's self-
development in his experience of communion with nature. This is the source, not
only of his self-knowledge, but of the harmonious development of his existence,
because such conditions of self-development as dissociation from the way of ego
and the dominating influence of passions and cultivation of the attitude of
detachment are prerequisites for communion with nature. Communion or love is not a
natural possession, but an ideal to be attained. Tagore consistently maintained
that the ego which separates one from other persons and nature has to be overcome.
Similarly, the other influences which obstruct the expansion of human
consciousness, which conditions communion, need to be transformed. The
transforming effects of communion with nature on the existential level are evident
on the level of man's communion with man. Perfectionistic ethics affirms that
self-realization or development is possible through sacrifice and love.
One important positive condition of man's communion with nature is the proper
development of his aesthetic sensibility. Because this sensibility is ordinarily
dormant in man, he does not have the attitude of communion with nature. He
responds to, or communicates with, the beauty around him, but does not have the
love-experience of the environment in question. Persons such as poets and
aestheticians who have properly developed what is latent in man can have an
intimate union with the phenomena in question.
One distinctive characteristic of man's communion with nature emphasized by Tagore
is disinterestedness. In the experience of communion with nature, man is free from
the interested attitude of using this as a means to the fulfillment of certain
ends. This apprehension or experience concerns a natural phenomenon as the end in
itself; there is no motivation to control it for some gain. In stressing the
disinterested way of man's love of nature Tagore distinguished between love-
experience and love-adventure. The latter, considered as typical of the use-
approach to nature, is exemplified in Robinson Crusoe's solitary contact with
nature in order to gain something from her, `coaxing her, cooperating with her,
exploring her secrets, using all the faculties to win her help.' It follows that
the joy or the bliss which results from love of nature is equally disinterested.
4. Thus far, I have discussed the nature of the relationship between man and
nature, indicating the bearing of their relationship on their meaning. Now, Man
and Nature exemplify two spheres of unity which are so related that one can have
full or adequate meaning only in relation to the other; neither constitutes a
separate sphere of meaning. Tagore's position can be understood only if one
relates his rationale of the relationship between man and nature to its ontic
grounding discussed briefly above. The thesis is that the One Supreme Spirit or
Person is the source of their relationship or unity. This notion of ontic
grounding has an existential import whose understanding illumines in a new
perspective the nature of the unity of the triad, man, nature, and God.
God is not merely the transcendent or the external source of man and nature, but
is immanent to both. This means that what is grounded therein is a natural
manifestation or expression of God. Man and nature, then, as expressions of the
divine reality have adequate meaning, of which God is the ultimate source. This is
the more evident if we view God, the Supreme Person, not merely as the ground but
as the goal of man and nature. What differentiates man from the lower creatures is
not merely the sense of his limitedness, but the urge or the longing for higher
being. As a result of dissatisfaction he has a directedness or thrust to what
exceeds his existence. The supreme object of this human longing or transcendence
is the highest being, the Supreme Spirit, in union with whom there can be complete
fulfillment. In the context of this human situation constituted of discontent,
transcendence, and fulfillment one can grasp the real significance of the relation
between God and man. Similarly there is incompleteness in nature, which is
characterized by incompleteness and imperfection. Its beauty is transcendental and
has complete fulfillment in God--the infinite Person. One important bond of man's
unity with nature is, therefore, the need for total fulfillment through
transcendence.
Conversely, God relates himself to man and nature in response to his need. It is
important to note that God's expressing himself in this response is essential to
his nature because God is love itself (Rasa vai sah). In the exposition of
Tagore's view proper emphasis has not been laid on this fulfillment situation. The
relationship between God, man and nature represents a movement which has both
centrifugal and centripetal character: God not only creates, but also fulfills. He
is essentially God of man and nature and can no more be separated from them than
they can from Him. The enrichment of the three in interrelationship reflects the
integration of the triad. That God does not negate but affirms in greater depth
both man and nature was aptly stated by Tagore in his Personality: `The infinite
and the finite are one as song and singing are one,' and in Sadhana: `Music and
musician are inseparable.'
From this it follows that God can be realized through both man and nature. The
Upanisads onesidedly emphasized the approach to God through one's self-hood, as is
evident from the nature of the classical mahavakya system. What is distinctive of
Tagore's integral theism is his equal recognition of man and nature as modes of
union with God. `Thou art the sky. . . . But there where spreads the infinite sky
far to take her flight in reigns the stillness with white radiance.' That
spirituality, according to Tagore, requires a balanced strength of the within and
the without is indicative of the synthetic, total view of his spirituality which
reflects his vision of the integration of God, Man, and Nature. This vision is the
basis of the religion of an artist.
Visva-Bharati University
Santiniketan, W. Bengal, India
****
THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR METAPHYSICS
STUDIES IN METAPHYSICS, VOLUME II
PERSON AND SOCIETY
Edited by
GEORGE F. McLEAN
HUGO MEYNELL
UNIVERSITY PRESS OF AMERICA
INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR METAPHYSICS
DEDICATION
This volume is dedicated to Prof. H.D. Lewis, the first President of The
International Society for Metaphysics. His open vision and creative spirit enabled
the Society rapidly to undertake the coordinated program of research in
metaphysics throughout the world of which this series is the fruit.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Grateful acknowledgement is made to The University of Hawaii Press, for permission
to reprint Masao Abe, "The Problem of Evil in Christianity and Buddhism," from
Paul O. Ingram and Frederick J. Streng, eds., Buddhist-Christian Dialogue: Mutual
Renewal and Transformation (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press, l986), pp. 139-154.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
PART I. THE PERSON AS SOCIAL
1. Person and Community, Individual and Society,
Reformation and Revolution
by Richard McKeon 3-16
2. Confucius, Aristotle, and Contemporary Revolutions
by Ellen Chen 17-27
3. Person, Personality and Environment
by Peter A. Bertocci 29-38
4. Individual and Society in Metapysical Perspective
by Ivor Leclerc 39-48
5. Self-Awareness and Ulitimate Selfhood
by Seyyed Hossein Nasr 49-57
6. Buddhism and the Way of Negation
by Toshimitsu Hasumi 59-61
PART II. SOCIETY AND THE PERSON
7. The Development of Community
by Robert O. Johann 65-75
8. Community in the Process of Development
by Mieczyslaw Gogacz 77-79
9. Person as a Unique Universal Social Being
by Mihailo Markovic 81-89
10. Homo Creator: Solving the Problem of Human
Existence
by Janusz Kuczynski 91-99
11. The Extension of Human Rights and the
Advancement of Society
by Augustin Basave Fernandez del Valle 101-108
Comment by Abraham Edel 109-113
12. The Role of Reason and Its Technologies in
the Life of Society
by Alwin Diemer 115-123
13. The Problem of Evil in Christianity and
Buddhism
by Masao Abe 125-142
Index 143-145
INTRODUCTION
It has been the triumph as well as the agony of the 20th Century to have come to a
newly developed sense of the person. This has implied in social relations both
creative liberation and destructive oppression. It is the task of metaphysics as
described by Aristotle to know the good or the end toward which human striving
should be directed. Hence, after its study on Person and Nature,1 The
International Society for Metaphysics has carried out this study on Person and
Society. A third, correlated study on Person and God2 follows.
By seeing social crises as the classical problem of the one and the many in
contemporary terms, the study searches for ways to deepen the understanding of the
person, not in opposition to society, but precisely within it and in terms of it.
On this basis it seeks to evolve a deeper and more adequate metaphysical
understanding of the nature of society and of its implications for the development
of contemporary social life in its legal structures and technological
implementation.
The study draws upon the resources and the experiences of the world's many
cultures. Part I works out a more adequate notion of the person for contemporary
life by looking for new insights in the psychology of the person and the
dialectical tensions within society. It then develops a metaphysics of the person
as social in terms of the various Eastern and Western horizons whether as
transcendent or as the ground of being.
Part II concerns the person in society, focusing upon the nature of the person in
relation to the development of community and social praxis. It draws conclusions
regarding human rights, appropriate applications of the burgeoning technological
capabilities and the problem of evil.
Upon completion of these studies on the person, the International Society for
Metaphysics undertook a series of investigations regarding society, in terms of
unity, truth and justice, and the good. Further, having studied intensively both
person and society it extended the investigation to the field of culture and
cultural heritage understood as personal creativity in community and in history.
In this manner the work of the ISM has constituted a cohesive and coordinated
investigation of metaphysics as a living discipline in our day.
NOTES
1. George F. McLean, ed. (Washington: University Press of America and The
International Society for Metaphysics, l988).
2. George F. McLean and Hugo Meynell, eds. (Washington: University Press of
America and The International Society for Metaphysics, l988).
CHAPTER I
Person and Community,
Individual and Society,
Reformation and Revolution
RICHARD McKEON
INTRODUCTION
Inquiries concerning the nature of man and society and programs of action bearing
on their formation and change have undergone reformations and revolutions which
parallel in sequence and purpose contemporaneous revolts against metaphysics and
projections of architectonic substitutes. Again and again, the apparently endless
proliferation of warring theories about being and the nature of things and of
occurrences has led philosophers to abandon metaphysics in order to investigate
how we know, hopeful that knowledge of mind and knowing might enable them to
establish principles and uncover methods of knowing being and what is. When their
epistemic investigations, in turn, have travelled many paths into many regions of
thought and feeling, it has seemed plausible, again and again, that examination of
what we say and do might provide a key to meanings and references and to beings
and existences.
Such revolutions have marked off the turns of the ages since the ancient Greeks
laid down the pattern and established the vocabulary of culture and philosophy in
the West. Inquiry concerning truly fundamental questions of being and existence,
thought and feeling, action and expression faces, as a consequence, the need to
make initial and usually unexamined choices which determine the statement and the
examination of the questions. The choice of semantic and substantive
presuppositions may be schematized in two dimensions. Perpendicularly, one might
choose to begin with beings or with existences, with ideas or with experiences,
with symbols or with actions. Horizontally one might ground one's choices in
metaphysical principles of things, or in epistemological methods of critical
judgment, or in analytical interpretations of statements or processes.
Aristotle made a characteristic contribution to the construction of this variable
matrix of symbols and significances. He formed a vocabulary of univocal scientific
and philosophic terms by giving words in ordinary usage strict definitions and by
inventing technical terms or terms of art to transform the original ambiguity of
words into a dynamic structure of interrelated terms and meanings. This vocabulary
of univocal words entered into the languages of philosophy, science, and policy in
the West. But its terms seldom retained the meaning by which Aristotle defined
them or the applications with which he used them, and progress or even simple
changes in all fields were often announced and developed accompanied either by
citation or by refutation of Aristotle. Changing interpretations of Aristotle are
among the significant characteristics by which successive ages in the West may be
interpreted.
Perpendicularly Aristotle opted for self-sufficient subtances, self-evident first
principles, and natural potentialities and action. Horizontally he formulated an
architectonic theoretical science of being and of first principles, an
architectonic practical science of political and moral actions, and a productive
science which might be put to architectonic uses to order processes and products
of artistic and mechanical making. Aristotle's theoretic science of being, which
came to be called metaphysics, related the sciences--theoretic, practical, and
productive--and the arts--particular and universal--by their first principles or
their commonplaces. But in the inquiries and analyses of his followers and
opponents it ceased to be a science; it became a belief about being and reality
and principles, formulated and reformulated in antagonistic idealisms and
materialisms and disavowed and refuted in a variety of skepticisms.
The forms which arts, sciences, and culture take are determined by the
circumstances, times, and communities in which they arise and develop. Aristotle's
practical science of politics is a single science of human action, individual and
social, treated in two parts: from the perspective of the grounds of individual
moral action in the Ethics and from the perspective of the grounds of political
organization in the Politics. Its purpose was practical: to lead men to perform
good actions, not theoretic, to discover and demonstrate the final good. In the
inquiries and analyses of his followers and opponents, it ceased to be a
practical: science and became a theoretical science of the good, or a physico-
biological science of nature, and human nature, or a rhetorical art of inducing
actions, good or bad. Aristotle's productive science of poetics can be given an
architectonic function, since the statement of what is thought to be and the
formation of human associations and communities may be treated as products of arts
of making or artificial objects. But from the beginning his followers and
opponents turned, from poetic science and the investigation of form and matter in
art objects, to the rhetorical art of using words to produce effects in feeling,
conviction, and action.
NATURE AND FAMILY
This is still the vocabulary of discussion and the strategy of action. We tend to
begin with the vocabulary in which questions are formulated and to dispute
concerning significances and applications. We use rhetorical arts to secure
agreement in the reformation and revolution of statements of questions and of
principles, and in the establishment of communications and of communities. We seek
to be objective by beginning with what men say and do rather than with presupposed
things grounded in nature or with alleged facts grounded in knowledge. We expect
natural things and warranted knowledge to emerge from the reinforcement or
resolution of claims of individuals and groups in opposition.
Nature is a product not a principle; the examination of man and society as
disclosed by what they say and do can take over the functions once exercised by
metaphysics in determining the nature of things and the principles of knowledge,
morals, and policy. Men are still formed by the communities in which they are
reared, and these are still formed by the men who constitute them and live in
them. Justice and equality are still sought in the relations of man and society,
and in the relations of men to men and of societies to societies. The meanings of
`nature' have changed, however, and nature operates differently in processes and
in explanations. It is no longer used as a principle to establish the `nature' of
man and society and of justice and equality in their interrelations. Instead the
nature of rights and duties, and of man and society in general, are derived as
products and sequences of what men say, and do, and make.
From the beginning of Western philosophical speculation, two theories of the
relations of men and society have developed in opposition and in mutual
adjustment. Plato analogized man and society; the virtues of man can be discovered
writ large in the state. They form a single mutually defining whole or a single
virtue. The associations and communities of men differ only in size, not in
nature. Aristotle made univocal distinctions between the virtues of men and the
institutions of societies. He sought a basis for discovering and investigating the
`nature' of man in the nature of his faculties and in their natural functions and
habituations. The `nature' of the associations of men form a hierarchy from the
household, the simplest community required for mere living, to the state, the
inclusive community required for living well. The virtues of man, based on his
nature, provide him a second nature. The institutions of states, based on natural
relations of men and things, constitute a nature prior to the nature of individual
men, which orders the relations of ruling and being ruled. Justice is a virtue in
individuals, an order in states, and a bond between individuals and states.
Aristotle begins his Politics with a refutation of the theory that human
associations differ only in size and in the number of their members. This is a
preliminary to formulating the theory that their differences are found in the
nature and function of their ruler and ruled in ordered sequence from simple
autonomous to inclusive free community. Aristotle based the simplest community on
two natural relationships, the generation of the immediate family on male and
female, the formation of the economy or household on master and slave. Two further
relationships arise with products of these relations, father and son, and owner
and property.
The relation of male and female in the generation of children is a relation of two
rational beings. Aristotle likens it therefore to `constitutional' rule, that is,
to the true form of the rule of many called by the very name of `polity' or
`constitution', as contrasted to the degraded form called `democracy.' The
relation of father and son in the education of the young is a relation in which
unformed rational potentialities are formed and developed; it is likened therefore
to `royal' rule. The relation of master to slave in the formation and operation of
the household economy is a productive relationship in which the workers lack by
nature the power to make decisions concerning their own welfare and that of the
community. Thus, it is likened to `despotic' rule. The relation of owner to
property is a relation between man and the things he makes; it operates therefore
in production and use. In the household slaves are animate instruments of action,
while property consists of products and inanimate instruments of production.
NATURAL RELATIONS
Aristotle's formulation of the natural relations which underlie the family and the
more inclusive communities, the village and the state--into which it enters as an
element and from which it derives its most characteristic social functions--are
the source of four doctrines attributed to Aristotle and almost unanimously
condemned as egregious Aristotelian errors: a conception of property, of slavery,
of youth, and of women. They are all errors concerning the `nature' of men in
social relations. They are misinterpretations of Aristotle, for they neglect the
distinction between the meanings Aristotle gave to `nature' in practical and in
theoretic sciences. Nevertheless as widely accepted interpretations, they take on
characteristic forms in successive ages and make his distinctions available to
frame new interpretations of man and society, science and knowledge, and action
and statement.
Property
Aristotle differentiated the political order from the economic order; he made
economic self-sufficiency of the household a prerequisite to the political
organization of the state; and he subordinated economic to political objectives.
Politics became inseparable from economics in political economy, and political
theory and history were given new economic forms. They came to be seen as theories
of property and production--or of the freedom and rights of men--and as histories
of the development and interactions of cultures--of the generation of communities
and their acquisition of power.
With these changes in economics and in its relation to politics Aristotle's
conception of the nature of property and of production became egregious errors,
but they provided the vocabulary for their own correction. Like Plato, Aristotle
recognized that existing Greek cities were in reality two cities rather than one:
a city of the rich and a city of the poor. Therefore he changed his definition of
democracy from the rule of the many to the rule of the poor. Moreover, he
maintained that of all possible constitutions only two actually existed, usually
in mixture, oligarchy and democracy. These balanced and opposed the pursuit of
wealth and the pursuit of freedom as ends of the state. He separated questions of
ownership, production, and use of property. He argued for private as opposed to
common ownership, and he sought criteria and limits of production in use. The
determinant role of use and consumption in the household led him to distinguish
the economic order of the family from the political order of the state. He
differentiated property which is an instrument of production from wealth which is
accumulated and used for exchange but not for further production. This distinction
earned him repeated criticism and refutation for failure to understand the
productivity of capital and the justification of interest.
Locke began his Second Treatise on Civil Government by distinguishing the power of
magistrates over subjects, fathers over children, master over servants, husbands
over wives, and lords over slaves. This was in refutation of Filmer's reduction of
the commonwealth to the family in his Partrarcha or the Natural Power of Kings. In
this Locke was similar to Aristotle who had begun his work on Politics by
distinguishing the rules of statesmen, kings, householders, and masters in
refutation of Plato's reduction of the republic to the family. Where Locke sought
the foundations for society in natural powers, Aristotle sought them in natural
relations. Aristotle's refutation of the reduction of the state to the family was
for the purpose of distinguishing politics from economics. Locke's refutation of
that reduction permitted him to assign the name `property' to "the mutual
preservation of lives, liberties, and estates" and to make the enjoyment of
property the end of civil government.
Modern political revolutions have been economic revolutions, conflicts of rich and
poor, haves and have-nots. Resolution has been sought in common ownership of the
means of production as a stage to the disappearance of politics and the withering
away of law and the state. Resolution has been sought also in private ownership of
the products of one's labor as a stage to the extension of rights from the
economic to the social and cultural and the withering away of divisive
nationalisms in the community of mankind. In the one, dispossessing the
dispossessor is the road to freedom and well-being; in the other, life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness became a synonym for life, liberty, and property.
Among nations, have-not nations came into existence liberated from imperialisms
and colonialisms, and seeking to form a third world independent of the worlds of
communism and of capitalism. Within nations, have-not groups, minorities and
majorities, took form to vindicate their economic, civic, social, and cultural
rights.
Aristotle's natural relations have ceased to be generative principles of
interdependent societies. But they have reappeared as principles of opposition in
existing men and emerging societies, whose clashing purposes and claims may lead
to the formation of equal and just societies and men. The rejection of Aristotle's
argument that wealth is not productive is usually on the grounds that he confused
economic with biological productivity. It is seldom remarked that the argument
depends on the sense which `nature' takes on in a practical science there the
nature of a political association orders and relates the activities of men and
communities that function within it. Its nature defines and delimits the pursuit
and accumulation of wealth lest unlimited accumulation take precedence over all
other social ends and activities and transform the political community.
Slavery
Aristotle's exposition of the natural relation of master and slave is the source
of the attribution to him of a doctrine no less offensive to modern sensibilities
and repugnant to accepted opinions than his condemnation of the art of money-
making. It is chrematistike, the doctrine that some men are by nature slaves. We
have since learned that all men are by nature equal, but in making that discovery
we have abandoned again Aristotle's distinction between a practical and a
theoretic, a political and a psychological, sense of `nature.' In the controversy
between those who think slavery is natural and those who think it is contrary to
nature, Aristotle chooses his position by expounding the nature of the rule of
master over slave, rather than the individual nature of the slave or the
particular science of the master. For the production and use of property in the
household or the economy, instruments of two kinds are needed: inanimate
instruments of production or make and animate instruments of action or doing; that
is, tools and materials that are used and workers who use instruments in
production according to the directions of a master craftsman or architecton who
relates making to doing. The rule of master over slaves has two aspects. One is an
economic aspect, which leads us to recognize the continued existence of "wage-
slaves" even after the abolition of slavery: the other is a social aspect, which
leads us to recognize that in actual social situations there are many slaves who
lack the power to make fundamental decisions bearing on their own welfare or that
of the community of which they are members. Communities of the unprivileged are
formed on the model or as instances of communities of the dispossessed.
The vocabulary of natural relations in ruling and being ruled supplies the
distinctions of kinds of suppression in discriminations based on race, nation,
religion, age, sex, or any other association or co-existence. The change is from
natural generative relations to antagonistic oppositions in which the victims of
discrimination struggle to achieve equality of individuals, of groups, and of
nations. Paradoxically the achievement of equality of men and of societies
requires two steps. First, the underprivileged group must be integrated into a
group with recognized unity and dignity. Secondly, liberated and established
groups must be reintegrated in the just and equal functioning of more inclusive
associations and nations in a world community. In the first step integration and
dignity are sometimes sought by `demonstration,' not in the sense of proving
utility or worth, but in the sense of exhibiting and calling attention to
injustice and inequality. In the second step desegregation and community are
sometimes sought by assigning "quotas" according to the number of the disfavored
group, without consideration of the abilities and functions required for the
successful operation of the larger inclusive group. Indeed, demonstrations at
conventions, legislatures, administrative bodies, or international organizations
may be for the purpose of impeding their operation. Active participation with
other groups may be for the purpose of changing the functions, the membership, or
the constitution of the inclusive body.
The operation of the societies of men depends at once on mutual trust and
antagonistic opposition. If one distinguishes the political and the moral, the
collective and the individual, senses of `nature', some men are by nature slaves
in the societies in which they function, but all men are by nature free and equal
in their individual integrity and activities. On the other hand, if the political
and social natures of associations are reduced to and derived from the physical,
biological, and psychological natures of individual men, all men are equal. This
equality is not in their powers and abilities, but in the rights and freedoms,
which they realize in societies. These include: to live, to satisfy their needs
and wants, to form and take care of families, to participate in other
associations, to think and to express their thoughts and feelings, and to share in
the economic and cultural, technological and scientific achievements of society.
Youth
Aristotle used the natural relation of father to son for the formative education
of the young for participation in household and in other communities. This was
transformed and inverted to add a cultural antagonism of old and young to the
economic antagonism of rich and poor, and the social antagonism of privileged and
repressed. Paideia means both education and culture, both a process and a product,
individual and social. The education of a man in a society is to acquire a
comprehension of the knowledge available and an appreciation of the values
esteemed in the society. Cultures endure and change. The culture of an age of
innovation or of revolution is found, not in a body of knowledge and a canon of
commitments, but in attitudes and abilities which enable men to use what is know
to investigate what is unknown, to turn from representations to presentations.
Tradition and revolution are natural constituents in any human association. But
society sometimes functions as a cohesive whole in which different cultural
conceptions and aspirations are adjusted to each other and influence each other.
At times revived, reviewed, or newly imagined cultures function to reorder society
and to reform man.
The revolt of the young has been generalized from a revolt against parents to a
revolt against established forms of education and all establishments. From a
revolt of children against their father, as it was in the family as Aristotle
treated it, it became the revolt of the generation gap, as it was in the family
made into state in the Republic of Plato. It became the revolt of young societies,
young states, young ideas, arts, sciences, philosophies, religions, modes of
production, and policies of action. If education in its broadened sense of culture
is not the transmission of the known and the accustomed, but the formation of arts
and abilities to go beyond them, the young are clearly right in their criticism of
the establishment. The accustomed answer to their criticisms, that they do not yet
have the education requisite to judge what they are taught or to propose changes
or improvements is inapposite, since such knowledge does not exist in the minds of
either young or old and depends on instituting new cultural institutions and
designing new modes of education.
Women
Aristotle's use of the natural relation of male and female for the generation of
children and the formation of the family is the source of a doctrine, attributed
to him, of the natural inferiority of women. Here, as in the other natural
relations, Aristotle distinguishes between the sense of `nature' proper to
theoretic sciences like physics, biology, and psychology, and the sense of
`nature' proper to practical sciences like politics and ethics. In biology male
and female are members of the same species, and they do not differ in any of the
biological functions investigated except generation. The terms `male' and `female'
occur only in the On the Generation of Animals as the two principles operating in
all generations as form and matter in the semen and the catemenia. In order to
emphasize the continuity and the difference of the functions, Aristotle says that
in the operation of those principles the female is an immature or an impotent
male. His interpreters, favorable and unfavorable, generalize such statements to
make them apply to all functions, biological, psychological, and social, of male
and female. In the controversies of the time, Aristotle did not derive the
offspring from the sperm of the father, and he did not attribute a kind of sperm
to the mother. He was an epigenecist, and held that the embryo arises from a
series of successive differentiations from a simple homogeneous mass, anticipating
in all its essential features the doctrine of Harvey.
The natural relation of male and female in the Politics is a relation of rule. It
is a "constitutional" or "political" rule in which ruler and ruled both
participate in ruling and contribute to the generation of the family. In this the
male differs from female in providing the initiation of the process of formation.
In the Nichomachean Ethics there is no differentiation of male and female virtues,
but in the Politics the differentiation of functions provides a basis for
distinguishing the virtues of a mother from the virtues of the father. When
political natural relations are reduced to individual natural powers and
functions, women are constituted a deprived group or species, alienated
economically, enslaved socially, and curtailed culturally.
RIGHTS AND NATURAL RELATIONS
The vocabulary of natural relations was formed by Aristotle to provide principles
for the action of man and society in the context of nature and the cosmos. This
has been transformed in meaning and inverted in application to a vocabulary of
existential situations in which men form antagonistic groups which seek in actions
and statements to liberate men and to form just societies. The vocabulary of
universal natural relations which are generative of moral man and civil society
has become a vocabulary of particular natural rights to be acquired by
constituting societies in which the aspirations of men are realized. Natural
relations are univocally distinct; natural rights are ambiguously intermingled and
analogically interdependent.
Economic rights extend beyond production and consumption for the satisfaction of
material needs and felt wants based on economic relations of ownership and
property. They include participation in and enjoyment of, whatever has been made
or done by man in society that might contribute to a fuller life and even, in
turn, protection of nature and the cosmos for the continuation of life and the
advancement of well-being and happiness. Social rights extend beyond freedom of
action and cooperation based on social relations of workers and supervisors of
work. They include decision-making in general, not only concerning one's own
actions and those of others, but also concerning beliefs and values, facts to be
accepted and the knowledge to be credited. Freedom of choice (the combination of
feeling and knowledge in desiderative reason or rational desire) is transformed
from a freedom to do as one should in accordance with the order of society, to a
freedom to do as one pleases to achieve individual satisfaction in a community
based on mutual confidence, in cooperation with other communities moving to a
world-community of free and equal men.
Cultural rights extend beyond education and cultivation of what is known and what
is valued based on cultural relations of old and young, teacher and learner,
establishments and processes of formation. They begin to include as well the
development and transmission of arts and disciplines designed to use the known as
a basis for inquiry into the unknown, and what is perceived and experienced as a
basis for discernment of the previously unperceived and intuition of the
previously unfelt and unappreciated. They spread, diversify, and deepen culture
into a plurality of cultures and societies which is the community and culture of
mankind. Political rights extend beyond legislative and judicial institutions for
the formation and rectification of economies, societies, and states based on
political relations of ruler and ruled grounded in erotic loves and
concupiscences. They begin to include other forms of love and attachment,
including charity (agape) between God and man, and friendship (philia) between
equals who share without distinction of mine and thine. They embrace a world-state
which will control and prevent conflicting appeals to force, and recourse to war,
as well as a stateless world-society without need for domination and law.
The natural relations of men, in a word, provide distinct principles for the
generation and continuation of the family and for the formation and operation of
the household on which other associations and communities are based. The natural
rights of men, on the other hand, are formulated in universal bills of human
rights, which overlap as expressions of the single right to live, claimed by
existing men and societies of men. They set forth and differentiate rights as
objectives to be sought in the development of man and of society and of the
relations between them.
Aristotle made ethics and politics parts of a single science of politics, but he
carefully distinguished between the scientific treatment of the virtues of man and
the institutions of the state. He did not reduce ethics to politics or politics to
ethics. The intricate vocabulary in which he made these distinctions has been used
to transform virtues into duties in systems of moral laws, and to direct political
actions to moral ends ordered in a hierarchy of priorities established by the
principles of moral virtue. In the portion of the science of politics concerned
with communities, Aristotle distinguished economics from politics by basing the
family and the household on natural relations of men. He treated the more
inclusive communities based on them as `natures' prior to and determinative of the
natures of individual men in themselves and in relation to each other. In like
fashion, in the portion of political science concerned with the actions of
individual men, he sought grounds for the examination and organization of the
virtues of man in the nature and operation of his psychological faculties and by
treating the virtues which constitute the characters of men as their `second
natures.'
The faculties of man provide two basic distinctions for the scientific examination
of moral action. The first is the distinction between faculties which are, and
those which are not, subject to habituation, since virtues are habits formed by
actions such as they in turn produce. The second is the distinction between the
irrational faculties which share in rational principles which form moral virtues
and character, and rational faculties which have a rational principle and
contribute to the formation of moral virtues.
Moral virtues have two interdependent characteristics. One is that they are
determined relative to the passions and actions of individual men; the other is
that they are determined by universal rational principles, as a prudent man would
determine them. The rational faculties are likewise of two kinds. One is
calculative and grasps rational principles of variable things; the other is
scientific and grasps rational principles of invariable things. The calculative
faculty is the source of two intellectual virtues: art, the virtue of making, and
prudence, the virtue of doing. The scientific faculty is the source of the three
intellectual virtues of knowing, the virtues of scientific proof, intuition, and
wisdom. Prudence has its applications and exemplifications in the state and in the
individual. When it is concerned with the individual man himself, it is called
`prudence.' But as man exercises prudence it may be called economics, legislation,
or politics; politics, in turn, is divided into deliberative and judicial
prudence.
These basic distinctions set up univocal differentiations between choice, which is
concerned with means, and wish, which is concerned with ends; and between
character and rational principles, of desire and reason, as the sources of virtue.
They have been merged by the reduction of the invariable to the variable and by
the consequent transformation of scientific into calculative virtues.
`Deliberation,' `choice,' and `decision' are no longer limited to things which are
contingent and within our control. They are used also to know things which are
variable but not in our control, and things which are invariant and under our
control; they have taken over the functions of `demonstration,' `intuition' and
`proof.'
Aristotle distinguished arts, prudence, and science as the intellectual virtues of
making, doing, and knowing; but the scientific analysis of those virtues did not
determine the scientific methods of the productive, practical, and theoretic
sciences. We have adapted the vocabulary of those distinctions to reduce
intellectual virtues and scientific methods to moral virtues. We have done so by
introducing man and his decisions into the processes and the nature of art,
policy, and science, and then by reconstructing them according to the rules and
choices of games.
Justice occupies a crucial place in the relations of man and society, in the
formation and activation of men by societies, and in the constitution and
operation of societies by men. Aristotle emphasizes the univocal character of that
distinction by remarking that `justice' is an equivocal term whose meanings are as
far apart as those of `key' as the collar-bone of an animal and the instrument to
lock a door. It is a universal virtue since a man is formed in all his virtues by
living in accordance with the laws of his society. It is a particular virtue since
societies are formed and regulated by the agreements and decisions of men
concerning equality. `Justice' is equivocal because there is no relation between
the formation of men by societies and the formation of societies by men.
There are two forms of the particular justice by which equality is established and
maintained in societies. One is distributive justice which establishes a
proportion between persons and the functions and possessions assigned to them. The
other is a rectificatory justice which establishes a proportion in transactions,
voluntary and involuntary, between man and man. This focuses on the character of
injuries done without consideration of the characters of those who injure or are
injured by treating men as equal before the law. These distinctions of justice in
man and in society now provides a vocabulary by which to deny those distinctions
in the recognition of kinds of existing injustices to be rectified. In a time of
newly emerging nations, rectificatory justice takes precedence over and determines
distributive justice. The antagonistic oppositions of underprivileged and
dispossessed groups in established nations make use of rectificatory justice to
win assent to new forms of distributive justice. As a consequence no difference
remains between universal and particular justice, for the virtues of universal
justice imposed by the establishment are injustices to be rectified when
rectificatory justice establishes a new distributive justice to take the place of
established inequalities and injustices.
Metaphysics as a science of being and first principles provides principles and
causes operative in sciences of man and of society and applicable to problems of
individuals and communities. Metaphysics as an art of statement and action takes
its beginnings, its materials and its motivations, rational and emotional, from
the oppositions of particular men and societies. A vocabulary of univocal terms is
no less useful in an art of metaphysics than in a science. A science of first
principles fixes their meanings and references by the scientific methods of the
various sciences. An art of grounding one of two opposed statements or actions or
of assimilating them in a more comprehensive statement or more inclusive action
opens up new meanings and moves to new references.
The relation, man and society, as disclosed by what men say and do is heuristic in
its orientation and concrete in its foundations. Insight into the relations of
persons and communities breaks the dogmatisms which are the source of antagonistic
oppositions and leads to revolutions and reformations in the communications and
cooperations of men. It preserves a plurality of cultures by reviving them in
statement and in action in an embracing world culture whose unity is the community
it establishes for the development and enrichment of a diversity of cultures. It
finds a basis for the establishment of justice in existing injustices in men and
in societies, and in a rectificatory justice which establishes new distributions
of function and property in which men seek equality, not in powers, but in rights,
and freedom, not in acquisition, but in activity. It looks toward in a just
society which seeks common realization for individuals and communities not in
overcoming oppositions, but in assimilating to each other innovations and
achievements in art, science, and policy.
University of Chicago
Chicago, Illinois
CHAPTER II
CONFUCIUS, ARISTOTLE, AND
CONTEMPORARY REVOLUTIONS:
Comment on Professor McKeon's
"Person and Community, Individual and Society,
Reformation and Revolution"
ELLEN M. CHEN
In his illuminating paper Professor McKeon provided a synopsis of the
architectonic structure of Aristotle's philosophical enterprise which, as the
culmination of Greek thought, had "laid down the pattern and established the
vocabulary of culture and philosophy in the West." He has also delineated the
changing interpretations of Aristotle in the successive ages in the West, and drew
a careful picture of the dynamic state of affairs on the contemporary social,
national and international scene. The central thrust of Professor McKeon's paper
is a defense and clarification of Aristotle's position against criticisms of his
conceptions of property, slavery, youth and women. Of these four issues on which
Aristotle's opinions have been considered wrong the issue of property in its
economic aspect is generic and inclusive of the other three: slaves, youths and
women were properties of men who were masters, sires and lords. I shall therefore
not enter into the issue of property in its economic aspect; but rather, regarding
the economic aspect as pervading the other three, I shall address myself to the
issues of slaves, youth and woman on which modern revolutions have been based.
In view of the renewed interest on Confucius in China, it is opportune, while
commenting on the issues that have turned the moderns against Aristotle, also to
comment on Confucius' ideas on the same issues which also have been attacked in
modern times. In this way it can be seen that the new metaphysical awakening which
has brought about the contemporary revolutions is not limited to the West, but is
a universal phenomenon bringing changes to cultures and traditions far apart.
Consequently my reflections will cover the following three points:
1. The justice of modern criticisms against Aristotle by arguing that Aristotle's
treatment of master-slave relation which serves as model for the male-female and
father-son relation, is reflective of his entire enterprise from physics to
metaphysics.
2. A study of Confucius' distinction between the "chu¦ n tzu," literally, the
princely man who is destined to rule, and the "hsiao jen," the little man who is
destined to be ruled, is comparable to Aristotle's views on the master-slave
relation; that Confucius' contempt for women goes far beyond Aristotelian
machismo; and that the Confucian emphasis on filial piety has had a stifling
effect on the creative impulse of the young and in no small degree has contributed
to the conservative character of Chinese culture.
3. The metaphysical significance of today's liberation movements.
METAPHYSICAL ROOTS OF ARISTOTLE'S
JUSTIFICATION OF SLAVERY
According to Professor McKeon, criticisms of Aristotle's conceptions of property,
slavery, youth, and women are "misinterpretations of Aristotle, for they neglect
the distinction between the meanings Aristotle gave to `nature' in practical and
in theoretic sciences." The purpose of ethics and politics was "practical, to lead
men to perform good actions, not theoretic, to discover and demonstrate the final
good." Thus according to Aristotle, practically, politically and economically,
some men are slaves, even though theoretically, psychologically and according to
nature, no men are slaves.
My question is: can a practical science stand on its own without being supported
by its theoretical foundation? Either Aristotle has to abandon the unity of the
sciences, or admit the disjunction of theory and practice in his system. Neither,
I maintain, is the case.
The parallel between Aristotle's ethics and politics and his physics and
metaphysics is unmistakable. The serious recognition and study of motion in his
physics eventually points to the motion that moves least as best, motion being a
sign of dependency and restlessness. The study of substances in his metaphysics
begins as a study of general ontology (ens commune) inclusive of physical
substances, but eventually it centers on the study of those pure eternal forms
transcending the physical realm, and finally upon the contemplation of the one
self-enclosed Thought-Thinking-Itself. In the same way the study of man and
society in his ethics and politics begins with acceptance of man as social (he is
neither god nor beast), but ultimately it exalts those values that enable man to
be independent of society. In every subject matter, whether physics, metaphysics,
ethics or politics, self-sufficiency is the highest norm for Aristotle.
Unlike Plato for whom the only just life is the life of the philosopher, Aristotle
begins his inquiries into ethics and politics by treating every level of human
life on its own terms. But it is a question whether Aristotle had consistently
carried out his promise. Whitney J. Oates says:
Take, for example, his insistence that the man of practical wisdom should have
nothing to do with anything other than that which is specifically human. Hence he
is divorced from the man of philosophic wisdom who is supposed to be absorbed in
things higher than human and therefore will not be involved in the tensions of
ethical inquiry. And yet, when Aristotle makes his final "argument" for the end of
ethical endeavour, the contemplative activity of happiness, the man of philosophic
wisdom appears as the king . . . .1
While allowing man to be by nature social, self-sufficiency remains for Aristotle
the highest value even in ethics and politics. As a physical being man is not
self-sufficient, only the state is self-sufficient. Thus the citizen has his
nature fulfilled in the state. This means that according to Aristotle sociality as
a value is subordinated to self-sufficiency or a-sociality. Sociality in the
nature of incomplete beings, i.e., the citizens, is for the sake of forming the
self-sufficient individual, the state, which is by nature a-social. (Hence the
necessary business of making war in the very definition of a state).
When Aristotle says that man is by nature social, he is looking at man as man,
neither god nor beast. But when he says that contemplation is the most self-
sufficient activity, which would be the true happiness for man, he is speaking of
man as aspiring to the life of god. As a thinking being man can be self-
sufficient. If liberality, justice, courage and temperance all require external
means for completion, contemplation requires nothing but solitude. In the final
analysis the man of philosophical wisdom can rise above sociality and above the
human condition. He alone is the true master.
Clearly there is in Aristotle a built-in tension between what is by nature and
what is the best for man, for if man lives according to nature he will not attain
the best. In the end happiness consists not in the fulfillment of what is properly
human, but it resides in the activity of his thinking power alone. This is why the
slave, though a man and by definition having a rational soul, since his mode of
existence is primarily that of the body, has to enter into a relationship of
inequality with the master. Thus in the actual social context the unity of man
undergoes a bifurcation: the master whose activity is supposedly mind moves from
being a man to a god, while the slave whose activity is mainly that of the body
moves from being a man to a beast. This bifurcation applies equally to the
relation between male and female, with the male compared to the form, agent, and
final cause while the female performs only the function of the material cause; and
between the father and the son, with the father as the actualized form toward
which the son as the potentiality in process of actualization is moving.
Just as what Aristotle considered to be science and demonstrative knowledge was no
more than reasoned beliefs, what he took to be "natural human relations" in his
ethics and politics were not natural, but certainly conventional. The distinction
between physis and nomos consists in this: nomos was based on man's understanding
of physis, hence a change in nomos indicated a new insight into physis. All the
so-called "natural relations" have been historically conditioned; in that sense
nature is a product, not a principle. In this light, the shift from viewing human
relation based on "natural relations" in Aristotle to "natural rights" in modern
times has been a giant step toward the liberation of mankind, for the concept of
"natural rights" provides the corrective for what is wrong in the practice of
"natural relations." There is truly a sense, according to Rousseau, that we move
through history to nature, and that even now we are groping toward the nature of
things. Following Rousseau we may say that many "natural relations" maintained in
the past have been indeed most unnatural, and it takes all the task of
civilization to make man natural.
THE DICHOTONOMY OF MIND AND MUSCLE IN
CONFUCIUS' THEORY OF MAN
If today people identify themselves with the oppressed side of their parentage,
this was not Confucius' way. Confucius was born to a concubine of an official. Not
unlike the motion of Eros in Plato's Symposium, Confucius desired only the
qualities of his father whose manners and life style he adopted. In the Analects
we read that he refused to relinquish his carriage to be exchanged for an outer
coffin for his favorite disciple Yen Yuan, who died at the age of thirty-two,
offering his own noble lineage as an excuse.
When Yen Hui died his father asked for the Master's carriage for an outer coffin.
The Master replied: `Talented or not, everyone speaks of his own son.' When Li
(Confucius' son) died, he had a coffin but not an outer one. I did not go about on
foot in order to provide him with an outer coffin, for I am the son of a grand
official, it is not proper for me to go about on foot. (11:7)
Confucius was a native of Sung, and a descendent of the Shang, who were conquered
by the Chou. Yet his conscious and unconscious thoughts were filled with the glory
of the conqueror's culture, exclaiming: "How admirable is its culture, I follow
Chou" (Analects 3:14). Living at a time when Chou was already on the decline,
Confucius took it to be his life's mission to revive the power of Chou. He even
dreamed often of his idol the Duke of Chou, founder and consolidator of Chou
culture and institutions as well as Chou political power, and interpreted the fact
that as his years advanced he no longer dreamed of the Duke to be a sign of his
own failing mission. (Analects 7:5)
Aristotle speaks of slaves as by nature beasts of burden. Confucius divides human
beings into two categories: the "chu¦ n tzu," the princely man who uses his mind
and thus is destined to govern others, and the "hsiao jen," literally the little
man, i.e., the commoner who labors with his muscles, who is destined to be
governed by others. For Confucius, the "hsiao jen" is by definition morally inept,
he can never aspire to the virtue (te, i) of the "chu¦ n tzu": "Some `chun tzu'
may be lacking in virtue, but there is no case that a `hsiao jen' can be in
possession of virtue" (Analects 14:7). There was in Confucius' mind no idea that
the educational process could be a means of liberation for the oppressed mass.
While it is to be admitted that "in teaching there is no class distinction"
(Analects 15:38), when the "hsiao jen" is given an education, the net result is
that he becomes a more docile servant: "When the `chu¦ n tzu' learns the way he
loves man, when the `hsiao jen' learns the way he becomes more easily commanded"
(Analects 17:4).
Aristotle's attitude toward women was condescending; Confucius' statements on
women verge on the contemptuous. He spoke of women and "hsiao jen" and of "hsiao
jen" and thief, in the same breath:
Only "women" and "hsiao jen" are hard to deal with. If you get close to them, they
lose their respect for you. If you keep them at a distance, they turn resentful.
(Analects 17:25)
The Master said: `He who assumes a stern appearance while being inwardly indulgent
to himself can only be compared with the "hsiao jen.' Is he not like the thief who
sneaks over the walls? (Analects 17:12)
It is true that the distinction between the "chu¦ n tzu" and "hsiao jen" was by no
means clear-cut in Confucius. The various meanings he gave to these terms show
that they were undergoing a process of transformation in his own mind. From having
been naturalistic terms designating birth right and hereditary title they are on
the way to becoming value terms standing for the result of a man's moral choice.
Thus the "chu¦ n tzu" is not only the princely man, but also the man whose choice
is virtue and the universal good, while the "hsiao jen" is the common laborer as
well as the selfish man unwilling or incapable of choosing the higher good.
Eventually the "chu¦ n tzu" stands for a virtuous man, the man with a pure heart
and an inner rectitude, regardless of whether he holds a title or not, and the
"hsiao jen" an evil or morally weak person no matter how exalted his position.
Still, the antagonism between mind and muscles or virtue and labor is not resolved
in Confucius. There is no doubt in Confucius' mind that a man who aspired to
virtue was above the concerns of certain occupations:
Fan Ch'ih requested to be taught agriculture. The Master replied: `I am not as
good as an old farmer for that.' Then he asked to be taught gardening. The Master
answered: `I am not as good as an old gardener for that.' After Fan Ch'ih left,
the Master said: `What a `hsiao jen' is Fan Hsu!' (Analects 13:4)
Just as in Aristotle virtue and menial labor cannot be found in the same person,
for Confucius farming and gardening are not proper occupations for the "chu¦ n
tzu." "The `chu¦ n tzu' is not a mere vessel" (Analects 2:12); one is first and
foremost a human being, before one is a farmer or gardener. The tension here is
between the universal and particular calling of man. Confucius prides himself for
being a teacher of man in respect of his universal calling. Politics, or the art
of government, is the learning of how to be a universal man. Thus he calls those
"hsiao jen" whose goal in life is no larger than a particular calling, and who
mistook him for a mere teacher of a trade.
There is an inherent tension in Confucius' conception of man. He could not
reconcile his ideal of the virtuous man with the many cruel and uncultured
activities performed by a man of labor. For instance, since a man of humanity
(jen) neither kills nor can bear the sight of killing, Confucius advised: "The
`chu¦ n tzu' stays away from the kitchen," a kitchen at his time being also a
slaughter house. If for Aristotle the freedom of some must be purchased by the
slavery of others, for Confucius, in order that some human beings may live
according to virtue, others whose fate is to serve the physical needs of man must
live without the embellishment of virtue. The Confucian belief that "rites do not
apply to the common man" is the equivalent to Aristotle's conception that the
slave cannot be virtuous. Hence the distinction of "chun tzu" and "hsiao jen,"
based on the distinction between the man who uses his mind and the man who uses
his muscles, becomes also the distinction between the man of virtue and the man
bereft of virtue.
In Confucius' disciples the tension between labor and virtue disappeared. The
superiority of mental work over physical work became a dogma which poisoned the
thinking of generations upon generations. Even Chairman Mao, liberator of the
Chinese proletariat, wrote in his autobiography that during his student days he
had to set aside a sum from his very meagre allowance in order to buy the water he
needed. Since an educated man does no menial work, carrying his own water from the
river would be too demeaning.
In contrast to the anti-Confucius campaign of the 1960's, which was orchestrated
by the government for the purpose of purging certain supposedly illiberal elements
within the party, the anti- Confucian movement in early Republican China was the
expression of a crisis of civilization. It arose out of a deeply felt need among
the Chinese intellectuals to reform China's social and political institutions, and
to experiment in science and democracy.2 The problem was how to transform China
into a modern state without giving up its time-hallowed values. To the partisans
of the early period it meant a choice between adhering to the dead weight of
China's tradition or opting for the modern Western way.
From our analysis of the theory of man in Aristotle and Confucius we see that
there is no need to make such an irrevocable choice. Both Confucius and Aristotle
were burdened with the inconsistencies which today we call historical necessity
but which they took to be simply in the nature of things. There is always the
question of how much a thinker can break the tablets of his own time and still
express the spirit of his age. At the same time, both Confucius and Aristotle, as
great thinkers, have provided what Professor McKeon calls "the vocabulary for
their own correction."
The cumulative efforts of civilization, the ideals of great thinkers and
humanists, aided by advancements made in science and technology, have enabled the
moderns to fulfill the desires of the ancients while removing their
inconsistencies. In becoming modern we do not have to reject the deepest values of
the past. Rather, the task of the present and future is the liberation of the past
from its own inconsistencies. By discovering new ways to bring into concrete
realization the values and aspirations of the past, the present makes the past
more consistent with itself, and thus its values and aspirations can be truly
saved. History has a way of working out its own solutions. What is dead it leaves
to rest in peace. But in the present and the future whatever is worth saving from
the past is truly preserved, fulfilled, renewed, and enlarged. Thus history, which
conditions everything, recedes to make room for the emergence of what transcends
history. Modernity means the illumination and at the same time in the light of a
new freedom the removal of the historical necessity with which the past was
burdened. The universal realization of the aspirations of the best, which was
impossible at the time of Confucius and Aristotle, is exactly the challenge today.
On the other hand, it is true that Confucianism had not contributed to the
development of modern science in China whereas Aristotle's scientific studies had
laid the foundation for progress in the West. The main difference between China
and the West which is responsible for the general conservativeness of Chinese
society and institutions in contrast to the dynamism in Western culture, lies in
the long absence in China of the habit of critical intelligence vigilant over
ruling ideas and practices. The exaltation of Confucianism since the Han times, as
the state cult which monopolized the educational enterprise and discouraged
independent thinking, had much to do with the absence of that dialectical process
which is possible only when rival schools of thought freely stimulate and
challenge each other.3 But that responsibility rests with Confucius' disciples,
not Confucius himself.
SIGNIFICANCE OF TODAY'S LIBERATION MOVEMENTS
The Worker
The message brought by the liberation of the worker is that nous resides not in
the ruler alone, but in the ordinary man as well. Mencius spoke for all ancients
when he declared it to be a universal principle that: "Some labor with their minds
and some labor with their muscles. Those who labor with their minds govern others
while those who labor with their muscles are governed by others." (Mencius 3A4)
The I-ching (Book of Changes), however, acknowledges that Tao was in all men, that
"the ordinary people live by it (tao) every day, although they are not aware of
it."4 It was exactly the lack of awareness on the part of the ordinary people that
had kept them in shackles. With heightened awareness through the implementation of
universal education or dissemination of revolutionary ideologies democracy becomes
inevitable. Whether today's majority of mankind still, according to Aristotle's
yardstick and in Professor McKeon's words, "lack the power to make fundamental
decisions bearing on their own welfare or that of the community of which they are
members" (p. 8), is beside the point. It is the faith of democracy that when the
common people are given the opportunity to make their choice, they produce the
most stable and equitable society.
Hobbes was the first philosopher to take the common man and his passions
seriously; thus he accused Aristotle of expounding an aristocratic philosophy.
Locke was the first one to recognize the value of labor. Though he did not quite
see the metaphysical significance of his economic theory, it was he who showed
that labor was the pathway to dignity, that the laborer, by increasing the value
of nature, was the true liberator of mankind. With Marx's definition of man as a
worker, there is no more dichotomy between mental and physical labor. The division
of labor between mind and muscles, which to Confucius and Aristotle was the
foundation of their hierarchic conception of the world, need not be repudiated.
What must be repudiated is that conception of a hierarchy of worth and value which
excludes physical labor and is easily used as an excuse for oppression. Henceforth
mind and muscles must enjoy equal partnership in the production of a just society.
Youth
There was a time when culture, civilization and science all pertained to a fixed,
eternal order. Confucius looked back to the golden age when culture and virtue
were complete. The Confucian teaching on rites and music was comparable to
Aristotle's notion of paideia as both education and culture. Admirable as their
theories of education were, both Confucius and Aristotle lacked a perception of
the growth aspect in culture.
Today's youth revolt and generation gap is at least partially due to the rapid
advancement of science and knowledge in the last fifty years. Often a teenager
today has mastered more basic knowledge in science or know-how than his parents.
Thus it is the case now that, not only must parents teach their children, but
children must also teach their parents. Since authority and proprietorship go with
knowledge, the vanguard of Nous now appears younger and younger. That the young
are in the process of growth means that Nous is also in time and history and has a
growth aspect. The child is not merely the potential in the process of
actualization, but this actualizing process of the child is also the actualization
of Nous itself. Here we must all become children again. In and through the child
in all of us Nous is set free to have movement and progress. In this light
childhood, as full of the sense of wonder, of freshness of being, and of life's
adventures, is not a stage to be outgrown, but an end in itself.
Woman
For ages women had scaled down the power of their intellect to devote themselves
to their supposed primary function of child bearing and rearing. The woman's
liberation signals the union of the earthly Aphrodite with the heavenly Aphrodite
in Plato. We have arrived at an age when the reproductive power on earth is no
longer a blind instinct, but has become a conscious, rational choice.
Even more significantly, the liberation of woman, symbol of the bearing of life on
earth, also means reason's attainment of life and fertility on earth. Woman's
unique experience of change and growth in and around her body is an invaluable
asset, a necessary and essential ingredient, for the kind of thinking that is
life-enhancing and earth-affirming. Nous is no longer an ascetic, life-negating
force, but becomes creative in the very fabric of life.
CONCLUSION
Today we celebrate the return of Nous to the world. We notice that slaves, youth
and women in their social roles perform primarily the three functions of the
vegetative soul in Aristotle's psychology: slaves supplied the nutritive needs to
the body, youth's primary function is to grow and women were meant for the
function of reproduction. This shows how deeply rooted the majority of human
beings have been in the biological sphere. Yet Aristotle believed that "the
excellence of the reason (nous) is a thing apart" (N.E. 1178a22-23). It is clear
that Aristotle's ethics and politics are rooted in his psychology and his
psychology is rooted in his metaphysical notion of the excellence and independence
of thinking itself. This exaltation and separation of the reasoning power over
other powers of the soul, this tyranny of mind over body in the history of
philosophy, East and West, thus reveals itself to be the cause, as well as
justification, of man's alienation from the world and man's oppression of man.
Reason, man's pride and jewel, which has enabled him to produce his glorious
cultures and civilizations, and often reckoned to be the seat of his spirituality,
has also been the agent of man's degradation of man.
Today's liberation movements herald an age when Nous is no longer seen as holding
a destiny separate from the world, but is fully naturalized to become the logos of
change in the world itself. The proper function of intelligence is not a process
of cutting off, but union. Intelligence is rooted in life, its function is exactly
the service and liberation of physical life on earth, thus its turning back to
life is indeed homecoming.
St. John's University
Jamaica, New York
NOTES
1. Whitney J. Oates, Aristotle and the Problem of Value (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 316.
2. See Chow Tse-tsung, "The Anti-Confucian Movement in Early Republic China," in
A.F. Wright, ed., The Confucian Persuasion (Stanford, 1960), pp. 288-312.
3. Taoism and Buddhism were not interested in social reform, though they were
strong rivals to Confucianism in matters religious and metaphysical. Taoism's
contribution to the development of Chinese science is now universally recognized.
Yet lacking the spirit of social involvement, its scientific activities have made
no impact on the betterment of man's social relations.
4. The Hsi Tz'u, Part I, Chap. 5. Cf. Richard Wilhelm's translation: The I Ching
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950), p. 298.
CHAPTER III
PERSON,
PERSONALITY AND ENVIRONMENT
PETER A. BERTOCCI
My thesis will be that we can better understand the actual development of human
beings in their environments if we distinguish more adequately person from
personality. I am aware that "person" and "personality" are often used inter-
changeably, and that, for reasons now familiar, "personality" has been substituted
generally in the social sciences for the hoary philosophical concepts of soul,
spirit, mind, self, and person. Yet, it would not be difficult to show that the
general conflation of "person" and "personality" is not complete. For example,
when we exhort someone to "be a person" we are not asking them to become what they
inevitably are, either a person or a personality, but a certain quality of person
and personality. Again, in crusading against depersonalization or dehumanization,
we do not suppose that a person can become a non-person or have no personality at
all, but that as a person one deserves a certain quality of treatment. Once more,
in shifting from "chairman" to "chairperson," we still expect the chairperson to
have a personality of some sort; we recognize something that transcends gender and
personality, namely, the person.
I am, however, not interested in rescuing words. My underlying concern, which this
paper can begin to express, is to show that both "person" and "personality" are
required if we are to develop a more solid appreciation for what is involved when
we think about the dynamism of personality-development (or self- realization, or
personal fulfillment) in the various branches of the social sciences and
philosophy.
1. Let us turn directly to the contrast I have in mind by citing the definition of
personality framed by a social psychologist, Gordon W. Allport, whose efforts to
bring systemization to the psychology of personality have commanded unusual
respect. His definition reflects a life-long concern to free the unique pattern
and growth of personality from the confinements of behavioristic-operational and
positivistic method, and from the clutches of favored biological and social norms.
His thought also reflects the influences of the philosopher-psychologists William
James, Mary Whiton Calkins, John Dewey, Wilhelm Stern, G.F. Stout, James Ward, and
William McDougall.1
Allport's definition reads: "Personality is the dynamic organization within the
individual of those psychophysical system that determine his characteristic
behavior and thought."2 This definition of personality refers both to organized
and organizing psychophysiological systems. In Allport's work there is never any
doubt that personality is a joint-product of the interaction of the individual and
his natural-social environment. What is systematically ambiguous in his thought,
and in the literature of the social sciences generally, is what is meant by
"within the individual." I have in mind more than Allport's comprehensive system
as I proffer and defend the following definition in order to render more coherent
data in the psychology of personality: Personality is the organization by a self-
identifying person of his or her own psychophysiological wants and abilities that
uniquely characterizes their expressive and adaptive adjustments to their
environment.
2. The basic issue we face is this: Can personality, with its admittedly unique or
characteristic organization, take the place of, or be identical with, a unifying
person?
Long ago Stern proclaimed: Keine Gestalt ohne Gestalter, James' insisted that
consciousness is owned, and both Ward and McDougall emphasized that psychic monads
with their own unique demands had windows open to varied environments. They would
not dream of holding that the individual could fulfill himself or herself, let
alone exist, in complete isolation from his or her environment. No individual
simply unfolds or matures; they require the challenge and the convergence of
environments. Nevertheless, the quality of their learned responses and their
patterns is never simply the product of environmental influence--natural, social,
or divine. Whatever the differentiating modifications and transformations called
for by interaction with these environments, there are telic tendencies embedded in
the matrix of abilities that constitute the individual, and these tendencies are
always involved in the selective response one makes both to one's own abilities
and to the environment.
In James' terms, then, each person is a fighter for ends. What needs further
stress is that all fighters for ends, whatever their unlearned similarities with
the abilities and motives of others, undergo conflicts as their own nature matures
unevenly, as they interact selectively with their environments. As C.I. Lewis once
said, "the individual may not control what happens to him, but the meaning he
gives to what happens to him is subject to his active selectivity--within limits
that are not easily defined."3
Despite the continuing controversy about what telic factors are innate in persons,
it may be noted that resistance by personality-theorists to unlearned tendencies
depends on whether (and how) the adaptability of human beings is recognized--the
adaptability being possible because in human beings especially abilities are
loosely geared to innate needs.4 But there is no final denial--except by those who
would reduce even physiological phenomena to the physico-chemical--of the
animating telic thrusts whose permutations influence what will be salient,
gratifying, or relevant even at the level of human sensory perception. In passing,
it may be noted that even the behavior of Pavlov's dogs reflected their hunger in
a stimulus-situation; and B.F. Skinner's pigeons are hardly impervious to the
inner biological situation that gives purchase to reinforcement.
3. I am urging, accordingly, that the tensions, conflicts, and anxieties that
occur have their locus, not in the interstices between individuals (persons, as I
shall contend) and society but within the telic persons whose natures allow them
to give different meanings and values to what goes on as, at the various stages in
their maturational-adaptive-expressive experience, they interact with their
environments. Telic persons are not market-places where different avenues converge
to form their natures; their inherited (affective-conative-cognitive) activities
are not centers of influences; nor is their developing personality a mere complex
of statistical averages. Persons--whatever else--go on fighting for ends that are
expressed adaptively as they learn more specific ways of gratifying them. The
environment is their environment and their personality is their way of organizing
their responses to environments, and in ways that they perceive to be open for
them.
Neither persons nor their personalities, in sum, are mirrors of society or
culture, any more than children are mirrors of their family. Such generalized
descriptions break down once one sees that society, culture, and family, are
relative abstractions to persons who, given their unique endowment in their corner
of the world, at their stage of development, confront situation after situation
internal to their being and beyond it. Child-persons interact with father and
mother as "psychological environments" to which the children are sensitive in
different ways; and they take on the meanings open to their outlook at different
stages in their development. Parent's actual effect upon children is a joint-
product in which their own response to their parents expresses their own
interpretation of what the parents mean to them. At the same time, people's
personalities are no mere accretions, because they bear the dynamic marks of their
wanting-knowing abilities as, in relatively patterned ways, they realize what they
can become as they seek to gratify or satisfy their instinctive needs.5
The nature, number, and dynamics of unlearned telic tendencies make considerable
difference, especially to educational and social theory. For personality, let
alone its assessment, is the person's own mode of response to himself/herself in
their environments. What I wish to stress is that the locus of action and change
is the person with his or her matrix of needs and abilities. Never without an
environment, persons purposively and purposefully select modes of expression and
adjustment that reflect their varied responses to their environments, that is, to
the natural, the social, and the divine world as they are able to appraise them.
There is no personality without person. Person is also the unit for social
science, for the conflicts that go on between groups occur in the persons who are
constantly expressing themselves and adapting themselves to environments.
4. My second main theme is related to this first and emerges from developments in
the psychology of personality that called forth reconstructed philosophical
concepts. Thus, the ego re-appeared in Freudian thought as an essentially
conscious and self-conscious cognitive function. It may seem a far cry from this
ego to the Cartesian cogito as a being who thinks, although it is not so far if we
remember that Descartes defined a thinking being as one who "doubts, understands,
affirms, denies, wills, refuses . . . imagines and feels."6 The fact remains, in
any case, that in Freudian thought the ego, beginning as the servant of the id
from which its energy derives, seems, nevertheless, to have its own capacity to
guide development. But this development requires selective organization and
involves both the formation of the ego-ideal and the more rigid super-ego. Both
ego-ideal and super-ego reflect the compromise, if you will, open to a telic agent
(more reflective than the unconscious id) in its interaction with the natural-
social environment. In short, the organizing of inner urges, in accordance with
the individual's perception of the environmental situation and with his/her
appraisal of optional hedonic consequences, is attributed--as it was not in
earlier Freudian formulations--to what the ego can consciously know.
I would further emphasize here that the ideal: "where the id is, there shall the
ego be," calls, not for substituting a cognitive ego for the affective-conative
id, but for a wanting- knowing ego whose appraisals of "individual" and "social"
demands reduce conflict and produce greater harmony. The ego, we must infer,
though born in a womb of non-rational instincts, experiences a rational demand to
organize his or her total experience in accordance with norms of logic and
inductive inference. In short, the ego that reappeared in Freudian thought is
never completely independent of impulse or environment as it engages in the
formation of patterns of individual-social life or personality without being
reduced or confined to any learned pattern.
5. But the term "ego" made a different reappearance in ego-psychology that had no
special links with conceptions of the unconscious.7 Social psychologists and
psychologists of personality who had decided that their science was well rid of
anything reminiscent of the soul or ontological self, now used self and ego to
interpret a phenomenon that involves the unity and continuity of the personalities
acquired in environmental situations. Sarah and Ruth, Saul and Paul, are unique
minded-bodies, to be sure. The relatively organized personalities that
characterize them would not be what they are without an acquired central and
abiding psychological core that gives each his/her own quality of unity and
continuity. Sarah and Ruth are now to be understood not only by their more or less
systematic responses in environments, their personalities, but also, and better,
by a learned center or focus that illuminates their own unique organization as
they respond. For example, tasks that they learn will be more effectively and
enduringly learned if Sarah and Ruth are self-involved, or ego-involved. Moreover,
many of their most significant conflicts, anxieties, gratifications and
satisfactions are experienced when the egos in their personality are engaged in
whatever transaction is taking place. Defense mechanisms, for example, are
developed in order to protect the ego in the personality.
To be more specific, G.W. Allport, after extensively reviewing research, noted the
difference that ego-involvement makes to "attention, judgment, memory, motivation,
aspiration level, productivity, and . . . the operation of personality-traits."8
Such studies, he infers, indicate that personalities are not collective
assemblages. In his own most systematic exposition, Allport, hoping to avoid the
historic ambiguities of the world "self," hit upon the word proprium to designate
what was "warm" and "central" to each personality, the "intimate region of
personality involved in matters of importance to the organized emotional life of
the individual."9
In sum, this psychologist of personality found that better psychological anchorage
is required for the organization of learned dispositions in personality,
especially when matters of importance or priority involving its unity and
continuity are involved. The place assigned by many psychologists to `ego-
identification,10 as a process vital to the development of personality, is
recognition of the need to unify factors within the personality as the person
constantly responds to his own learned formations in personality and assign
priorities. In all this, as in the case of Freudian theory, the rejected or
neglected self has returned with its own primary unity and continuity, that is, as
knower, rather than as known, as agent in organizing and not simply as product of
organization.
Let me approach my suggestion by reference to the change of Saul to Paul. Saul and
Paul are both personalities. The Saul that gives way to Paul is a personality
nurtured in a prized community. That personality as a whole does not vanish when
Saul becomes Paul. But the self-concept dominating Saul could not be harmonized
with new assessments that grew out of experiences of conflict with Christian
communities. Surely, it was not the personalities and the egos that did the
knowing and the wanting, since they were products of knowing-wanting. It is the
knowing-wanting person that was engaged in Saul. What came into being on the road
to Damascus was not a new person, not an entirely new personality, but a new ego
or self-image that the person later expressed by "I am one with Christ . . . ," as
he changed his personality. In brief, Saul and Paul are both personalities with
egos that a unique knowing-wanting person learns. He does this as he makes his way
in particular natural- social-divine environments which he perceives as they
affect him. But both Saul and Paul are the expressions and adaptations of the
person involved in them.
6. My concern, then, is to distinguish between the unique unity-in-continuity of
the person without which there is no understanding of the unique unity and
continuity of personality and ego that are the products of interaction with the
total environment. Further analysis of the changing yet relatively continuous
organization of personality and ego would also reveal, I suggest, the theoretical
need for (self-identifying) agent- persons whose constitutive nature is not
generated by the environment, who are no passive re-actors to their ambient, and
who discover the range of quality of their own existence only as they interact
with environments that provide opportunities for actualizing their potential. Nor
is this the place to develop the theme that man is a creator of symbols because he
is a self-identifying wanting-knower whose meanings overflow symbols and language,
as H.H. Price11 has taught us. A personality and its ego--that is, a changing yet
relatively patterned personality responsive to inner and outer environment--
reflects the meanings and values of an agent-person whose varied motives are
continuous and discontinuous with those already at work before self-conscious
criticism and evaluation take place.
This personality cannot be substituted for the person. At the core of this
contention is the conviction that no theory of acquired personality can forever
postpone the question: Is it the personality that senses, wants, feels, remembers,
imagines or thinks? What is wanted and learned can hardly be wanter and learner.
Using Stern's terminology, there is a unitas multiplex, a person, who is active
and not only reactive to his environments. The minimal proposal here is that both
a Saul and a Paul are the joint-products of a psycho-physiological telic agent, a
person, who, interacting with factors within and beyond his control, organizes
both sensory and non-sensory experiences into habits, attitudes, sentiments,
traits, and egos that reflect the quality of his adaptation and expression in
relation to environments. Again, anyone who would substitute personality for
person must confront the fact that the personality cannot at once know and be the
result of knowing, cannot itself act and be the result of interaction, cannot
itself evaluate and be the product of evaluation. Personalities cannot be treated
like islands that have drifted away from the mainland that continues to respond to
the tides of existence.
7. In closing, I can only hint at a view of the person that will fit the
personality-situation I have been depicting. Alas, our discussion of the relation
of the person to his or her personality may have dredged up the image of an Atlas
balancing the world of personality that is no part of it. Indeed, a main reason,
expressed explicitly by Allport, for rejecting the dominant, historic concept of a
substantive self or person is that the psychology of personality in particular
must avoid an homunculus that is at worst redundant and in any case circular. The
charge of redundancy and circularity I must neglect. But I think it does
misconstrue the theoretical situation. In any case, is it less circular to say
that the organism, or the individual, does so and so?
But while I shall continue to insist on the need for a self-identifying person
(elusive in our experience of ourselves, but undeniable as H.D. Lewis12 has
effectively shown), the patterning and growth of personality by itself requires us
to reconsider the conception of an unchanging substance-person. Assuming that the
change, growth, and structure of personality call for a self-identifying unity in
which we can distinguish such activities as sensing, remembering, imagining,
thinking, feeling, wanting--and I should want to add willing, oughting, and
aesthetic and religious appreciating--it is important to realize that these
activities of the person are not exhausted by their formations and their
particular objects and objectives at any one stage, although they are limited in
the scope of their potential. The person at any point is nothing other or
transcending these activity-potentials, whose expression and adaptation are
engaged in the formation of personality. It is the irreducible unity-in-
continuity of the person that is the common thesis of my personalistic teachers,
Borden Parker Bowne,13 Edgar S. Bright- man,14 and Frederick R. Tennant.15 With
them I think we must insist that there can be no succession of experiences (or of
changes such as we find in personality) without an experience of succession. The
person it is who cries: When me you fly, I am the wings.
The articulation of the nature of such unified persons must continue to command
our attention. But, the personality that is at once their expression and also
their limiting formation can hardly be an unchanging, non-temporal, and self-
identical being. We must look for our model, with Bergson and Brightman, in the
kind of time-binding unity that we find at any moment of experience. Within limits
this time-binding, being-becoming selectively nurtures itself in interaction with
the environment and, insofar as it survives, is forever crescent--adaptive and
expressive--in the patterns of its personality. Hence the person is never self-
identical but self-identifying. I, for one, can find no referent in my experience
for any kind of self-identical wanting-knowing person; the data of personality-
formation call for self-identifying that is never mathematical. If to be is to
act, if to be a person is to act expressively and adaptively in a total
environment, the person is better defined as being-becoming whose self-identifying
witnesses to continuity in active unity.16
Since this view will suggest to many the route or serial view of a cumulative
identity proposed by some process philosophers, which is well represented in the
work of Charles Hartshorne.17 My main obstacle to that particular view is that I
cannot understand how the person at any moment can reach a present in time and
selectively incorporate his/her given past into a present self-identity. I suggest
rather that the given initial and primary unity "enlarges" selectively as its
constitutive activity-potentials mature, respond to the environment and,
therefore, becomes pregnant, via its personality formations.
Thus, there is another equally important pole to my earlier contention that there
can be no personality without person. For the personality at any stage of
organization, is no appendage to the person; it is no coat that can be discarded
leaving a pristine knowing-wanting person. The actual existent at any point is
person-cum-personality. The person is always not simply "immanent" in his/her
personality. The person is shaping and being shaped, modifying and being modified,
expressing and being expressed. This is the ongoing life of the person in
maturation and in interaction. Again, the personality-structure(s) can both
express and control the person. A unique person-cum-unique personality is the
complete person at any stage.
While such a proposal places the actual selective agency in the persons and their
complex activity-potentials, it makes full allowance for their interplay with the
total environment and for the vital importance of environmental influence to the
quality of the person-cum-personality. There is never a neat dividing line between
the private and the public person-cum-personality. The reality is always persons
engaged in forging, critically and uncritically, the personality that gives a
particular form and content to that person's investment at any point in their
history, without necessarily being captured by the organization and priorities of
any particular personality. The consequences of this formulation of the relation
of person to personality will influence the interpretation of the nature of free
will and moral obligation, as well as the interpretation of the values in moral,
aesthetic and religious experience, but these are themes for other occasions.19
Boston University
Boston, Mass.
FOOTNOTES
1. Gordon W. Allport, The Person in Psychology: Selected Essays (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1968), contains essays on Stern, James, Dewey, Karl Buhler, and K. Lewin.
The interchangeable use of "person" and "personality" is reflected in the above
titles of Allport's books as well as in Personality and Social Encounter (Chicago:
Univ. of Chicago Press, 1960/1981), and The Nature of Personality: Selected Papers
(Westport, Ct.: Greenwood, 1950/1975).
2. Gordon W. Allport, Pattern and Growth in Personality (New York: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston, 1961), p. 28. Chap. 2 provides a useful discussion of "personality."
3. C.I. Lewis, The Ground and Nature of the Right (New York: Columbia Univ. Press,
1955), p. 26.
4. William McDougall, Energies of Man (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1933).
5. Abraham H. Maslow, Motivation and Personality (New York: Harpers and Bros.,
1954).
6. Rene+ Descartes, Meditations, Meditation 2.
7. Gordon W. Allport, "The Ego in Contemporary Psychology," Psychological Review
50 (1943), 451-578. See my discussion of Allport's theme in "The Psychological
Self, the Ego, and Personality," Psychological Review 52 (1945), 91-99.
8. Gordon W. Allport, Pattern and Growth in Personality (New York: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston), p. 128.
9. Gordon W. Allport, ibid., p. 127.
10. See Gordon W. Allport, ibid., Chapter 6 for an introduction to the literature.
The works of Erik Erikson are central contributions to the phenomena of self-
identification.
11. H.H. Price, Thinking and Experience (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1953).
12. H.D. Lewis, The Elusive Mind (London: Allen and Unwin, 1969).
13. Borden P. Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge (New York: Harper, 1879).
14. Edgar S. Brightman, Person and Reality, ed. P.A. Bertocci (New York: Ronald
Press, 1958).
15. Frederick R. Tennant, Philosophical Theology, Vol. I, The World, the Soul, and
God. (Cambridge: Univ. Press, 1928).
16. Peter A. Bertocci, The Person God Is (New York: Humanities Press, 1970),
chapters 2-6.
17. Peter A. Bertocci, "Hartshorne on Personal Identity: A Personalistic
Critique," Process Studies 2 (Fall, 1972), 216-221.
18. Peter A. Bertocci, The Person God Is, see chapters 2-6.
CHAPTER IV
INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY
IN METAPHYSICAL PERSPECTIVE
IVOR LECLERC
I
My aim in this paper is to deal specially with the metaphysical issues involved in
the topic: man and society.
It is not surprising to find that there is a consonance between the metaphysics
involved in the doctrines of a particular school or trend of thought respecting
man and society and the metaphysics involved in that school's doctrines respecting
other fields, such as nature for example. Indeed it would be surprising if there
were not a single metaphysics underlying the particular doctrines and conceptions.
When one examines from this point of view the rise and development of modern
thought in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such an underlying metaphysics
is what one does find.
What we now generally designate modern thought in contrast, for example, to
medieval, arose and developed on the basis of a new conception of nature. This
conception in turn was grounded in the renaissance resuscitation of Neoplatonism,
in opposition to the antecedent domination of Scholastic Aristotelianism.
Fundamental in this Neoplatonism was a Neoplatonic metaphysics and in particular a
Neoplatonic ontology.
Neoplatonism, from Plotinus, had confirmed and emphasized the conception of being
found in Plato,1 namely of being as changeless, permanent, static. This conception
was basic in the thought of St. Augustine, who states, e.g.,: "For it is only that
which remains in being without change that truly is."2 It was this conception of
being which was given a new and pregnant formulation by Nicolaus Cusanus in the
fifteenth century in his doctrine of being, the Maximum, as coincidentia
oppositorum, as containing all complicans, and of the world, i.e., created being,
as explicatio Dei. The full implications of Cusanus' doctrine came to fruition in
the seventeenth century theories of man.
But initially it was a new theory of physical nature which was developed in the
seventeenth century, the theory of the physical as matter. Not only was matter,
for the first time in history, accorded the status of a self-subsistent being or
existent, but its being was conceived fully in accord with the fundamental
Neoplatonic conception of being. Matter was held to be created by God, the
perfect, changeless, creating being, in an image of that perfection, this image
having the form of perfect, in-itself-changeless, completely homogeneous
mathematical extension. This was the essential Neoplatonic conception of being in
a novel doctrine of the physical, whether as maintained by Descartes in his theory
of a one res extensa, or as maintained by an increasing majority, in the theory of
material atomism. In both theories matter in its being is completely changeless.
Portions or atoms of matter undergo translation from one place to another, i.e.,
undergo locomotion, but in this remaining in themselves changeless and unaffected
by that locomotive change. Above all, in strict accord with the basic doctrine of
changeless being, matter is in itself inert, i.e., without activity, and thus
completely unable to initiate locomotion: matter is moved; it does not move
itself. Thus this doctrine of the physical, conceived in terms of the Neoplatonic
conception of being, stands in complete contrast to the antecedent Aristotelian
doctrine of the physical as having the source (arche) of its change (kinesis) in
itself, this change constituting a process from potentiality to actuality, which
is to say a process of coming into being.
The ineluctable consequence of this new doctrine of nature was a metaphysical
dualism; mind and soul had to be accorded a separate and independent status as
another kind of being. Now this other kind of being was also conceived in terms of
the Neoplatonic conception of being. It was in this that the doctrine of Cusanus
of complicatio-explicatio was especially fruitful. The new metaphysics had
extruded "act" from the physical, but had not rejected the concept of act
entirely. It was retained in the other side of the metaphysical dichotomy, but in
a way fundamentally different from the Aristotelian conception of act. The new
metaphysics remained consistent, in respect of mind or soul, with the Neoplatonic
conception of being as perfect, changeless. In this new modern doctrine God
created res cogitantes or monads as in themselves perfect, with their essence
complicans in them. Thus for Descartes, for example, res cogitantes are created
with their full complement of "innate ideas"; and for Leibniz the monads are
likewise created with their essential ideas which constitute the law of their
individual series. Thus the act of this kind of being, which is fundamentally a
thinking act, is an explicatio, unfolding, of what is complicans, enfolded, in it
from its beginning. The act of being of a res cogitans or a monad is in no respect
a coming-into-being, a becoming, a generation; each is fully in being, and thus in
itself changeless--the unfolding or explication of what is implicit is not a
change in any sense of becoming; the logical process is its paradigm instance.
Consistently with this both Descartes and Leibniz explicitly conceived of God as
maintaining every being in its full being in every moment of its existence by an
act of perpetual re-creation.
II
This modern form of Neoplatonic metaphysics and its fundamental ontology underlay
and determined the seventeenth century theories of man and of society which came
to full and mature articulation with John Locke. Man--metaphysically identified
with mind or soul, with body as its immediate "property"--was conceived as an
"individual," complete in its being. It is important to be clear that this is the
metaphysical basis of the modern doctrine of "individualism." In terms of this
basic conception man, as mind or soul, in the first place is an ontological
ultimate--in the terminology of the time, a "substance." Secondly, this substance
is a self-complete entity, that is, complete in respect of its being or essence,
"requiring nothing but itself in order to exist" (except for God's creative act),
as Descartes had consistently defined "substance" in accord with the Neoplatonic
ontology. Man, as such a substance, complete in his being, has no "requirements"
or "needs" other than the moral one of obeying God. There are, it is true, certain
"needs" to be acknowledged, but these pertain strictly to his body, his immediate
property which, metaphysically considered, falls into the other realm, that of
physical nature, needs such as food, clothing, shelter, etc. Thirdly, as a self-
complete being, the individual has no need of any other individual.
This means that "society," conceived as it had been from Plato and Aristotle
onward, as "natural"--in the sense of being grounded in the "nature" of man, as
necessary to the achievement or fulfillment of that "nature," and thereby not only
itself "being natural" but also "having a nature" of its own, one accordingly
determinative of man's nature--this conception of "society" had to be utterly
rejected. Society, in the new modern conception, cannot be grounded in the nature
of man as a natural requirement, since man, in his nature, is a complete
individual, and thus does not require or need a "society," i.e., a fellowship,
association, partnership, community of men, in any respect to complete his nature.
Secondly, this entails that "society" has to be accorded an ontological status
quite different from that which it had in the antecedent rejected theory.
"Nature," physis, in its original meaning, was contrasted with that which is a
product of human artifice, and this feature of the connotation of the term had not
been lost. So in the seventeenth century in rejecting the conception of society as
"natural," thinkers drew the logical conclusion that society must be, by contrast,
a human artifice (Hobbes), a construct or contrivance by individual men for the
purpose of achieving each his own individual needs--which are strictly those in
respect of his property. Consistently Locke, noting that the family or "conjugal
society" is the first society, sees this as grounded not in any need of a man and
a woman of each other in their being, i.e., as "individuals," but in the needs of
their bodies, their property, more particularly for the propagation of other
bodies3--the corresponding souls of course deriving from God's creative act.
The consequence of this "individualist" conception of man and its concomitant
conception of society have been sufficiently both analysed and manifested in
practice for me to need to spend much time on them here. One consequence is,
however, particularly relevant to the metaphysical consideration: this is that
societies have consistently failed to conform to the theory of them as artificial
contrivances, on the model of the machine, with ends, purposes, and functions
determined essentially from without by their artificers, the "individuals" which
as such transcend ontologically the societies which they construct. The result of
this is that in Western countries in which the "individualist" doctrine of man
continues to constitute the fundamental guiding principle of practice, societies,
especially the economic ones, the business corporations and the trade unions, have
increasingly grown in size and power to an extent that they have now become out of
effective control of the political society, that society which has the ends and
needs of all members of the community as its purpose. This means that these
countries are today floundering dangerously because of the lack of a viable
philosophy of man and of society in terms of which the ends of the total community
can be safeguarded and served.
In the eighteenth century, particularly with Rousseau, began the recognition of
"society" as having ends, purposes, and a "will," not to be conceived as the
arithmetical sum of the ends, purposes, and wills of the individual constituent
members; it became clear to many thinkers that "society" has ends, purposes, and a
"nature" in a significant respect transcending those of the constituents. The
outcome of this recognition was the theory which accords to society, particularly
the political society, the state, the ontological status of a self-subsistent
being. In this theory, which derived considerably from an inaccurate and
inadequate understanding of Plato, the constituent men were no longer conceived,
as in the "individualist" theory, as ontologically complete beings; on the
contrary, they were conceived as dependent, in respect of their being or essence,
on the supreme, self-complete society, the state. This is the metaphysics of the
"organic" theory of society, in terms of which individual human beings are
"organs," in the etymological sense "instruments," of the state--an "organism"
being a whole in which the functioning of the parts is in reference to the whole,
and thus determined by the whole.
The practical consequences of this philosophy of man and of society have become
sufficiently manifest, especially in the course of the last half century, to make
clear the extremely urgent need for a viable alternative to both the foregoing
philosophies, between them ruling the globe and threatening its destruction.
III
The working out of such an alternative is essentially a philosophical task, and it
is an obligation which the present generation of philosophers ignores at the peril
of the future of mankind. The most fundamental aspect of this task is an
ontological one, the development of a theory of being in terms of which a coherent
and adequate theory of the nature of man and of society will be possible. In other
words, today the theories of man and of society need to be explicitly pursued in
conjunction with the theory of being.
As a background to this conjoint inquiry we have seen that the modern
"individualist" theory of man was grounded in a Neoplatonic theory of being. It is
now necessary to recognize that the modern "organic" theory of man and of society
was not based on the development of a new theory of being; on the contrary it was
grounded also in the modern Neoplatonist ontology. I hardly need to remind you
that the modern "organic" theory owes more to Hegel, the arch Neoplatonist of the
nineteenth century, than to any other man. It seems to me of the first importance
to our topic to bring to the fore and emphasize the fundamental role of ontology
in the theory of man and the theory of society, and that in the modern period the
Neoplatonic theory of being has dominated and determined both the alternative
modern theories of man and society. In the present day ontology has become the
most neglected of philosophical disciplines, one consequence of which has been
considerable muddle and confusion in thought seeking to come to grips with the
issues involved in the theory of man and of society.
Today we need explicitly to face the question whether an adequate and coherent
theory of man and of society is possible at all in terms of the Neoplatonic theory
of being, or whether it is necessary to seek another ontological basis for the
theory of man and of society.
As a first step in tackling this question I would suggest that account be
explicitly taken of the outcome, in human life and experience in the modern
period, of the adoption of the "individualist" and the "organic" theories. Much
has been written about this, and it has been dealt with also in several of the
papers contributed to this meeting. I will deal with one point in this as of
especial philosophical relevance. This is that these theories have survived--apart
from the fact of their being in accord with the prevailing metaphysical
presuppositions underlying the development of natural science from the seventeenth
till the beginning of this century--these theories have survived not by their
inherent theoretical virtue manifesting itself logically in practical
exemplifications throughout the range of human activity; rather they have survived
because human experience has necessitated practice in all spheres of endeavor and
life which is strictly inconsistent with the ruling theories of man and of
society, and because the respective theorists have failed to recognize the
inconsistencies--since these are indeed fatal to their theories.
The actual life of human beings, it needs to be explicitly acknowledged today, is
not consistently and coherently analyzable in terms either of the "individualist"
or the "organic" theories. To anyone not blinded by dogmatic adherence to the
"individualist" theory it should be clear that human beings do not live in
essential independence of each other; on the contrary, the enormous extent and
range of their interdependence is not only manifest, but their interdependence is
also manifestly essential to their being--a misanthrope is generally and correctly
regarded as pathological; and Hobbes' attempt to construct a theory of society on
the basis of a conception of man as fundamentally misanthropic has never received
acceptance. And to anyone not dogmatically adhering to the "organic" theory it
should be clear that the necessary interdependence of human beings is not that of
"organs," "instruments," functioning in relation to a transcendent whole; that is,
their interdependence is not consistently and coherently to be construed as
dependence upon the transcendent whole.
It is on this fact of the necessary interdependence of human beings on each other
that any theory of man and of society based on a Neoplatonic ontology must
founder. For on this ontology the human individual must be essentially self-
complete, which entails that the human being is to be conceived as fundamentally
without relations to his fellow human beings, "real" relations that is, in the
basic meaning of "real," viz., belonging to the res itself. This is the case with
both the "individualist" and the "organic" theories: the former can admit real
relations in individuals only with God, and the latter only with the transcendent
organic whole.
IV
For the philosophical theory of man and of society the fact which is of cardinal
importance is that of the interdependence of human beings. The first philosophical
inference to be drawn from this is that interdependence necessitates that
relations be seen as "real." The second is that society is to be conceived as a
real relationship between individual human beings. It is evident that I am here in
full accord with the position taken by Professor Johann in his paper.
But this raises as a crucial issue the problem of the ontological status of
relations. And this can be effectively tackled only as part of the theory of being
per se. I will approach it here in the context of our topic. We have arrived at a
point in our investigation at which it has become clear that what faces us is the
need of an ontology in terms of which human beings can consistently be conceived
as having real relations with fellow human beings, and in terms therefore of which
society can be consistently and coherently conceived. What is required is a theory
of being in which the act involved in being be necessarily a relational act, and
in which the relation is "real," in the full sense of the relation being an actual
interconnection with another being, and not, as in the Leibnizian theory,
"phenomenal," and in the Neoplatonic theory in general, wholly "internal." It is
most important to emphasize that on a Neoplatonic ontology a relation necessarily
has the status of a feature, attribute, or property which inheres in the being
itself--for Plotinus explicitly the category of relation had to be conceived on
the paradigm of an inhering quality; which is why in the Neoplatonic tradition the
term "quality" came to be used as synonymous with attribute or property: a
substance is "qualified" by various attributes.
Now if we hold that relation be a real interconnection, it becomes clear that
there can be no fully completed being anterior to the act of relating, for that
would imply the relation not being real, i.e., the interconnection not making any
essential difference to the being in question. Consequently it is necessary to
acknowledge that the act of being must involve a process which is other than as it
is conceived in terms of the Neoplatonic ontology, namely a process of explication
of what is implicit. The process must be one of the achievement of completeness,
as Aristotle maintained in his conception of ousia as energeia and entelecheia,
i.e., as "in-act" and as "achieving its end." This entails, again as Aristotle
held, that the process involved in the act of being must be the transition from
potentiality to actuality, so that the process is one of the "actualization" or
"realization" of the human being. This could therefore be seen as a theory of
"self-actualization" or "self-realization," but it is essential to understand the
theory in a sense contrary to the similar theory held on a Neoplatonic basis. The
theory of "self-realization" has been much favored by thinkers in the idealist
school; in that tradition the theory is understood in terms of a Neoplatonic
ontology, which means that the "realization" is of what the self is in its
essence. In the alternative ontology here being presented, the "potentiality"
which is "actualized" cannot be restricted to the "essence" of the being in
question, but must include also what is presented by other beings in the
interaction between them.
The theory of being which is necessitated here must be explicitly recognized as
standing in contrast to the Neoplatonic theory of being as complete, changeless.
This theory of being is one which was first propounded by Parmenides and taken
over by Plato, in his middle Dialogues at least. This theory of being was grounded
in an elaboration of the philosophical implications of the Greek verb "be," which
rigidly excluded "becoming"--for which entirely different verbs were used, such as
gignesthai, "to be born."4 The philosophical limitations and inadequacies of this
theory of being became clear to Aristotle, who developed an alternative ontology
in which "being" was not exclusive of "becoming" but in which being included a
process of becoming. Neoplatonism, however, returned to the earlier conception of
being, Augustine's identification of being with God serving additionally to
confirm the Neoplatonic ontology in Western thought down the centuries. In the
theory of man it is today most important, as Professor Bertocci has urged in his
paper, to reject the "historic concept of a substantive self or person"--that is,
the Neoplatonic doctrine of the self, for the concept of being as "substance" is
historically the Neoplatonic doctrine--and to see the self or person rather as a
being-in-becoming.
This is the conception of being, I have argued, which is necessitated by the fact
of the interdependence of human beings. I have maintained further that this fact
of interdependence entails the necessity of relations as real. We must now
explicitly address the problem of how relations are to be conceived in terms of
the foregoing theory of being. In seeking an answer to this problem it would be
unacceptable to suppose that since we have rejected the Neoplatonic conception of
relations as qualities inhering in the subject, the alternative is to conceive
relations as some kind of tertium quid connecting the beings. This supposition
would be unacceptable because it would be incoherent and inconsistent with any
theory of being, since the tertium quid would by hypothesis be neither a being nor
a constituent of a being; its status would thus be totally inexplicable.
The way to an answer to this problem, I submit, is that which I took earlier in
conceiving relations as grounded in the act involved in being, whereby the act of
being is essentially a relational act, an act of relating to other beings. I would
say more specifically that the act of being is an "acting on" another and a
reciprocal "being acted on" by another.
This conception has important implications: besides the general one which we have
already noted, that this entails the conception of being as necessarily involving
becoming, this conception entails "subjects" acting, which are not merely the
outcome of the actings--I agree with Professor Bertocci that the conception of
subjects as wholly the outcome, product, of acting is an incoherent one. Further
entailed, I would want to argue, is that there is a whole constituted by the
interacting which is something more than, and thus not adequately analyzable as
the mere arithmetical sum of the interacting subjects. Moreover, that whole has a
character or definiteness which is analyzable as the definiteness of the
relational interacting. It must be emphasized that the definiteness or character
must explicitly not be conceived on the analogy or paradigm of a quality, e.g., a
color, inhering in a substratum; the definiteness here is the definiteness of an
acting, i.e., constituting the "whatness" of the acting. Since the acting is
relational, the "whatness" will in one aspect be that of the interacting whole.
Now I wish to submit that what we have here in such an interacting whole is a
"society," in other words, that the essence of a "society" is constituted by such
an interacting whole. This holds for the minimal society, that of two human
beings, and for any such whole of a plurality of human beings, however great. The
essential condition is that the members be reciprocally interacting. And the
character or definiteness of the society in question will be determined by the
character or definiteness of the interacting. It is the character of definiteness
that would distinguish, for example, the society of two constituting a friendship
from that constituting a marriage. Since the character or definiteness of the
society is grounded in the "nature" of individuals as acting, a society is, as
Aristotle maintained, "natural," and further, has a "nature" pertaining to it, one
which is defined by the definiteness of the society as an interacting whole, a
nature which is moreover in an important respect determinative of the individual
members.
This brings us finally to the consideration of the ontological status of
"society." In the theory I am proposing a society is not to be conceived as a full
being in its own right, since it is essentially and fundamentally dependent upon
the actings of its members. Thus the individual human beings must alone be
accorded the full and primary ontological status. Only individuals can in a full,
non-derivative sense be "agents," with the power of choice and decision. It is
only individuals as essentially acting which can include in their being access to
the criteria of the "good" which are absolutely indispensable to being as acting.
Emory University
Atalanta, Georgia
NOTES
1. More specifically in the middle Dialogues. It is questionable whether this
would hold for Plato of the Sophist for example.
2. Augustine, Confessions, Bk. VII, Ch. 11.
3. John Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government, Ch. VII, Sects. 78, 79.
4. See Charles H. Kahn, The Verb `Be' in Ancient Greek (Dordrecht/Holland 1973),
especially Ch. VIII, n. 5.
CHAPTER V
SELF-AWARENESS
and
ULTIMATE SELFHOOD
SEYYED HOSSEIN NASR
The fruit of several centuries of rationalistic thought in the West has been to
reduce both the objective and the subjective poles of knowledge to a single level.
In the same way that the cogito of Descartes is based on reducing the knowing
subject to a single mode of awareness, the external world which this "knowing
self" perceives is reduced to a spatio-temporal complex limited to a single level
of reality - no matter how far this complex is extended beyond the galaxies or
into aeons of time, past and future. The traditional view as expressed in the
metaphysical teachings of both the Eastern and Western traditions is based, on the
contrary, upon a hierarchic vision of reality, not only in reality's objective
aspect but also in its subjective one. Not only are there many levels of reality
or existence stretching from the material plane to Absolute and Infinite Reality,
but there are also many levels of subjective reality or consciousness, many
envelopes of the self, leading to the Ultimate Self which is Infinite and Eternal
and which is none other than the Transcendent Reality beyond.1 Moreover, the
relation between the subjective and the objective is not bound to a single mode.
There is not just one form of perception or awareness. There are modes and degrees
of awareness leading from the so-called "normal" perception by man of both his own
"ego" and the external world to awareness of Ultimate Selfhood, in which the
subject and object of knowledge become unified in a single reality beyond all
separation and distinction.
Self-awareness, from the point of view of traditional metaphysics, is not simply a
biological fact of life common to all human being. There is more than one level of
meaning to "self" and more than one degree of awareness. Man is aware of his self
or ego, but one also speaks of self-control, and therefore implies even in daily
life the presence of another self which controls the lower self. Tradition,
therefore, speaks clearly of the distinction between the self and the Self, or the
self and the Spirit which is the first reflection of the Ultimate Self: hence the
primary distinction between anima and spiritus, or nafs and r-u.h of Islamic
thought, and emphasis upon the fact that there is within every man both an outer
and an inner man, a lower self and a higher one. That is why also tradition speaks
of the self as being totally distinct from the Ultimate Self, from -atman or
ousia, and yet as a reflection of it and as the solar gate through which man must
pass to reach the Self. Traditional metaphysics is in fact primarily an autology,
to quote A. K. Coomaraswamy,2 for to know is ultimately to know the Self. The
.had-ith, "He who knoweth himself knoweth his Lord," attests to this basic truth.
There are, moreover, many stages which separate the self and the Self. In its
descent towards manifestation the Self becomes shrouded by many bodies, many
sheaths, which must be shed in returning to the One. That is why the Buddhist and
Hindu traditions speak of the various subtle bodies of man, and certain Sufis such
as `Al-a' al-Dawlah Simn-an-i analyze the "physiology" of the inner man or the man
of light in terms of the la.tt-a'if or subtle bodies which man "carries" within
himself and which he must "traverse" and also cast aside in order to realize the
Self.3
In order to reach the Ultimate Self through the expansion of awareness of the
center of consciousness, man must reverse the cosmogonic process which has
crystallized both the radiations and reverberations of the Self within what
appears through the cosmic veil (.hij-ab) as separate and objective existence.
This reversal must of necessity begin with the negation of the lower self, with
the performance of sacrifice, which is an echo here below of the primordial
sacrifice, the sacrifice which has brought the cosmos into existence. The doctrine
of the creation of the cosmos, whether expounded metaphysically or mythically in
various traditions, is based upon the manifestation of the Principle, which is at
the same time the sacrifice (the yajn+ a of Hinduism) of the luminous pole of
existence, of the universal man (al-ins-an al-k-amil), of Puru.sa, of the Divine
Logos which is also light, of the Spirit (al-r-u.h) which resides within the
proximity of the Ultimate Self and at the center of the cosmos.
The Ultimate Self in its inner infinitude is beyond all determination and cosmic
polarization, but the Spirit or Intellect, which is both created and uncreated, is
already its first determination in the direction of manifestation. It is m-aya in
-Atma and the center of all the numerous levels of cosmic and universal
existence.4 Through its "sacrifice" the lower levels of the cosmic order in its
objective as well as subjective aspects become manifest. The human self, as
usually experienced by men who have become separated from their archetypal
reality, is itself a faint echo upon the cosmic plane of the Spirit and ultimately
of the Self, and exists only by virtue of the original sacrifice of its celestial
Principle. Hence, it is through the denial of itself or of sacrifice that the self
can again become it-Self and regain the luminous empyrean from which it has
descended to the corporeal realm.
Self-awareness can only reach the Ultimate Self provided it is helped by that
message from the Divine Intellect which is called "revelation" or tradition in its
universal sense. The gates through which the Spirit has descended to the level of
the human self are hermetically sealed and protected by the dragons which cannot
be subdued save with the help of the angelic forces. Self-awareness in the sense
of experimenting with the boundaries of the psyche, with new experiences, and with
the heights and depths of the psychological world, does not result in any way in
moving closer to the proximity of the Self. The attempted expansion of awareness
in this sense, which is so common among modern man anxious to break the boundaries
of the prison of the materialistic world he has created for himself, results only
in a horizontal expansion, but not in a vertical one. Its result is a never ending
wandering in the labyrinth of the psychic world and not the end of all wandering
in the presence of the Sun which alone is. Only the sacred can enable the
awareness of the self to expand in the direction of the Self. The Divine reveals
to man His Sacred Name as a holy vessel which carries man from the limited world
of his self to the shores of the World of the Spirit where alone man is his Real
Self. That is why the famous Sufi, Man.s-ur al-.Hall-aj, through whom the Self
uttered "I am the Truth" (ana'l-.Haqq) prays in this famous verse to the Self to
remove the veil which separates man's illusory I from the Self who alone is I in
the absolute sense.
Between me and thee, it is my "I-ness" which is in contention;
Through Thy grace remove my "I-ness" from between us.
With the help of the message and also the grace issuing from the Self, the lower
self or soul is able to become wed to the Spirit in that alchemical marriage
between gold and silver, the king and the queen, the heavenly bride and the
earthly bridegroom, which is the goal of all work of initiation. And since love is
also death (amor est mors) and marriage is death as well as union,5 the perfection
of the self implies first of all the negation of itself, a death which is also a
rebirth, for only he who has realized that he is nothing is able to enter unto the
Divine Presence. The only thing man can offer in sacrifice to God is his self, and
in performing this sacrifice through spiritual practice he returns the self to the
Self and gains awareness of the real "I" within, who alone has the right to claim
"I am." As R-um-i has said in these famous verses:
I died as mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die as man, to soar
With angels blest; but even from angelhood
I must pass on: all except God doth perish.
When I have sacrificed my angle-soul,
I shall become what no mind e'er conceived.
Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence
Proclaims in organ tones, "To him we shall return."6
One of the factors which distinguish most sharply traditional metaphysics from
that part of post-medieval Western philosophy which is called metaphysics today is
that traditional metaphysics is not mere speculation about the nature of Reality,
but is a doctrine concerning the nature of the Real combined with methods revealed
by the Origin or Absolute Reality to enable the self or the soul, as usually
understood, to return to the abode of the Self. The Ultimate Self cannot be
approached by the efforts of the self alone, and no amount of human knowledge of
the psyche can increase the awareness or the consciousness of the self which will
finally lead to the Ultimate Self.
The contemplative disciplines of all traditions of both East and West insist in
fact on the primacy of the awareness of the self and its nature. As the great 13th
century Japanese Zen master Dogen has said, "To study Buddhism means nothing other
than inquiring into the true nature of the ego (or the self)."7 The famous dictum
of Christ that the Kingdom of God is within you is likewise a confirmation of the
primacy of the inward journey towards the Ultimate Self as the final goal of
religion.
Traditional psychology or rather pneumatology, which however must not be confused
in any way with modern psychological studies, is closely wed to traditional
metaphysics, for it contains the means whereby the soul can understand its own
structure and with the help of appropriate spiritual disciplines transform itself
so as finally to realize it-Self. This is as much true of the Yog-ac-ara school of
Mahayana Buddhism as of various forms of Yoga in Hinduism, or of the contemplative
schools within Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In the latter tradition for
example, a whole science of the soul has been developed based on the progressive
perfection and transformation of the self towards the Self. In Arabic, the word
nafs means at once soul, self and ego. As ordinarily understood the nafs is the
source of limitation, passion, and gravity, the source of all that makes man
selfish and self-centered. This nafs which is called the nafs al-amm-arah (the
soul which inspires evil), following the terminology of the Quran, must be
transfigured through death and purgation. It must be controlled by the higher
self. With the help of the Spirit the nafs al-amm-arah becomes transformed into
the nafs al-laww-amah (the blaming soul), gaining greater awareness of its own
nature, an awareness that is made possible through the transmutation of its
substance. In the further stage of inner alchemical transmutation, the nafs al-
laww-amah becomes transformed into the nafs al-mu.tma'innah (the soul at peace),
attaining a state in which it can gain knowledge with certainty and repose in
peace because it has discovered its own center which is the Self. Finally,
according to certain Sufis, the nafs al-mu.tma'innah becomes transmuted into the
nafs al-r-a.diyah (the satisfied soul) which has attained such perfection that it
has now become worthy of being the perfect bride of the Spirit, thus returning to
its Lord, as the Quran asserts, and finally realizing the Self through its own
annihilation (fan-a') and subsequent subsistance (baq-a') in God.
The traditional science of the soul, along with the methods for the realization of
the Self, a science which is to be found in every integral tradition, is the means
whereby self awareness expands to reach the empyrean of the Ultimate Self. This
traditional science is the result of experiment and experience with the self by
those who have been able to navigate over its vast expanses with the aid of the
spiritual guide. It is a science not bound by the phenomena or accidents which
appear in the psyche or which the self of ordinary human beings display. Rather,
it is determined by the noumenal world, by the Sub.stance to which all accidents
ultimately return, for essentially sa.ms-ara and nirv-a.na are the same.
Traditional cosmology also is seen, from the practical point of view of the
perfection of the soul and the journey of the self to Self, as a form of the
sacred science of the soul, as a form of autology. The cosmos may be studied as an
external reality whose laws are examined by various cosmological sciences. But it
may also be studied with the view of increasing self-awareness and as an aid in
the journey towards the Ultimate Self. In this way, the cosmos becomes not an
external object but a crypt through which the seeker of Truth journeys, and which
becomes interiorized within the being of the traveller to the degree that by
"travelling" through it he is able to increase his self-awareness and attain
higher levels of consciousness.8 Again to quote R-um-i:
The stars of heaven are ever re-filled by the star-like souls of the pure.
The outer shell of heaven, the Zodiac, may control us; but our inner essence rules
the sky.
In form you are the microcosm, in reality the macrocosm; though it seems the
branch is the origin of the fruit, in truth the branch only exists for the fruit.
If there were no hope, no desire for this fruit, why would the gardener have
planted the tree?
So the tree was born of the fruit, even though it seems the other way round.
Thus Muhammad said "Adam and the other prophets follow under my banner";
Thus that master of all knowledge has declared allegory: "We are the last and the
foremost."
For if I seem to be born of Adam, in fact I am the ancestor of all ancestors;
Adam was born of me, and gained the Seventh Heaven on my account.9
The process through which man becomes him-Self and attains his true nature does
not possess only a cosmic aspect. It is also of the greatest social import. In a
society in which the lower self is allowed to fall by its own weight, in which the
Ultimate Self and means to attain It are forgotten, in which there is no principle
higher than the individual self, there cannot but be the highest degree of
conflict between all limited egos which would claim for themselves absolute
rights, usually in conflict with the claims of other egos - rights which belong to
the Self alone. In such a situation even the spiritual virtue of charity becomes
sheer sentimentality. The traditional science of the soul, however, sees only one
Self, which shines, no matter how dimly, at the center of oneself and every self.
It is based on the love of one Self, which however does not imply selfishness, but
on the contrary necessitates the love of others, who in the profoundest sense are
also one self. For as Meister Eckhardt has said, "Loving Thy Self, thou lovest all
men as thy Self."10 The sheer presence in human society of those who have attained
the Ultimate Self has an invisible effect upon all members of society far beyond
what an external study of their relation with the social order would reveal. Such
men are not only a channel of grace for the whole of society, but the living
embodiment of the Truth that self awareness can lead to the Ultimate Self only
through man's sacrificing his self and knowing his own limitations, and that the
only way of being really charitable in an ultimate and final sense is to see the
self in all selves and hence to act charitably towards the neighbor not as if he
were myself, but because he is at the center of his being my-Self. The love of
other selves is metaphysically meaningful only as a function of the awareness, not
of our limited self, but of the Ultimate Self. That is why the injunction of the
Gospels is to first love God and then the neighbor. Knowledge of the self in its
relation to the Self reveals this basic truth: that the inner life of man leaves
its deepest imprint upon the social order even if one were to do nothing, and that
harmony on the social level can only be attained when the members of a society are
able to control the self with the help of the means which only the Ultimate Self
can provide for them. To quote D-ogen again,
"To be disciplined in the Way of the Buddha means getting disciplined in dealing
properly with your own I. To get disciplined in dealing with your I means nothing
other than forgetting your I. To forget your I means that you become illumined by
the things. To be illumined by the things means that you obliterate the
distinction between your (so-called) ego and the (so- called) ego's other
things."11
The traditional sciences of the soul deal extensively with all the questions
relating to sense perception, inner experience, contact and communication with
other conscious beings and the like. But their central concern is above all with
the question of the nature of the self, of the center of consciousness, of the
subject which says "I." In fact one of the chief means to reach the Ultimate Self
is to examine thoroughly with the help of the spiritual methods provided within
the matrix of various traditions the nature of the I, as was done by the great
contemporary Hindu saint, S+ri Ramana Maharshi.12 As awareness of the self expands
and deepens, the consciousness of the reality of the only I which is begins to
appear, replacing the ordinary consciousness which sees nothing but the multiple
echoes of the I on the plane of cosmic manifestation. The consciousness of the
only I which is the source of all consciousness, leads him who has realized this
truth to sing with `A.t.t-ar that
All You have been, and seen, and thought,
Not You, but I, have seen and been and wrought.13
The realization of the Ultimate Self, of the I who alone has the right to say "I
am," is the goal of all awareness. Through it man realizes that although at the
beginning of the path the Self is completely other than the self, ultimately the
self is the Self, as Zen masters have been especially adamant in emphasizing. But
this identity is essential, not phenomenal and external. The self is on the one
hand like the foam of the ocean wave, insubstantial, transient and illusory, and
on the other hand a spark of the Light of the Self, a ray which in essence is none
other than the supernal Sun. It is with respect to this spark within the self of
every human being that it has been said:
There is in every man an incorruptible star, a
substance called upon to become crystallized in
Immortality; it is eternally prefigured in the luminous
proximity of the Self. Man disengages this star from its
temporal entanglements in truth, in prayer and in
virtue, and in them alone.14
Imperial Academy
Teheran, Iran
NOTES
1. Traditional metaphysics speaks of Ultimate Reality either as the absolutely
Transcendent or the absolutely Immanent which however are one, Brahman being the
same as -Atman. Hindu metaphysics, however, emphasizes more the language of
immanence, and Islamic metaphysics that of transcendence, without one language
excluding the other. See F. Schuon, Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts trans.
by D.M. Matheson (London: Faber and Faber, 1953), pp. 95 ff. See also Schuon,
Language of the Self trans. by M. Pallis and D.M. Matheson (Madras: Ganesh. 1959),
especially chapter XI "Gnosis, Language of the Self."
2. See A.K. Coomaraswamy, Hinduism and Buddhism (New York: Philosophical Society,
1943), pp. 10 ff.
3. See H. Corbin, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, trans. N. Pearson, (Boulder,
Shambhala, 1978). In diverse traditions, the return of the self to Self has been
compared to the shedding of outward skin by a snake which by virtue of this
unsheathing gains a new skin and a new life.
4. See F. Schuon, "Atm-a-M-ay-a," Studies in Comparative Religion (1973), pp. 130-
138.
5. It is of interest to recall that in Greek it (tele+o) means at once to gain
perfection, to become married and to die.
6. R.A. Nicholson, Rumi-Poet and Mystic (London: Allen & Unwin, 1950), p. 103.
7. Quoted in T. Izutsu, "Two Dimensions of Ego Consciousness in Zen," Sophia
Perennis (Teheran), vol. II (1976), 20.
8. See S.H. Nasr, An Introduction to Cosmological Doctrines (London: Thames &
Hudson, 1978), chapter 15.
9. Rumi, Mathnawi, ed. by R.A. Nicholson (London: Luzac, 1930), vol. IV, Book IV,
v. 519-528, trans. by P. Wilson.
10. Meister Eckhart, trans. by C. de B. Evans, I. 139. The quotation is from
Coomaraswamy, op.cit., p. 13.
11. Izutsu, op. cit., p. 33.
12. S+ri Ramana Maharshi in fact based the whole of his teaching upon the method
based on asking who am I. His most famous work, a collection of answers given to
one of his disciples, Sivaprakasam Pillai, who arranged and amplified them is
called Who am I? (Tiruvannamalai, 1955). See A. Osborne, Ramana Maharshi and the
Path of Self Knowledge (Bombay, 1957).
13. From the Man.tiq al-.tayr, trans. by F.S. Fitzgerald. A.J. Arberry, Classical
Persian Literature (London: Allen & Unwin, 1958), p. 131.
14. F. Schuon, Light on the Ancient World, trans. by Lord Northbourne (London:
Perennial Books, 1965), p. 117.
CHAPTER VI
BUDDHISM AND THE WAY OF NEGATION:
Comment on Seyyed Hossein Nasr,
"Self-Awareness and Ultimate Selfhood"
TOSHIMITSU HASUMI
The splendid exposition of Professor Nasr manifests the comprehensive character of
the relation of self-awareness and Ultimate Selfhood. This problem is as old as
the history of philosophy in both East and West. From Socrates to Descarte in the
West and from Confucius to Zen philosophers in the East, it has always been the
most important philosophical theme. Prof. Nasr approaches it from the standpoint
of comparative philosophy. He penetrates into the depths of the religious and
philosophical thought of Islam as represented by Sufism, and of Buddhism, most
particularly of Zen. From these standpoints he then shows clearly how Self-
Awareness is possible and how to arrive at Ultimate Selfhood.
This subject of Self-Awareness and Ultimate Selfhood is not a merely philosophical
problem, but a large complex of philosophical and religious problematics in both
the East and the West; indeed it is the main object of comparative philosophy.
Here I will comment only upon the philosophical aspect, particularly the
speculative problem of mystical "intention."
In explaining the meaning of Self-Awareness, Prof. Nasr distinguished between
"Self" and "self." The "self" of daily life is not the ultimate "Self," for we
arrive at Self after the destruction of self or ego. First, from the philosophical
standpoint, Self-Awareness is the highest goal of the search for knowledge in
which the Self as the knowing subject is also the object of the knowing. This
"Self-Identity" is the condition sine qua non of the Self-Awareness. To reach this
we must separate the self and the Self, and negate our lower self.
This way of negation is similar in Sufism and Buddhism. In Zen, however, there is
no conception of "creation" as found in such other religions as Christianity and
Islam. Hence, the Ultimate-Self is "Nothingness," and self becomes it-Self through
absolute self-negation.
I agree with Prof. Nasr that the contemplative disciplines of all traditions in
both East and West insist on the primacy of the awareness of the self and its
nature. The subject and the object are the self and Self in different stages of
knowing, in which process negation is the first condition of Self-awareness. In
order to reach the higher Self, the lower self should be denied, and through this
first negation the lower self begins gradually to approach the higher Self. As the
lower self is still far away from this higher Self, however, to reach it the lower
self must deny itself in a series of three stages.
This process to the higher Self is the process of the "philosophia negativa,"
whose logical structure is the dialectic: the self as subject denies the self as
object, and thereby begins to know and evaluate itself to the Self. In this
dialectical process "reflection" is the "reflection" of self-identity moving from
the self to the Self as both subject and object. At each of three stages of
reflexion, as the self denies itself the process of Self-Awareness gradually
develops. We can see this process in the Zen text, "The Ten Images of Ox." As true
awareness is "Enlightenment," the Self is the illumined subject without selfness.
The following is an attempt to formulate the process from the lower to the higher
Self:
The first stage is the "intentio recta." The self knows immediately or directly
the object of knowing. This self is called "das Dasein" in Heidegger's
terminology. It is not yet evaluated as knowing self, and intends only the object.
The second stage is the "intentio obliqua." This is the first reflection between
the subject and the object. Here objectivity and general validity are the most
important. Most scientific knowledge is on this stage.
The third stage or "intentio reflexiva" is the second reflection in which the self
as both subject and object reflect each other. It is a first primitive beginning
of Self-Awareness, for the self is not yet transcendental. Once the self as both
subject and object evaluate each other, the evaluated self is no longer the "self"
as "das Dasein," but the Self, and is called "intentio reflexiva." However, as it
has not yet reached ultimate Selfhood, this intentio does not yet provide absolute
validity and the two are not yet self-identified.
The fourth stage of "intentio" is also developed from the second reflexion and is
called "intentio intensitiva." In this stage the knowing subject reflects its
object. The reflexion is transparent as self becomes like two mirrors facing each
other. As object of knowing the Self becomes self-identical and ultimate. The Self
is enlightened and becomes like the image in one mirror, which at the same time
reflects its object in the other. As subject and object the self both reflects and
is reflected at the same time. This is the highest stage of mystical knowledge and
is called the "Ultimate Reflexion."
The subject of this Ultimate Reflexion is the Ultimate Selfhood. At this stage,
the Self has no proper self-hood, but enters the state of the beatific vision,
which in Zen is called "Nothingness." This Ultimate stage of Selfhood is illumined
from both within and without. Basically, however, it has no inner or outer, no
over or under, for it is Nothingness and not selfhood. This is auto-reflection,
the highest state of reflexion. The Self now becomes selfless and Truth reveals
itself. This illuminated selfless Self simultaneously is the state of the Ultimate
Selfhood and of Self-Awareness.
One must distinguish the two ways, i.e., the way to the Ultimate Selfhood and the
way of realizing Ultimate Selfhood, that is, "the way of going and the way of
return." The identity between the self and Self should be realized in this way,
for it is not phenomenal and external, but essential: it is the affirmation of
selfhood in our daily life. The deep meaning of religion consists in this
realization of Ultimate Selfhood.
In conclusion, one can say that in the state of Ultimate Selfhood the Self truly
knows itself and the self finds its proper meaning.
CHAPTER VII
THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMMUNITY
ROBERT O. JOHANN
The question to which I have been asked to address myself concerns human
sociability. In what sense are human beings naturally social? Is society to be
conceived as an atomic sum of individuals or is it rather an organic whole? The
answer which I shall propose is that it is neither. Any human society, I shall
say, is a unity of persons who, contrary to the "atomic sum" conception, are
essentially relational and, contrary to the "organic whole" conception, are not
parts but subsist in themselves as free initiatives. Indeed, the thesis to be
elaborated here, instead of exalting either individual freedom or human
sociability at the expense of the other, will ground the exercise of freedom in
its bearing on relationship and root the reality of relationship in our very
nature as free agents.
SOME DISTINCTIONS
If this thesis is to be understood, some preliminary distinctions are needed. A
first and crucial one has to be made between two aspects or dimensions of human
existence that correspond to two ways of approaching it. The two ways I have in
mind are personally and impersonally.1 To approach fellow humans personally is to
deal with them in terms of what is known when we engage them directly in a
communicative relation. This is the other as free initiative, an intentional (in
the sense of intentio intendens) subject, a being that is significant not merely
as a what or one of a kind, but as a who, as uniquely existing. Approaching the
other personally is approaching him as you, in mutual relation with me. To
approach others impersonally, on the other hand, is to attend only to that about
them which is or can be known without entering into a personal relation with them.
Since this excludes their reality as unique subjects, what is left is their
reality as determinate objects in the world, mere instances of a kind.
The two dimensions of the human self that we shall be considering, therefore, are
the self as determinate object and the self as intending subject. These two
dimensions, however, are not to be construed as mutually exclusive. They are not
simply two distinct and contrasting aspects with no other connection between them
than that they are both dimensions of the self. Rather, just as the two approaches
to which these dimensions are correlative can be related to one another as the
abstract and limited one to the concrete and inclusive one, so also can the
dimensions themselves. For it should be noted that when we approach others
personally and deal with them as intending subjects, co-sources of a personal
exchange, we are also necessarily aware of and dealing with them as determinate
objects. To be able to communicate with others we must first of all be able to
hear the sounds they make, if not also, as normally, see their movements and
gestures. But our awareness of these is subordinate to and controlled by what is
at the focus of our attention and apprehended through them, to wit, the intending
subjects themselves.
The same, however, is not the case with the impersonal approach. For then our
concern is with what is true of the other regardless of his or her intention. With
the impersonal approach, attention is focused on changes going on in one place and
their empirical connections with changes going on elsewhere; it prescinds from
whether or not any of these changes are meant or intended. Thus, whereas the
personal approach is inclusive of the impersonal, the impersonal (since it focuses
only on objective nature while prescinding from what it mediates) is abstract and
exclusive. So too with the dimensions of the self correlative to these approaches.
The self as intending subject is concrete and includes the determinate object
through which the intending subject is mediated. The self as determinate object,
however, is an abstracted aspect of this concrete and inclusive reality and is
viewed in isolation from it.
The bearing of these distinctions on the question before us can now be made clear.
When it is said that human beings are naturally social, what is usually meant is
that sociability is rooted in their nature as determinate objects. Both the
"atomic sum" and the "organic whole" conceptions of human society are, I suggest,
contrasting versions of this first interpretation. The sense of "naturally social"
defended here, on the other hand, roots human sociability in our nature as
intending subjects. As we shall see, this has important consequences for
understanding the nature of human values generally, the kind of politics required
for their achievement, and the proper place of "community" in the scale of human
concerns. But, before going on to these matters, I wish first to elaborate briefly
the views of human sociability which I am rejecting.
TWO VIEWS OF HUMAN SOCIABILITY
The two views I have in mind are the individualist and the organic or
collectivist.2 For both these views, the social nexus is first of all and
fundamentally a fact about ourselves and only secondarily, if at all, a matter of
intention. Dependence on others for being what we are and behaving the way we do
is characteristic of our determinate nature, regardless of our individual aims and
purposes. Indeed, the very ability to formulate those aims is conditioned by our
participation in society. As one author puts it ". . . the concepts that we use to
describe our plans and situation, and even to give voice to our personal wants and
purposes, often [I would say always] presuppose a social setting as well as a
system of belief and thought that is the outcome of the collective efforts of a
long tradition."3 Thus, for both views, society is a necessary condition for the
human quality of our lives. Human life, as one kind among others, is essentially
group life.
Individualism
The difference between the two views resides in the way this determinate nature is
viewed in relation to the individual whose nature it is. Individualism sees it
basically as a classificatory construct, something posterior, therefore, to the
concrete entities it unites and so not normative for them.4 Since the way we group
and classify things is a function of our particular interests, these remain
primary in the realm of value. Whether and to what extent certain objective
characteristics of ourselves come to be prized and cultivated depends upon how
they are viewed in relation to our aims.
Thus, one way of regarding, and consequently intending, our union with others is
purely instrumentally. Social institutions in this case are not considered to have
any value in themselves, and our participation in them, far from being something
prized, is actually viewed as burdensome. But we join together with others in
various social arrangements as a way to promote our own personal aims. Such is the
case in what has been called "private society."5 Yet, even where social life, or a
particular form of it, is intended as good in itself, the priority of individual
interests remains intact. For, on this view, it will all depend on whether
individuals are so constituted as to find this sort of thing fulfilling in itself,
as well as conducive to other things. For example, it is an empirical fact that
people normally take delight in exercising their native capacities. Granted, then,
that one of our human capacities is reason (understood here as the capacity to
adopt a universal point of view), and granted that a justly ordered society is a
prime example of the exercise of such a capacity, it would not be out of line with
the individualist conception if human beings were to experience a just society,
since it is expressive of their nature, as fulfilling in itself. However, that
such a society is objectively worthwhile regardless of an individualist's
empirical desires, this first position is unable to say. For it holds that there
are no values (including society as a value) independent of the desires of
individuals, and therefore that there is no final or objective basis for affirming
what should or should not be sought or what is really worth seeking.
The Organic View
Such is not the case with the organic view of human sociability. Whereas the
individualist sees the value of society as something relative to individual desire
(even if it happens to be desired by some individuals as good in itself), the
collectivist sees individuals as functional parts of, and therefore relative to,
society as an organic whole. In this instance, determinate human nature is not a
construct for classifying individuals but an intelligible unity antecedent to
them, one in which they participate and which makes them to be what they are.6 To
say here that we are naturally social is to say that we exist essentially as
parts; that that of which we are parts has a meaning and value independent of us
individuals who compose it; and that only in the light of this larger meaning and
value can we ourselves, together with our aims, be properly understood and
appraised. Here, then, determinate human nature is normative for the person. A
person's freedom is fundamentally a freedom to conform. If we identify this
freedom with our being as subjects, then according to this interpretation, our
reality as subjects is relative to the objective order. It is only insofar as we
conform ourselves to this order that our choices, and therefore our lives as a
subjects, are grounded and justified. Any other course is groundless, arbitrary,
and indefensible.
Comparison and Critique
In comparison with individualism, this conception has certain strengths. The first
is a logical one. It is the recognition that choice must be grounded, not only if
it is not be arbitrary, but even for it to be possible. A choice that is not
grounded is indistinguishable from blind impulse. This means that prior to their
particular projects, individuals must be faced with some task, set by nature, in
the light of which those projects can be appraised. Without such an antecedent
task, functioning as a standard of appraisal, it becomes impossible to distinguish
alternative claims and so impossible, too, to choose.
The second strength of this position is more psychological in character. For it
caters to our need to be part of something larger than ourselves while at the same
time taking some of the onus out of choosing. When individual desire is accorded
the primacy and objective nature viewed as relative to it, the individual can come
to feel terrifyingly alone. Instead of enhancing our importance, such a position
seems to deprive us of significance. Moreover, having to decide for oneself just
what one is to do and be is, as Dostoievsky's Grand Inquisitor pointed out, simply
too burdensome for most people. It is much more comfortable to have what is
required of us all spelled out beforehand.
Needless to say, these strengths have their weaknesses, and part of the case for
individualism is its capacity to exploit them. For the conception of the human
being as primarily a part is tantamount to smothering selfhood. Yet what has been
the excitement of recent years if not a new and awakened sense of self? The human
self has felt the need to throw off all the limitations it has saddled itself with
and to reject every structure forcing it to accept this or that single role as the
whole truth of its being. This is, equivalently, to reject determinate nature as
normative along with the corresponding conformist conception of freedom. Freedom
is not really freedom if it means "knuckling under" to what is already the case.
And the logic of this contention should be clear from the distinctions that were
made earlier. For there we saw that determinate human nature is only an isolated
aspect of human freedom and subjectivity. This last is what is concrete and
inclusive. Thus, to make determinate nature normative for the person and so
subscribe to freedom as conformity is to subordinate the greater to the less, the
inclusive reality to a part of itself.
But if individualism is right in rejecting this conception, it does so in a way
that not only will not stand up to analysis but is also self-defeating. For the
basic thesis of individualism is that values are determined by choice. In other
words, there are no objective ends. An end is an end only as actually intended by
a subject. None of our interests or inclinations function as norms unless and
until the subject chooses that they should.
But there's the rub. As we have already seen, choice without grounds is not only
arbitrary, it is impossible. For choice, as a human act, implies judgment--a
judgment about what is worth doing in the situation. Without such judgment, one
cannot speak of an act or deed but only of an event. What takes place in that case
is simply the result of the interaction of objective forces already in operation.
This means abandoning the realm of freedom and responsibility for that of
determinism. Judgment, on the other hand, presupposes standards and, in the final
analysis, a standard that is not itself a matter of choice--otherwise we are
involved in an endless regress. But the only thing that can function as such a
standard is some reality to the accomplishment of which the subject as such is
naturally ordered. Subjectivity, in other words, cannot be viewed simply in its
transcendence of determinacy. There must also be something which transcends the
subject and to whose realization the subject's own intentional life is relative.
Our capacity to choose is a capacity for a positive reality which is inclusive of
us as subjects (much as our reality as subjects is inclusive of our nature as
determinate) and which only choice makes possible. Apart from such a reality
functioning as an objective end, choice is impossible and freedom an illusion.7
Moreover, this is not the only way in which individualism winds up defeating
itself. The denial of objective ends is similarly self-frustrating in the realm of
politics. For a plurality of agents in one field of action has to be unified if
they are not to work at cross-purposes and accomplish nothing. But their
unification is impossible without the subordination of the aims and interests of
some to the aims and interests of others. If, however, all goods are subjective,
then the idea of reaching a rational consensus about how these goods are to be
ranked is unthinkable. The subordination of some aims to others, therefore,
becomes the subordination of some preferences to others or, in other words, the
domination of some people by other people. Hence, as one author puts it, "The
liberal [read: individualist] attempt to establish freedom from domination through
the impersonal rule of law [which reflects the values of no particular person and
no particular group] is constantly undermined by the liberal insistence on the
subjectivity of value."8 With no objective standard for appraising the worth of
aims, whatever aims come to prevail in the group will do so, not because of their
intrinsic merit, but because of the power behind them. The politics of
individualsim is thus, inevitably, power politics.
AN ALTERNATIVE
So much for these first two views of human sociability. What we have to do now is
elaborate an alternative. As the preceding pages have made clear, the crucial
point is to establish an objective end for the subject, something that can serve
as a final standard of judgment. In order to do this, let me first recall the
meaning that was earlier attached to the term "subject." It will be remembered
that the subject was not defined as pure thinker, detached knower, disinterested
correlate of mental contents.9 The subject was instead identified with what we are
aware of (and, in that sense, know) when we engage a fellow human in personal
communication. It is the other, not as something merely attended to, but precisely
as intending us. In other words, being a subject is not taken to be something
passive, but active. It is not a matter of mere consciousness, being open to and
aware of the other. It is rather a question of freedom, of self-disposition. The
act of intending is an act of aiming oneself, of directing oneself, of actualizing
oneself in this way and not that.
The Subjective Interest
This is why the subject cannot be thought of simply as part of something else. A
being that can determine itself must first of all exist in itself. More
importantly, for our present purposes, this conception of the subject as free
agent (in contrast with the classical notion of the disinterested spectator)
requires us to think of it also as an interest structure. For the subject cannot
determine itself in one way rather than another unless it has some basis for
discriminating between alternatives This basis can only be their relative bearing
on the attainment of some objective it is already interested in reaching. It is
only the agent's interest in some goal that can serve as a standard of appraisal.
But the interest we are concerned with here cannot be one that is extrinsic to the
exercise of self-disposition, i.e., to the subject's very being and life as a
subject. For if it were thus extrinsic, it could function as a standard only if it
were deliberately adopted. Its adoption, however, as the actualization of one
possibility among many, would itself presuppose a previous interest functioning as
a standard. Since this is the case with all the interests of the human self as
determinate object (they are all only hypothetically normative), we are led to
conclude that the subject's very nature as a subject is itself an interest
structure. It is our own nature as free agents that is our final norm for choice
and this means that simply as a free agent and antecedent to all our choices, we
already have an end. Being a subject and having an objective end are thus one and
the same.
Relationship as Objective End
What then is this objective end? For it can hardly function as a final norm if we
are not aware of it. In order to answer this question, let us first ask ourselves:
What is the context within which intentional activity, precisely as intentional,
makes a difference? For as I mentioned earlier, the objective end must be a
reality that is not only inclusive of us as subjects but also one that only choice
makes possible. The answer is sufficiently obvious to make its neglect by
philosophers something of a problem. The context within which activity as
intentional, i.e., not in terms merely of its effects but in terms of its source,
is meaningful is the context within which subjects themselves are meaningful. This
context is neither the realm of ideas nor that of determinate objects. As for
ideas, the subject's unique reality as "I" is of no moment in the presence of the
universal, the valid for anyone. An object, on the other hand, is precisely that
which leaves the subject out of account, that to which the presence of the subject
is a matter of indifference.10 The only context, therefore, within which the
subject's intentional selfposition is meaningful is the context provided by other
subjects with whom the subject is in personal relation. It is, in short, the
context of communication--which, indeed, is why the communicative relationship was
stressed earlier as being the locus in which the meaning of subjectivity is first
disclosed.
One is reminded here of Kant's contention that the function of Reason is to bring
about a good will.11 Were its ultimate purpose anything like human happiness,
well-being or some other determinate state of affairs, this might more surely be
accomplished by instinct. The self-justifying function of Reason is rather the
achievement of something beyond the empirically determinate, to wit, a will that
is good in its very willing. So also, analogously, here. The function of
intentionality is not to bring about a specific transformation of the external
situation. Its raison d'etre lies beyond the whole order of empirical objects and
the ways in which such objects are arranged and re-arranged. No arrangement of
empirical objects requires intentionality for its accomplishment. What calls for
and justifies an act as intentional is the achievement of a relation of subjects,
of persons. Apart from relationship, a "we" effected by the responsiveness of each
of us to the other as "you," our lives as intentional would be without point.
This, then, is the larger reality in which persons can participate and still be
themselves, and which only choice makes possible. And it is as an interest in this
larger reality that the subject must finally be understood. Human subjectivity is
by nature a capacity for, and an interest in, life-with-you. This is not an
interest which a person has, one among many, but an interest which defines the
person. Moreover, it is this interest, identical with a nature of the subject,
that alone provides a final standard of judgment and ultimately grounds choice.
Actions consistent with this interest and in accord with the requirements of
personal relationship are objectively right; those essential to relationship are
obligatory; those inconsistent with relationship are objectively wrong. Finally
since only actions consistent with the pursuit of our objective end are finally
defensible, all others must be judged ultimately irrational and essentially self-
frustrating. They are at one and the same time exercises of our capacity to choose
and negations of its ground.
CONCLUSION
It would seem, therefore, that an alternative to the two views outlined earlier
can indeed be espoused. It is one which, while emphasizing the essentially
relational character of the person, at the same time stresses personal autonomy.
Indeed, these two aspects are tied together. It is precisely because persons exist
only in response to other persons that we must also view them as existing in
themselves, i.e., as, self-determining wholes. Here then is the meaning of human
sociability. Human beings are naturally social not only in the sense that their
objective nature is a function of group life. Sociability is even more profoundly
at the core of human intentionality. Every intentional activity is animated by an
(at least) implicit reference to the other as you and, precisely as intentional,
is in the last analysis an acceptance or rejection of relationship. Since life is
human only as intentional, what this last comes down to is that the unit of human
living is not the solitary ego, but "you and I" in communication. It is a unit
that can be properly understood only from the "inside," by a participant, not by
an observer. And neither the mathematical model of a "sum" nor the biological
model of an "organism" do it justice. What is required is the distinctly personal
model of a conversation or dialogue.
But the import of this third alternative is more than theoretical. Precisely
because society is fundamentally a matter of intention, our ideas about it have a
bearing on its realization. Political activity informed by mistaken conceptions
thus becomes inherently self-frustrating. It is not that such activity must
necessarily fail of its aims. It may very well be successful. But then its success
will not satisfy. It will not be what those engaged in it really wanted but
something at odds with their own natures.12
What, then, is the practical importance of rooting human sociability in our nature
as subjects? The import of this move stems from the fact that it provides an
objective basis for judgments of value while at the same time respecting the
integrity and autonomy of persons. In so doing, it does not, to be sure, set up a
kind of ready-made blueprint for action. Neither is it able to certify the
objectively right course in a particular situation. It does not circumvent the
need for rational deliberation nor eliminate its uncertainties. What it does do,
however, is make such deliberation about the objectively worthwhile a meaningful
activity, and so enable us to move beyond a politics of conformism or of
compromise to a politics of consensus. With the organic view of society,
deliberation is not meaningful since the good is not a matter of judgment but is
already settled by our determinate nature. The individual's vocation is simply to
conform to some authoritative formulation of it. So also with the individualist
view. There is no point in deliberating about the objectively worthwhile, since
according to this view there is no such thing. The only rational course for
individuals is, given their empirical interests and the powers competing with
them, to negotiate the most satisfactory arrangement for themselves. That this may
include a society so ordered as to reflect their rational nature, we have already
seen. That it categorically should, however, this position is unable to affirm. A
rational consensus about the best course to follow in a given situation is
consequently meaningless. Only, it would seem, in a position like our own, which
recognizes a final standard of judgment does communal deliberation about what is
most worth doing become intelligible. And only where such deliberation at least
makes sense does the freedom of all from domination at last become possible.
Fordham University
New York
NOTES
1. See Chap. 1, "The Field of the Personal" in John Macmurray's Persons in
Relation (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961), especially pp. 30-43. Anyone
familiar with Macmurray's thought will recognize my deep indebtedness to him
throughout this paper.
2. The tags are applied roughly without any attempt to distinguish the variety of
positions covered by each. It is interesting to note that Roberto Unger, after his
penetrating critique of liberal individualism in Knowledge and Politics (New York:
The Free Press, 1975), seems unable to come up with an alternative other than a
form of the organic view.
3. Cf. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1971), p.
522.
4. See, for example Joseph Margolis, Values and Conduct (New York: Oxford Univ.
Press, 1971), pp. 31-34.
5. On this point and the following one, see the section "The Idea of Social Union"
in John Rawls, op. cit., pp. 520-529.
6. Cf. Unger's discussion of the unity of universals and particulars, op. cit.,
pp. 137-144.
7. See my "Person, Community, and Moral Commitment" in Person and Community, ed.
Robert J. Roth, S.J. (New York: Fordham Univ. Press, 1975), especially pp. 162-
172; also my analysis of the interest underlying judgmental activity in "God and
the Search for Meaning" in God Knowable and Unknowable, (New York: Fordham Univ.
Press, 1973), especially pp. 257-267.
8. See Francis Canavan's feature review of Unger's Knowledge and Politics in
Thought, 50 (1975), 432-437, p. 433.
9. Absolutely basic to Macmurray's thought is the shift from "self as thinker" to
"self as agent." He restricts the notion of "subject" to the former and prefers
"person" for the latter. I have used the terms "intending subject," "free agent,"
"free initiative," and "person" interchangeably.
10. For this idea of Marcel's, see Roger Troisfontaines' synthesis of his thought
in De L'existence a- l'etre, 2 Vols. (Paris: Vrin, 1953), especially Vol. 1, pp.
77-80.
11. See the first chapter of the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten.
12. On this point about the consequences of mistakes regarding matters of
intention, see Macmurray, op. cit., p. 148.
CHAPTER VIII
COMMUNITY
IN THE PROCESS OF DEVELOPMENT
MIECZYSLAW GOGACZ
The Metaphysics of Community
A community is a group of persons bound by real as well as by mental, connections.
A community is not, therefore, as some existentialists propose, a mere sum of
persons like atoms without mutual bonds, an agglomerate of absolute and hence
solitary beings, steeped in self-depreciation. Nor is a community, as the
NeoPlatonists suggest, an organic whole, a continuous and durable being, a special
order or zone of reality. That notion is found today among Hegelians, in the
thought of Teilhard de Chardin and among many in the natural sciences. A community
is then composed of two essential elements: persons and interpersonal bonds; it is
a unity, on the one hand, of individual, autonomous, and rational beings and, on
the other hand, of contingent relations.
Just as a person is not a system of relations, but a subject in his or her own
right and autonomous, the community is not a system for relations for these are
essentially contingent and cannot exist in themselves. A community subsists only
through its subjects which are its efficient causes. Hence, a community is defined
as a unity of rational autonomous beings in non-autonomous relations.
The relations, as bonds between real persons, are then both real and personal;
whereas between persons and their products they are only relations of reason.
There are many personal relations: presence, conversations, friendships. There are
also many relations of reason: descriptions, doctrines, sciences, ideologies, art,
unity. We tend to confuse these two types of relations. We treat human beings as
if they were only clients, sick people, workers, pentitents; inversely, we allow
business interests, social machinations, interinstitutional rivalries,
institutions, punishments and reward to dominate us.
The Metaphysics of Growth
If the community is a group of persons bound together by a multitude of real and
mental relations, the growth or development of community consists in the
appearance, continuation or change of these interpersonal bonds or relations
between persons and other things or processes. The development of community is not
a process or transformation taking place in a continuing and distinct structure.
Instead, the growth of the community consists in working out the role and place of
persons with other persons, substances and effects. It is the work of metaphysics
to discern, acknowledge and describe this role and place of persons.
The NeoPlatonic ideas predominant in our days misconceive the difference between
mental products and relations, on the one hand, and real beings, on the other,
attributing to the former a value in themselves and superior to that of human
persons. As a result society becomes more important than the individual human, the
whole becomes more important than the part, the culture or ideology is placed
above man, and institutions impose upon persons. Thus the person is reduced to the
reality of a thing, that is, to being an interchangeable part in the midst of a
larger structure or hierarchy of being.
It should be added that the same notions persist today in certain NeoPlatonizing
theologies and currents of thought that dominate our epoch. They see man as part
of a cosmos crowned by the person of Christ, in such wise that the person is
conceived as a thing and loses the dignity of a being whose friendship with God is
basically personal, individual and direct. Such theologies risk deforming the
authentic message of Christian Revelation. According to Revelation Christ suffered
for every person, for each human being, and not for a class, group or social
stratum composed of men. Each person has been saved by Christ and endowed with his
friendship; in each person Christ, with the Father and the Spirit, establishes his
home. Thus, a person is not a thing or object, either among men or before God;
rather one is chosen and is distinguished by one's personal friendship with God.
The person, then, is not a product, much less a system of real or mental
relations, but a reasonably autonomous, singular, unique and individual being. The
role or proper position of the person with others can be conditioned only by love.
By one's profound personal nature with others to be an object of love, not of
interests, machinations, rivalries, punishments or rewards.
Community and Its Development
In contemporary Polish metaphysics one can discern three principal notions of
community:
1. A group or ensemble of persons who choose the common good in a similar manner
(Card. Wojtyla).
2. A group of relations between persons whereby they achieve their existential
goals in approaching God (M. Krapiec).
3. A group of persons, each of whom in relation to the others is the common good
made concrete within their conscious.
These different conceptions have the common merit of clarifying and underlining
persons. At the same time they have the common deficiency of not being precise
regarding the essential constitutive element of community: "Similar activities"
(Wojtyla), "the bond with God which perfects man" (Krapiec), "interiorization in a
given person of the transcendental character of other persons." This could lead to
confusion, for such general conceptions of the constitutive element of community,
reduces the development of community to activities that are supposed to be common
to all men such as establishing contact with God and all other persons. The
constitutive factor of community, however, inasmuch as it defines its essence,
cannot itself be contingent.
A community consists essentially of related persons as causes and subjects of
their own interrelations. Consequently, its development and growth is nothing
other than the place and role of given persons in relation to other persons and
things.
CHAPTER IX
PERSON AS A
UNIQUE UNIVERSAL SOCIAL BEING
MIHAILO MARKOVIC
I
The question of the relative priority of society and of individual person could be
a fertile starting point for a critical analysis that reveals a multitude of
mediations between two sharply opposed concepts and eventually discards the very
question of priority in its initial simple form. On the other hand, interpretation
of the question can be so misleading that it would give rise to extremely biased,
mystifying and sometimes practically dangerous answers.
We still live in the world governed on the one hand by one-sided, narrow-minded
ideologies of authoritarian collectivism which tend to assume full control over
the life of the individual, and dominated on the other hand by possessive
individualism which systematically over-emphasizes "free initiative" and civil
liberties at the expense of social justice. We have been witnessing significant
changes during the last three decades: increasing concern about civil rights and
individual participation in collectivist societies, growing state control and
social welfare in liberalist societies. But the changes are much too cautious,
slow, and reluctant; and too often new initiatives and institutions tend to
degenerate in an alien, incompatible environment. There are hardly any movements
which struggle for genuine transcendence of the essential limitations of
contemporary societies; it is usually one-person or one-journal armies. Where
there are or have been movements, they invariably constitute what Hegel used to
call "abstract negation": expressing demands extremely opposite to official values
and aspirations, rather than transcending them, differentiating between the
limited and the historically indispensable in them.
Thus, the Soviet dissident movement for civil rights, in its just struggle against
bureaucratic oppression, tends to underestimate the remarkable achievements of its
society in conquering poverty, ignorance, and excessive social differences. They
do not come up with new solutions of the old conflict between the personal and the
social; ideologically they go back to eighteenth-century liberalism or an even
older patriarchal Christianorthodox political culture.
On the other hand, the New Left movement in the liberal societies, in its just
struggle against wars backed by the capitalist establishment, and against the
values of an over-competitive, over-discriminative, and consumerist society, has
invited total destruction of the old world and the building of a new one on its
ashes. It has tended to forget that it took centuries of struggle by the best
human minds to achieve a certain level of technology, democracy and culture, and
that only on that ground a really new, more rational and more democratic community
could be built. Instead of showing how in principle the step can be made from
representative to participatory democracy, from a competitive to a coordinated
economy, and from a consumerist to a creative lifestyle, many New Left activists
borrowed ideas directly from predominantly rural and authoritarian societies, and
rather irrelevant in societies at much higher levels of material and cultural
developments.
II
Abstract analytical thought, whether in its liberal or authoritarian version,
tends to oppose the society and the person as two simple, unstructured, and
unmediated entities. "Freedom of the individual" it is argued, "is absence of
social constraint. The interests of the individual should be subordinated to the
interests of society."
But what is this society which lays down norms, imposes laws, plans and controls
life, awards and punishes, and requires sacrifices? Is it that immediate social
community in which a person lives; one's family, neighborhood, peers, working
place, or club? Or is it the nation, race, religion, political party, or movement
to which one belongs? Is it the government of one's country, or community of
countries? Or humankind at large?
A young man is ordered to go to war, as his government tells him that it is his
sacred duty, and that there is nothing so noble as to die for his fatherland. His
peers tell him that this is a lie, and that he should escape. His family tell him
that they do not like to see him going to war, but that they even less like him
being arrested and dishonored. The mass media tells him he should obey, whereas
his moral and religious feelings strongly tell him that he should not. What is the
voice of the society? Which social law has priority: written laws of his country,
or unwritten ethical laws of a broad human community with which he shares basic
values and commitments? But who stands for the society even as interpreted through
the written law: those who wrote it, or those who interpret it (and interpret it
in different ways)? Is the law the constitution, or the special bill, or the
reading of either by one of the courts? Is the law what the judge eventually says?
But an expensive lawyer makes a lot of difference in what the judge says. And
there are higher level judges, and the Supreme Court sometimes overrides its own
precedents. What sense does it make, then, when Jacques Maritain demands obedience
even with respect to unjust laws? According to him: "Whether the law be just or
unjust free men obey it only because it is just to obey, just by a justice
intrinsic to the law."1 But even granted that we know which law we are talking
about, what is there to give such a dignity to any law, no matter whether just or
unjust? One might answer, the very principle of social order. But why should any
order be better than any disorder? Orders are known in history which blocked all
progress, and stifled human initiative and creativity for centuries. And examples
of disorder are known which cleared the ground for liberation and unprecedented
growth.
There are certainly philosophical ways to justify the ideas of law, of the state,
and of social order--by reference to: eternal ideas (Plato), reason (Aristotle,
Aquinas, Spinoza), general will (Rousseau), good will (Kant), or absolute mind
(Hegel). However, these philosophical justifications, just because they are purely
philosophical and not concrete and historical, refer to the concept of social
order and not to all actual orders, nor to any specific social order--and if they
do, like sometimes in the case of Hegel,2 they must be considered ideological and
apologetic slips, unless they are sufficiently mediated and supported by detailed
and comprehensive historical analysis. "A people is free," says Rousseau,
"whatever the form of its government when it sees in that which governs it not a
man but an organ of law and the law expresses the general will which is always in
the right because it considers only the common interest."3 How is one to interpret
a theory like this?
The apologist who commits himself to the views that the society or the government
has unquestionable priority over the person, will first dogmatically and purely
ideologically assume that the given law expresses general will. From that
assumption he will derive the proposition that the given law is "always in the
right, always an expression of common interest," and therefore that people will be
"free" precisely when they obey the given law.
But if we do not make the unwarranted jump from the law in general to the given
law, the only reasonable interpretation is: If the will expressed in the law is
general will, i.e., the will that always pursues common interest, then persons
will be free by following the law, because the law under those conditions would be
the general element of their own will.
This leads us to the following two conclusions:
(1) Not every law and not every order should be obeyed.
(2) In order to know which social order deserves to be respected and which law is
worth being obeyed, we must be able to establish what is "common interest" and
what is "general will."
III
Now what is the unanalyzed person whose will is a constituent of the general will,
and whose freedom is incompatible with social constraint?
One can hardly find sharper early expression of extreme individualism than in
Stirner: "I have founded my thesis on nothing. . . . The divine is God's concern,
the human man's. My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true,
good, just, free, etc., but solely what is mine and it is not a general one, but
is unique, as I am unique. Nothing is more to me than myself."4
Stirner could certainly have fully affirmed his individuality without asserting an
unlimited egoism. He could have rid himself of all divine or pseudo-humanist
Feurbachean mystification without inferring that he, as a creator, can build
everything out of nothing,5 that all ideas deserve to be rejected,6 that he can be
his own species . . . without norm, without law, without model,7 that one should
not aspire to community, but to one-sidedness, that "one should not `seek'" the
most comprehensive community, `human society,' but `seek' in others only means and
organs which we may use as our property."8
This kind of absolute individualism cannot be even formulated in a consistent way.
Stirner had to admit, in contradiction to everything that he said elsewhere:
"Without doubt culture has made me powerful. . . . I receive with thanks what the
centuries of culture have acquired for me; I am not willing to throw away and give
up anything of it; I have not lived in vain."9
Stirner undoubtedly understood much better than he expressed the fact that without
culture, without existing language and inherited ideas, without some kind of
ethical concepts, there is no person as human being. But what he probably did not
understand is that the essence of human culture is its productive and creative
rather than consumerist character. Creating and giving away is greater joy than is
taking and possessing. Friendship is doing things for the other without expecting
return. Love is pure delight in making the beloved happy. Art is shaping new forms
and looking around for someone who will genuinely need them. Philosophy is
inventing words and thoughts which will help men of an epoch to understand their
time, to become aware of their prejudices and grasp their best possibilities. A
truly free, powerful and creative person opens oneself toward the world without
fearing his vulnerability, one's life is so abundant and overflowing that one's
will always be more ready to give than to take. And the very last thought in his
mind would be "to seek in others only means and organs which he may use as his
property," or what Nietzsche once said, "to desire to overpower . . . until, at
last, the subjected creature has become completely a part of the superior
creature's sphere of power."10
A person is indeed unique, endowed with some capacities, talents, needs, and
dispositions which no other individual in the world has. One of the most important
human rights, indeed the basic right of a person, is to be able to discover,
express, develop, and cultivate those unique personal potential capacities and
needs. This is the right to actually be what one potentially is. This is at the
same time one of the clearest and most concrete criteria to evaluate the basic
character of a social system. The best and earliest sign that a society is, or is
going to become, oppressive, is the pursuit of uniformity, severe constraints on
expressions of individuality, and a stress on external discipline and heteronomous
conduct. A society that genuinely grows and develops, and that is becoming a real
human community, will create favorable conditions for personal self-discovery and
self-actualization. It has no reasons to accept as its general policy an external
control and suppression of individual idiosyn- crasies for fear that some of them
could be incompatible with social needs and norms.
There are two essential reasons for this tolerance. First, in contrast to the
sphere of public social life (production of socially necessary goods and services,
public decision-making, public education, mass media, etc.), there will be a
growing sphere of private life, and organs of public power will have to refrain
from interfering in what individuals do in their free time. Second, and most
important, in the very basic structure of his or her being a person is not only a
unique individual but also a social being. As a social being a person will have a
critical attitude toward his or her individual idiosyncrasies, and will
autonomously--rather than as pressed from outside--decide which of these unique
personal dispositions should be given priority, in what direction they should be
developed, and how their initial natural genetic forms should be transcended into
socialized and cultivated ones.
IV
A person is a social being in a particular and in a universal sense. The
particular sense is obvious; since birth an individual belongs to a growing number
of particular social groups, such as family, neighborhood, school, community,
larger local community, and nation. One is socialized through interaction and
through reward and punishment. One learns one's mother tongue, communicates, is
educated, receives an increasing amount of information, and is exposed to and
asked to comply with an increasing number of rules. Some of these are in conflict
with a morality and a particular ethnic tradition learned at home, with the
ideology of the national state, with more or less present racial or religious
awareness and solidarity, or with an implicit or explicit class-and-status-
consciousness. Pulled to different and often mutually incompatible gravitational
centers, the person either lives a chaotic and incoherent life, or finds it useful
to be deliberately split, or manages to introduce necessary harmony by sacrificing
some commitments and allegiances in favor of others.
But no matter how conformist or harmful for the unique creativity of the
individual these various particular forms of socialization might be, they are the
mediating link between unique individuality and the universal humanity of a
person. By learning the mother tongue the individual actualizes his universal
human capacity to learn a language and communicate with other human beings. The
disposition to learn any language, to communicate with any symbolic forms, is
already in the person's genetic make-up. But it can be manifested, objectified and
fixed only in some particular social community, and in just one definite phase of
individual development, never later. With the help of a rapidly-growing network of
symbolic forms in any particular ethnic environment a person develops universal
senses to experience the world, to see and feel in an increasingly more
comprehensive, articulated, and richly interpreted way than with crude primitive
senses. That this power of cultivated senses is universal can be seen from the
fact that, once developed due to one particular symbolic form, its results can be
translated into other particular forms.
This is even more true with regard to the capacity of rational thought. Had an
individual never been exposed to learning concepts and solving problems, his
built-in genetic disposition to generalize, discriminate, grasp regularities, and
derive logical conclusions from given premises, would vanish. But once developed,
it becomes trans-national and trans-cultural. And the same applies to imagination,
critical capacity, creative work, and so on.11
Once a person has lived in a definite human community, and developed basic
universal human capacities, he becomes universally social and stays that way even
when living alone on a deserted island, as the story of Robinson Crusoe
beautifully illustrates. This leads to the following two conclusions.
(1) It depends on social conditions in a particular community whether our
universal humanity, our communicative, rational and creative capacities, will
develop, stay dormant, be crippled, or perish altogether. What then could be a
better criterion of critical evaluation of various particular societies; of
establishing which are progressive, just, and emancipatory, and which are
retrogressive, unjust, and oppressive? What could be a better ethical criterion
for a person to judge among various particular commitments, whether national,
ideological, religious, or racial?
(2) Because society is such a complex, stratified,and multilevel structure, it can
never become completely corrupt and dehumanized, nor can all its members be
alienated. Surely if this should ever happen to a society it would lack any forces
for recovery. Many students of Marx have had great difficulty in understanding how
the most dehumanized and alienated social class, the proletariat, was supposed to
create the most humane form of society that ever existed. The truth is that,
fortunately, neither the political regime nor the economic structure constitute
the whole society, and that many persons and whole social segments escape
dehumanization. A potential universal humanity is genetically built-in, ready to
burst forth as soon as conditions become favorable within any particular social
community.
V
States and new movements often seek legitimation by construing their particular
interests as "general" ones: "defence of the free world," "economic justice,"
"worker's state," "national liberation." There are several clues that help a
person--under pressure to support and actively engage in "the cause"--to detect a
selfish particular interest lurking behind it. One is by mystification of both
ends and means. Goals are formulated in terms of hypostatized abstract entities
(National Glory, Free Society, the New Order, Dictatorship of the Proletariat).
Means are justified by the ends, which is a quite pragmatic and indeed cynical
procedure, given that the ends themselves have no rational and ethical ground.
Another clue is extreme disregard for personal integrity, the demand of mere
obedience, reinforced by external discipline, intolerance for individual criticism
and dissent, and interpretation of anything less than total acceptance as
betrayal. A third clue is mobilization of mass support on a low motivational
basis, along with a tendency to take human beings rather than institutions as
targets for attack, which results in outbursts of unnecessary violence. Once a
social undertaking is moved by resentment and hatred for all persons of an
opposite creed, race, nation or class, it is bound to end up in pathological
deformations of whatever were the initially declared goals.
Fourthly, there is the authoritarian structure of decision- making within the
social establishment or movement which allegedly pursues a universal human
interest. Once the person is asked to surrender his power to a central authority,
once decisions that deeply affect him are being taken without his participation,
once his loyalty is called for and not his suggestions or critical opinion, it is
clear that the person is confronted with a selfish particular interest, and that
between universal emancipatory claims and the actual reality there is quite a
substantial gap.
Between a person and the society there are a variety of conflicts and a variety of
possible temporary identifications at different levels. The interesting question
is when a person, who is fully developed as both a unique individual and a
universal human being, finds it possible to identify with a society. And the
answer seems to be that identification is possible when there is no longer a
monopoly of political and economic power in the hands of any particular elite
which usurps the right to speak in the name of the whole society; when there is no
more public power at different levels of social organization than is necessary to
coordinate necessary social activities and direct the communal development; when
none of the public power is (professionally) political, and all of it is delegated
and responsible to the electorate, subject to change and recall, and controlled by
a powerful democratic public opinion. In such a self-governing community12 social
institutions really pursue common interests and a person is as free as possible
because both aspire toward the same inherent, universal humanity.
University of Belgrade
Belgrade, Yugoslavia
NOTES
1. Jacques Maritain, Scholasticism and Politics (New York: The MacMillan Co.), pp.
102-103.
2. Already in an early essay on the German Constitution, written from 1799 to
1802, Hegel began to apply his philosophical ideas to German conditions. While he
praised the independent German states as "an expression of the inherent German
passion for autonomy," he characterized that historical state as a period of
negative freedom of the princes, and proclaimed the historical necessity of
entering into a new stage of "positive freedom" within a national state where the
freedom of the citizen would be guaranteed by the concentration of all state power
in one center: a national German monarch. "But that a monarch is at the same time
the state power, or that he has the supreme power, or that a state exists at all--
these are synonymous." (Hegel, Die Verfassung des Deutschen Reichs, ed by G.
Mollat, Stuttgart, 1935, pp. 46, 58, 83, 84, 112-13).
3. J. J. Rousseau, Lettres ecrite de la Montaigne, in Oeuvres completes de J. J.
Rousseau (ed. P. R. Anguis [Paris: Dalibon, 1824] vol. VII, Part II, Letter VII),
p. 438; J. J. Rousseau, The Social Contract, in The Social Contract and
Discourses, transl. by G.D.H. Cole (Everyman's Library; New York: E. P. Dutton &
Co., 1950) B. II, ch. 6, p. 37.
4. Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own, New York: Harper & Row, 1974, p. 41.
5. Ibid., p. 41: "I am not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am creative
nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything."
6. Ibid., p. 49.
7. Ibid., p. 55.
8. Ibid., p. 214.
9. Ibid., p. 238.
10. Nietzsche, The Will to Power (London: T. N. Foulis, 1914), vol. II, p. 130.
11. M. Markovic, From Affluence to Praxis (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 1974), pp. 12-16.
12. More on the humanist assumption of self-government: Ibid., ch. 7, "The New
Human Society and its Organization," pp. 209- 249; "Self-management and
Efficiency," in M. Markovic, The Contemporary Marx, (Nottingham: Spokesman Books,
1974), ch. 12, pp. 208-217; "Philosophical Foundations of the Idea of Self-
management," "Socialism and Self-management," and "Self-government and Planning,"
in Self-governing Socialism, ed. by B. Horvat, M. Markovic and R. Supek (White
Plains, New York: International Arts and Sciences Press, Inc., 1975), vol. I, pp.
327-351, 416-438, 479-491; "Basic characteristics of Marxist Humanism,"
decentralization--A Precondition of a More National Society" and "Political Power,
State, Self-government" in M. Markovic, Democratic Socialism: Theory and Practice
(Sussex: The Harvester Press; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982).
CHAPTER X
HOMO CREATOR:
SOLVING THE PROBLEM
OF HUMAN EXISTENCE
Comment and Counter-Proposal to Professor Markovic's
"Person as a Unique Universal Social Being"
JANUSZ KUCZYNSKI
Preliminary
The paper not only interestingly but often brilliantly poses several detailed
questions, and also contains many accurate and concrete formulations. Within the
framework of accepted philosophical assumptions, the author aims at an objective
approach to difficult problems. Based on his own often new interpretations of the
European philosophical heritage, he endeavors to concretize humanism and
formulates with deep concern propositions for the defense of the great values of
our common human tradition.
The introduction supporting Hegel's refusal of the principle of "abstract
negation" has important consequences. This allows the author, sometimes even to a
considerable extent, to surmount the limited nature of the New Left programs and
to present the glaring and literally reactionary nature of some anti- socialistic
pronouncements, which are incapable of suggesting any constructive alternatives to
the Communist movement. Also correct is the closely related statement on the lack
of proper class and historical orientation of the New Left.
However, it is unfortunate that the author did not extend this principle of class-
historical perception of phenomena to his entire paper. One of the consequences of
this is the omission of differences within the New Left, in which we will also
find valuable elements of criticism of capitalistic development and of the errors
of the socialist and communist movement. Another consequence is omission of the
positive moment of differentiation of leftist movements in general. To be sure,
lack of unity weakens the power of the entire Left, but at the same time it
reflects the unusually broad popularization of socialist ideas, corresponding to
very different socio-historical conditions.1
In the name of the above common values, and scientific philosophical discussion,
and with a view to constructive program and building understanding, I wish
strongly to underline:
1. the positive aspects of opposing theoretical propositions;
2. the principle of treating differences also as values, on condition that they do
not undermine mutual, fundamental values, but aim at enriching them; and
3. the need for the development of a new type of philosophical discussions.
Ideological struggle is not only a reality resulting from class-political
differences, for the intellectualist it is an imperative, a consequence of
fidelity to truth and the cohesiveness of theory. For not only realism, but also
intellectual exactitude requires one to repudiate the illusion of abandoning this
battle or introducing immediate ideological compromises. At the same time, these
same realistic moral presumptions warrant one to
seek and develop mutual values, even though these may be differently justified.2
In the long run philosophers may be more responsible than politicians for the
world's future. Marx was correct in his famous statement on ideas which become
material forces when they dominate the masses, and perhaps Husserl was right when
he defined philosophers as "functionaries of mankind."
Important among these are socialism and humanism. The first links us with Prof.
Markovic, though we may many a time differently understand the vital constituents
of this concept. The second, certainly, we share with many, though the differences
in understanding humanism may be enormous .Perhaps these very differences are one
of the most important subjects for discussion.
Conditions for fruitful and direct discussion, however, are to eschew equivocous
formulations and to pose questions as accurately as possible. A necessary
precondition of such scientific precision in human studies is historicism and the
closely related class perception of phenomena from the point of view of the
philosophy of history. Despite some simplified interpretations of Marxism, as well
as some theoretically important but peculiarly neo-dogmatic interpretations,3 the
principle of class and historicism in authentic Marxism is closely connected with
humanism, with the principle of the accumulation and inheritance of authentic
values, wherever and whenever they were created.
This raises some specific issues. At one point, Prof. Markovic asks several
questions concerning the relation of a young man to war. They are formulated
without reference to concrete national-class-historical situations, and thus each
of them may be answered in many ways. In the accepted theoretical horizon of the
paper, one cannot justify any answer outright. In the case of the young heroes in
the battles against Fascism there is actually no need to ask such questions. It is
a matter of fact, that they defended, not only their class and nation, but also
the general values of humanism.
One may presume that some of the author's questions have rhetorical character
after all, and are proof of his oratorical talent; for example, on the same page
we read: "What is the voice of the society? Which social law has priority? Written
laws of his country, or unwritten ethical laws of a broad human community with
which he shares basic values and commitments?"4 The brilliant and ironic remarks
against sophistry in the interpretation of written law are a correct answer,
though an indirect one.
On the same page, however, Prof. Markovic treated Jacques Maritain too one-sidedly
as a result of an ahistorical approach.5 Not only the majority of Christian
thinkers, but also official advocates of the Apostolic See, including the two last
popes, have distanced themselves from the centuries-old tradition of "natural law"
as a means of sanctifying ruling authority and exploitative regimes. This includes
the "established confusion" of capitalism, as E. Mounier correctly called it.
Cooperation between Christians and Marxists in the name of social justice and
progress, of peace and humanism, may become one of the means of saving the world,
as well as the subject of unusually fruitful discussions from the cultural point
of view.6
On the other hand, Prof. Markovic's summarizing remark at the end of this
paragraph is completely justified: "Disorders are known which cleared the ground
for liberation and unprecedented growth." It is worth adding that Marx made
similar remarks on the American Revolution; the positive estimation of this aspect
of bourgeois as well as socialistic revolutions is closely linked with the
fundamental constructions of historical materialism.
Marxism as a Class and Universal Philosophy
A historian of philosophy (especially one who treats works of human thought also
as a process of gaining knowledge) will recognize residues of linear, dogmatic
Marxism in estimations of various "philosophical ways to justify the ideas of law,
of the state, of social order," as "ideological, apologetic slips."
As a rule they constitute absolutizations of the partial truths of various stages
of historical recognition.7 Engels and Lenin8 noted that scientific socialism also
originates from Aristotle9 and certainly from Spinoza and Rousseau. The sources of
Marxism can be traced to many national cultures (besides the three classically
ascertained by Lenin). For example, many elements of Marxist humanism and the
theory of the national question undoubtedly were inspired by Marx's studies on
Polish history.10
This has paramount significance for contemporary times. Such an authentic and
historically profound movement of human community as socialism which looms so
large on the universal scale must consider all achievements, including the
contemporary. The future united culture of a socialistic world and a complete man
("der totale Mensch," according to Marx) will have to incorporate all
accomplishments, liberating them from today's political and class functions and
meanings. This concerns, of course, not only the great achievements of American
civilization and culture which can be very easily justified, but also of "exotic"
cultures very distant from the "Western" manner of thinking. H. Parsons tried to
effectively show in his important book that Marxism may efficiently break barriers
of cultural strangeness, while respecting to a maximum degree the distinctiveness
of such cultures.11
The apparent digression of the last few paragraphs allows us to approach, from our
point of view, answers to the question contained in Prof. Markovic's conclusions.
Dialectical thinking must differentiate various grades or levels of "common
interest" and "general will," according to one's ideas about the socialization of
community.
Prof. Markovic's Ideas
The finesse and depth of many of Sartre's deductions, especially when he moved
from phenomenology to historical materialism, fascinated some Marxists who,
however, took a road leading in the opposite direction, from Marxism to various
existential, phenomenological, and other positions--the paradox of ideological
transformations!
Prof. Markovic, instead, in the basic parts of his paper strives for a
concretization of Marxism in the defense and development of his humanistic
content. However, some of his formulations such as "one man or one-journal armies"
(though logically contradictory to other theses, for example, about the New Left)
block the possibility of class analysis, and thus of sociological precision. They
also tend to exclude worthy deliberation of the one universal social force that
may assure the development and even the salvation of human civilization. Marxism,
as a real humanism, must also be a realism; it must be closely linked with
authentic revolusionism and hence above all with creative attitudes.
Below I develop the idea of Marxism as the philosophy of creativity; in my
opinion, only fully effective creativity fully effective surmounts subjection to
social and theoretic evil. The "abstract negation," of which Prof. Markovic so
justly reminded us, often leads to deep and unnoticed intellectual dependence on
criticized evil. The author is right to reject it.
I approve with the greatest interest the plurality of values in the author's
beautiful remarks on creativity,12 friendship, love, and philosophical invention.
I wish to underline how much it goes beyond the horizon of E. Fromm's famous work,
"Love as the Solution of the Problem of Human Existence." We will probably agree
that love (in itself) has often been a mystification or utopian dream as a means
of social transformation; only when linked with just striving, could it solve
problems of man-society relations, and then only partially.
Today, however, just creativity may solve the problem of human existence; though
to do so it must be connected with struggle, love, etc. We are both against the
separation of individual aspects of human existence and thus against
absolutization, and by same token the alienation, of existence. For this reason, I
would prefer a somewhat more precise and revealing definition of the "essence of
human culture" underlining that it indeed has a "consumerist character" as well.
Consumption is one of the most important aspects of culture in a universal
perspective: exactly as one means of linking the individual with society. This is
the paramount phenomenon from the ontological point of view, inasmuch as the
reception of culture is its co-creation.113 In an anthropological approach in a
developed socialistic society (in contradistinction to society or sections of
society dominated by mass culture) it gives the broadest chances, apart from
creative work, for solving the "antinomy" of individuals and society in such wise
that the receiver at the same time becomes the creator.14
Similarly I would broaden and modify the idea of humanism, which for Markovic is
closely connected with naturalism and which was considered even in the example-
equation form in "The Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts."
a) It is still the case today that man has "the right to actually be what one
potentially is." This results of course from the destruction of "human nature" by
previous social conditions.
b) Nature itself must be seen historically; naturalism must take history into
account. If, for example, nature is also man's essence, then as a "complexity of
social relations" this essence is subject to development.15 The ecological crisis
stimulates today and sometimes absolutizes this original naturalism but, besides
valid slogans on the defense of nature, one must also see in it "natural evil."
Socrates, drinking hemlock, linked himself through nature with death; today,
cancer is a natural phenomenon and so is death. Will we always be reconciled with
both of them?
c) Thus I propose extending the concept of humanism, transcending it and
complementing it with humanistic creationism. In order to really solve the problem
of human existence, we must basically develop man's nature, in the biological, as
well as the existential sense.16 The philosopher must sometimes suggest very far-
reaching projects based on the coherence of theory.
Prof. Markovic' previously discussed concept is a classic Marxian idea, even a
repetition with the help of contemporary terminology a famous thesis of the
"Communist Manifesto," in his beautiful statement: "A society that genuinely grows
and develops and that is becoming a real human community will create favorable
conditions for personal self-discovery and selfactualization." In relation to
naturalism, we must develop Marxism according to its own principles in the same
way, one must look deeper into the relation of the private and public spheres of a
man's life. Their opposition arises naturally out of the antinomy of class
societies; in an authentic community, it ceases to be a political and humanistic
problem, and becomes purely technical.
I sharpen this formulation purposely, for I feel along with all its virtues, the
greatest fault of Prof. Markovic's philosophy is that it is dominated by a
problematic horizon, forced on by antagonistic societies and their antinomies.
Despite all its reservations, the proposed approach grows out of a metaphysical
(in a counter-dialectic meaning) opposition of the individual and society. This
manifests itself in a lack of differentiation of categories in the description of
man, and reduces almost everything to the notion of "person." This gives rise to a
conception of society in which divergent and opposing activities of individuals,
groups, etc., remind one of the disorderly, chaotic, and hence absurd "Brownian
movements" seen under a microscope.
University of Warsaw
Warsaw, Poland
NOTES
1. In his paper in Santiniketan (see Man and Nature, ed. George F. McLean;
Calcutta: Oxford Univ. Press, 1978), Prof. A. Woznicki paid attention to this
differentiation, but in a classically idealistic manner (in the sense of
historical idealism), and introduced it with a differentiation of interpretations
of Marx's theory: ". . . different ways of interpreting Karl Marx leads to a wide
variety of contemporary socio-political movements" "Nature and Human Praxis in
Karl Marx," in Dialectics and Humanism, Nr. 3, 1976). A related aspect--youth and
dynamics of scientific socialism--though exaggerated is beautifully formulated as
quoted in the paper in Sartre's statement: "Far from being exhausted, Marxism is
still very young, almost in its infancy: it has scarcely begun to develop. It
remains, therefore, the philosophy of our time."
2. For a more extensive treatment of this see: J. Kuczynski, "The Marxist-
Christian Dialogue" (Dialectics and Humanism, No. 2, 1974); and idem, Christian-
Marxist Dialogue in Poland, (Warsaw: Interpress, 1979).
3. For example, Maoism and various aspects of the "cultural revolution"; also L.
Althusser in his subtly developed, yet historically and theoretically false
thesis, that "Marxism is not humanism," since it is concisely scientific (L.
Althusser and E. Balibar, Lire le Capital, Paris: Maspero, 1968).
4. This was once, in the period of battle with Stalinism, a vital problem. I think
that momentous theoretical accomplishments in proving the existence of supra-
historical elementary norms and moral laws, as well as showing the presence of
such a conviction in classic Marxism, are evident in Marek Fritzhand's famous book
entitled, Man, Humanism, Morality. From Studies on Marx (Warsaw, Ksiazke i Wiedza
Publishers, 1961).
5. I do not know exactly why, but under the influence of his stay in the USA,
Maritain's views became more retrograde. One must remember, however, his
magnificent fight against Franco's fascism (in remarks, openly contradictory to
the ones cited in the paper). Also, Polish Marxists will never forget that
"Integral Humanism" was inspirational to broad circles of Polish liberal
intelligentsia in the battle against the "laws" of the German occupational state.
Naturally, irrespective of this, we conducted and will continue to conduct
philosophical understanding and scientific discussion with theo-centric humanism.
6. I anticipated this a few years ago in the Polish commentaries on the
ideological aspects of the Second Vatican Council (J. Kuczynski - "Porzadek
nadchodzacego swiata" /Order in the Oncoming World/, Warsaw: Ksiazka i Wiedza,
1976), recent years more broadly confirm these predictions. The policy of social
cooperation with the Christian world was inaugurated by Lenin; Thalmann confirmed
this in his speeches, as has Berlinger in the famous idea of the "historic
compromise."
7. "From the point of view of primitive, vulgar, metaphysical materialism,
philosophical idealism is only rubbish. To the contrary, from the point of view of
dialectic materialism, philosophical idealism is one-sided and exaggerated, . . .
one of the minute features, one of the sides of the edge of recognition . . ."
(W.I. Lenin - Philosophical Notebooks, Warsaw: "Ksiazka i Wiedza" 1956, pp. 338-
339).
8. "We, German socialists, are proud of the fact that we descend from Kant" - this
statement is sufficiently expressive. Lenin required communists to acquire all
human knowledge.
9. The extent of the theoretical discoveries of Aristotle was often underlined by
Marx.
10. It suffices to mention Marx's unique estimation of the classical altruism of
the Polish nobility, which, for the good of their Fatherland, renounced part of
their important state privileges in the May 3rd Constitution of 1791. I documented
and analyzed this problem in the book entitled Individuality and Fatherland
(Warsaw: Panstwowy Istytut Wydawniczy, 1972); also see my article, "The National
Question and Real Humanism" and J. Borgosz, "National and Internationalist Aspects
of Marxist Philosophy" (Dialectics and Humanism, Nr. 1, 1975).
11. H. Parsons, "Man East and West" (Amsterdam: B.R. Gruner, 1975). To a
considerable degree inspired by the conference in Santiniketan, co-organized by
the International Society for Metaphysics, Dialectics and Humanism issued a
special publication on Indian philosophy, devoted mainly to the matter of the
relation of Marxism to Indian culture in the perspective of world culture.
12. There has recently been a substantial increase of interest in creativity as a
philosophical problem. Tatarkiewicz published an important historical analysis of
this phenomenon in "Dzieje szesciu pojec" History of Six Ideas; (Warsaw: Panstwowy
Instytut Wydauniczy, 1975). Intensive research is being carried out by soviet
scholars (for example, Kiedrow, Altszuller, Korszunow and Bibler, the Georgian
school of philosophical anthropology, and Towmasjan in Armenia). Unfortunately, I
am acquainted with only a few American works, though for example from E. Landau's
Psychologie der Kreativita¦t, (Munchen: E. Reinhardt, 1972) we know how many there
are. With greater interest, I have begun studies on materials of "The Foundation
for Creative Philosophy," in which H. Parsons' paper displays the surprising
convergences between some of Wieman's thinking and Marx's theses. W. Minor's
paper, "Range and Depth of Creative Interchange," is also very persuasive. This
matter demands, a separate discussion which, on account of the manner of posing
the problems in the above-mentioned materials, will certainly be scientifically
fruitful.
13. Roman Ingarden, in his book, "Das literarische Kunstwerk" (Halle: E. Niemeyer,
1931) proved this in detail. His achievements were recently highly rated during
the conference "Marxist Critique of Phenomenology and Philosophy of R. Ingarden,"
especially in the papers of K.K. Dolgow, J. Fizer, N. Motroszylowa, D.M.
Rasmussen, McCormick, Ojzerman and Henrich. See Dialectics and Humanism No. 2, 3
and 4, 1975.
14. A. Kuczynska, "Piekn--Mit i Rzeczywistosc" (Beauty, Myth and Reality; 2nd ed;
Warsaw: Wiedza "Powszechna" 1976).
15. I think that certain elements of this non-historical, aprioristic naturalism
(sources of which are to be found in the Stoics, Rousseau, and some trends of
American cultural anthropology) were evident at the Santiniketan conference, for
example in the pages of Professors Bhattacharyya's and Thakur's papers. Such an
approach is also found in H. Parsons' inspiring book, "Man East and West."
16. So that there be no misunderstandings, I would note that I reject the idea of
super-man. This involves me in a polemics with the numerous successors of
Nietzsche, which is presented very extensively in my book, "Zmierzch
mieszczanstwa. Immoralizm--nihilizm--faszyzm" (Decline of the Bourgeoisie:
Immoralism--Nihilism--Fascism (Warsaw: Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1966).
CHAPTER XI
THE EXTENSION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
AND THE ADVANCEMENT OF SOCIETY
AGUSTIN BASAVE FERNANDEZ del VALLE
BEING-WITH-OTHERS
For objects there is no coexisting or being other: objects simply exist. Being
"with" another, however, means that at the same time, the other is with me. In
life there is no other way of being than "with" others, which is equivalent to
saying that "being with" one's fellow-men is a primordial manner of existence. As
no persons pre-existed society, there has never been a moment of association
simply in view of a goal. We find ourselves living by reciprocal actions with
usages, traditions and beliefs. These social forms do not belong to anyone in
particular; they are everyone's. This does not mean, of course, that they lack
meaning. On the contrary, because social phenomena as intelligible structures are
full of sense, it has been possible to develop sociology and social philosophy.
Social life has a spiritual nature and, in time, takes the form of institutions,
limited groupings and individual actions. It should be well-understood that
society is not a subsistent entity. Social realities are meaningful totalities,
not by any inconstancy of romantic thinking, but because of the tested fact that
in every concrete, social phenomenon the whole precedes the parts. This is a
priority of logic or of meaning, rather than of time. In history, however, social
groups interact so as to form society. Persons convert the universe of the
spiritual values into historical reality by their concretion in greater or lesser
circles of life. It is necessary, therefore, to find the structural law of the
spiritual world and to fix the appropriate position for the different sub-groups
in society.
Even though the hierarchical order of the spiritual universe remains the same for
all times, some realizations are genuine while others are deficient. However, the
fact that there is an absolute norm and that realizations are more or less
complete does not imply a static concept of society. There is a difference between
the ideal and the concrete order, whether in the United States or in Russia, in
the twelfth century or in the twentieth century, for in the temporal and
developing world the spiritual is not pure, but diluted in empirical phenomena.
It is commonly said that society perfects and develops mankind, as if by some
external addition. Nothing could be more erroneous. Society is a projection of
peoples' most deeply felt reality. Whether it is a decision that affects all
humans, a great natural institution or a spontaneous personal enterprise between
neighbors, it pursues a temporal public benefit for the people. The common good is
reflected, finally, in the goodness distributed because from the beginning it was
a social community of personal goods.
In coexisting with others, a person gives birth to and develops one's spiritual
life. The individual and the social are two essential aspects of a person. To
destroy either of these aspects is to destroy the person. As a mobile and
relatively autonomous spirit, the person possesses the nonspatial and incorporeal
faculty of putting himself in the place of his fellowmen. Around each person there
grows an ever-expanding circle of communities. In love, this spiritual movement
and social freedom reach their perfection.
To undertake an ontology of society one must begin with the real, concrete man in
his characteristic relation to other men. Prior to any concrete option, the person
is destined from the depths of his being to live socially. The person is an open
being-in-himself; progressively, he achieves his own dynamic self- development.
Every human is a relative being who transcends the order of mutual necessity.
Hence, human communication is intentional reciprocity, and this coexistence of men
is directed toward the realization of a union with the fundamental and founding
being.
Being-together-in-the-world is a primary character of intersubjectivity. I am
authentic only when I discover the other as thou. Upon discovering the thou I
discover the intersubjective we, which is supra-real, supra-concrete and
transcendental. Only within this existential orientation does the social
phenomenon become a scientific object. Love accents and underlines the singularity
of the other. In it there resides the animating power of human activities and the
interchange of persons; in it corporality becomes dialogue.
It is not enough to say that we are beings-in-the-world; we must add that we
expand toward and project ourselves toward the world. More than an encounter with
the world, we have being with the world. Hence, I speak, not of being thrown into
the world, but of being implanted in it with a personal mission.
Justice, which depends upon respect for the other and exhorts us to give each one
his due, rests upon the proper and distinctive value of each human being. The
rights of the person have always constituted the main focus of the struggle for
justice. If lawfulness is social order, humans and their good are situated at the
center of law. To give adequate recognition to human dignity, the law must
recognize and protect the liberty of men as morally independent and self-
responsible beings. This sphere of moral freedom with its ontic foundation is not
subject to the decisions of the authorities as if it were a mere instrument in the
service of the purposes of the state, the race or the social class. It is a matter
of safeguarding a supreme good by legal justice, for every right is a contribution
to the realization of a moral life, assuring its free development and establishing
an ethical "minimum." Respect for human dignity is demanded of every person and of
the community itself, the state or the nation. It is one thing for an individual
to want to sacrifice oneself voluntarily on behalf of the community, and another
very different thing for the community to impose that sacrifice. The rights of
man, based upon the moral command to respect human dignity, derive from the
ontological reality of one's capacity for self-determination.
For this reason, a person is capable of law and of acting in a juridically
responsible manner. To fulfill one's specific objectives, the individual must
conserve, develop and perfect one's being. This ontological requirement of the
full development of one's being bases the inalienable and irremovable character of
the fundamental rights of the human person.
The human individual is, essentially, an incarnate spirit, intelligent,
independent and free, who as a self-contained whole acts upon the world while
remaining open to communication with his fellowmen. In the existential plan, the
individual is the original and transcendental possibility of a search for
salvation. His liberty and communicability, within his space-time dimensions, are
projected toward the Subsistent Plenitude. In the multidimensional being of man
one should distinguish such material aspects as the corporeal and the living, such
religious aspects as both the deiform which originates from God and the theotropic
which is directed toward God. From the material fact of being a living organism
are derived such fundamental powers as the rights to life, to physical integrity,
to the use and disposition of material goods for subsistence and to work. The
spiritual, cultural and historical aspects of the person are the bases for the
right to communicate thinking, to educate children, to have legal security and to
participate in public life. From the religious aspect is derived the rights to
direct oneself toward God and not to deliver one's soul to the community, the
state, the social class or the race, although in times of danger one's life can be
given for the community. A political society can ask its citizens to sacrifice
their lives when the country so requires, but it can never ask for the sacrifice
of their souls.
RIGHTS
Although there exist numerous classifications of human rights, we prefer a
classification that attends to the distinctive nature of its object:
1) Civil or properly individual rights: the rights to life; to physical freedom
and to the guarantees of due process; to freedom of religion, education,
expression and assembly; to equality; to property; and to the inviolability of the
home.
2) Political or civil rights: the rights to one's national identity, to
participate in the civic life of the country, etc.
3) Economic rights: the rights to just and satisfactory remuneration, to an
adequate standard of living, etc.
4) Social rights: the rights to work and to the choice of work, to social
security, to protection of maternity and of infancy, etc.
5) Cultural rights: the right to participate in the cultural life of the
community, to education, etc.
All these rights are connatural, universal and absolute in the sense that every
person and authority must respect them; they are necessary in an ontological sense
because they are derived from each person's own human nature; they are
inalienable, inviolable and imprescriptible. Notwithstanding, human rights neither
can nor must impair the legitimate interests of society. No human rights can
justify transgressing the boundaries imposed by ethics, by other's rights or by
the demands of temporal public welfare. Just as the collectivity cannot be a
justification for breaching the prerogatives of the person, neither is it
admissible for an excessive exaltation of the individual to impede the common
welfare. Not only does the individual have rights; each people has the right to
assure that its personality, independence and culture be respected. In addition,
states have the right to an adequate standard of living.
Beside the traditional individual rights, the community has social rights, for
example, that its members enjoy the benefits of education, culture and the minimum
socio-economic well-being. While individual rights are susceptible to
jurisdictional protection, social rights lack this type of protection.
Through history there has been slow but sure progress in the fundamental rights of
mankind. Together with the development of culture there has been a progressive
awareness of one's human dignity. In ancient times theoretical formulations of
human rights did not exist, nor were there legal norms to protect them. From
primitive cruelty till the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" (1948), a long,
hard road has been traversed. There remain the great landmarks in the history of
human rights: the Spanish judicial power in the Magna-Carta of Leon (1188), the
British Magna Carta (1215), the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the Declaration
of Independence of the United States (1776), the American Bill of Rights (1787),
the Declaration of Human and Citizens' Rights (1789) of the French Revolution, and
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the creation in Western Europe
of a legal system of international protection of human rights (The European
Convention, 1950).
This is an impressive listing of doctrinal formulations. It must be asked,
however, if effective respect for human dignity, beyond words and declarations, is
exercised in every nation. The reports of the different commissions of jurists
state that in many regions of the earth there is a great distance between the
legal texts and reality. Thus, there has been talk of a geography of freedom in
order to diffuse the great spiritual and moral values in every region of the
world. At the same time there is need for a bold struggle for the social, economic
and technological progress of underdeveloped regions. Were the huge expenditures
of the armament race to be assigned even in small part to promoting the national
income of underdeveloped countries, it would contribute to the abolition or
reduction of "infra-life."
SOCIAL PROGRESS
Etymologically, the word progress, from the Latin progressio, means moving ahead,
the action of advancing or pursuing something. In a philosophical sense, however,
progress is accomplished only when values are fulfilled and the conditions of life
are improved. Not every change is progress; some may be truly retrogressive. A
change of structures is desired, not for the change itself, but for progress in
the realization of the essential human values of truth, goodness, beauty, justice
and, above all, love. The person, in his search for integral self-realization, is
the cause of social changes. As just one has a real power which actualizes itself
in behavior. This power is initially conceptualized in norms that are esteemed or
valued. Justice is motive power, whereas injustice by excess, defect, perversion
or demerit is human frustration.
Though the human person is the dynamic principle which initiates change, it is
accomplished by models which thematize values and refer to the ideal of society.
There is no model without reference to goals and goods. Particular projects are
pragmatic plans for transforming or adjusting to, the environment. We need the
model in order not to perish from excessive mechanism and pragmatism; but we also
need the project in order not to tarry in the ideal order alone. Change requires
the search for a spiritual "home," a new vision of the cosmos, because people
desire to have a more full and creative spirit.
This problem is not resolved by destroying the past or by its superficial
modification. The solution lies not in building a new society with limited social
engineering, but in developing mature political decisions in terms of concrete
situations. We cannot eliminate the political act and replace it by a "governing
machine." Computerized thought would, if possible, reduce all metaphysics to
physics and every ethical evaluation to technological purpose. In contrast, true
thought would return everything to its original place, its proper and essential
context, its origin or beginning. Cybernetics cannot substitute for political
action.
As the nature of the answers furnished by computers depends on what has previously
been fed into them, the will of the one who employs them determines the real
behavior of these electronic brains.
Similarly, the politician's act precedes and always completely determines the
process of the "governing machine." Supposing that a politician relies upon the
best available information, there remains the question of who will make the final
decision on the basis of that data and with political prudence. Man begins and
stops the computer process; he controls automation in public administration. The
political act cannot be lowered to the level of mere technical process, for the
essentially ethical character of the political act is irreducible to
mechanization. The progress of politics is always directed toward love.
Models of society involve an ethico-metaphysical evaluation. The consumer society,
built upon the value of that which gratifies, does not permit man to achieve the
highest values of his spirit; it promotes in the person conformism rather than
creative transcendence. The domineering society enthrones the will of power and
abandons the norms of justice and the imperatives of charity. The scientific-
technological society produces a technical dehumanized man who does not know what
to do with life, nor how to conciliate essential truths. The unconditioned society
erects the aesthetic enjoyment of self-promotion as the supreme law. The "total
man" is promoted, eliminating the repression of the libido, abolishing the unjust
distribution of goods and suppressing psychic and social negativities. This utopic
model is seen as overcoming all the conflicts and obstacles to an earthly heaven.
The informed society conforms to a world turned into a spectacle in which the
person is reduced to an image consumer.
Beyond all these unilateral and distorting models it is necessary to look for a
society which accomodates both body and spirit and which allows for an harmonious
development of the multiple strivings found in individuals and in groups. Like the
models prescribed for social change, it occurs to me to call the model of this
society which will permit an harmonious and creative development of the many
strivings of individuals and groups `an adequately human society'. This type of
society, which is always perfectible, considers the person in function of the
common good without depersonalizing him or her. It looks upon the common good in
function of the ultimate and of the human person. The person is relative for the
State and for society, whereas they exist absolutely for the person. The
contributed common good is translated into the distributed common goodness. By
common good is meant the organized set of social conditions on the basis of which
the human person can fulfill his natural and spiritual destiny. Human rights are a
very important part of the common good, but do not exhaust it. Thus, for the
progress of the society in which we live it would not be sufficient to extend
human rights to the whole world, because beyond human rights there is the quasi-
creative existence of man who inhabits the planet in a human manner.
An "adequately human society" would favor the communion of men and respect the
development of every person and thing according to its proper nature; each person
must be allowed to exist in his own manner. This will make possible real growth in
culture; a diffused ability to be loyal to one's personal vocation in its
uniqueness will result in a richer, more human and more plentiful world. The
vocational structure must be found within the horizon of an all-encompassing and
transcendental awareness and value. We must return to the simple, without
renouncing cultural achievements; we must substitute the politics of power by the
politics of culture.
The "soul of a culture," as Hector D. Manrioni states, "must be the reality of
love." To aspire to a "politics without enemy" sounds utopic if it is not based in
"caritas," in the profound and noble sense intimated by its etymology. When
dialogue is carried out fraternally and in the great light of truth, opposition is
turned into fellowship and one's neighbor can be seen as a fellowman. This is one
of the virtues of democracy. Prior to being a political form of government,
democracy is a form of human conviviality. More basic still, it is a human
vocation. In politics this vocation culminates in the practical achievement of
ethical postulates of co-participation, co-responsibility and reciprocal help. It
supposes the acknowledgement and protection of the rights of human person.
This carries the dialogical being of the human person to its fullness, serving as
an instrument of complete personal realization by making the human being, rather
than the state, the basis and goal of the political structure. It invites the
adhesion of free human beings; it evolves their responsiveness into a method which
permits the variety of political opinions to subsist and prohibits the barbarous
mutilation of dissident sectors of society. As a form of government, democracy
recognizes in men an essential equality of opportunities for the exercise of their
civil and political rights; it relies on the people to structure power.
The democratic regime is the most fair; it is the only one that permits true
progress inasmuch as:
1) it guarantees the citizen active political participation;
2) it avoids despotism by those who govern;
3) it facilitates a continuing and ordered expression of public opinion;
4) it makes possible appropriate and opportune changes and readjustments;
5) it promotes man's characteristic and distinctive note of rationality and,
through rationality, ethicity;
6) it adapts itself better to fractioned society with a pluralism of values; and
7) it recognizes the essential equality of persons and favors the structuring and
functioning of the state as a lawful society.
One must not ignore the importance of the institutional aspect of the common good.
In proper time the best means must be found and implemented to guarantee order and
peace in society, freedom of men and groups, ways for everyone to fulfill in a
free and responsible manner the essential tasks of life, economic security for the
near future and coming generations, and the well-being of society as a whole.
But social progress must not be looked for in the purely institutional,
organizational or technical order. The danger that progress in the natural
sciences will overcome moral progress creates deep suspense and fear. Scientific
progress can be utilized for constructive goals as well as for such destructive
purposes as an armament race. True progress in the natural sciences must be
proportioned to the moral strengths of people. The future is in our hands; history
is the work of freedom.
Universidad de Nuevo Leon
Monterrey, Mexico
COMMENT
ON PROFESSOR BASAVE'S
"THE EXTENSION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
AND THE ADVANCEMENT OF SOCIETY"
ABRAHAM EDEL
The strategy of my comments will be to make explicit the series of questions to
which Professor Basave gives such interesting answers, then to confront his
answers with alternatives (even where I would share his views), and thus to see
upon what grounds his answers should be preferred. I think this analysis will also
reveal in his approach a hidden pragmatism.
As I see it, the topics through which we range are: 1. Ontological categories for
the discussion of man. 2. Moral values central to the human situation and the
human enterprise. 3. A conceptual structure in ethical theory for the organization
of the values and their achievement. 4. A direction of social policy implicit in
the notions of "extension" and "advancement," employed in the title of the paper.
5. Finally, since we are working here in the framework of a metaphysical inquiry,
a return to the metaphysical through the method of selecting categories that
operates in the discussion.
Ontological Categories for the Discussion of Man
There are many categorial experiments in the history of thought for focusing on
the human being. For example: a Plotinian lowly fragment of the One or Whole, an
inner struggle of the dualistic body-soul (with Manichean overtones), a focused
reflection of an eternal or spiritual order, a voluntaristic atomic individual
contracting with his fellows (on his own terms), a material being manifesting
higher complex levels of organization, an interpersonal primordial I-Thou, an
existentialist center of creativity, and so on. Professor Basave's paper stands on
one of these and explicitly rejects some others, but is quite ready to invoke some
familiar ones in the discussion of specific issues. Clearly his basic model is the
interpersonal one of being "with" another, and this is taken to involve the social
content of the self as well as social origins of the self. It likewise seems to
involve a good that is not individually appropriated but toward which the
individual strives as part of the individual's self-expression. (This suggests the
knowledge model: not my belief and your belief compromised or tested, but the
truth drawing my thought and your thought).
Such a metaphysical approach is a welcome variant after several centuries in which
the dominant models have been centered either on the group-totality or on the
isolated atomic individual, and it is philosophically exciting in the hands of a
scientifically oriented thinker like George Herbert Mead or an existentially
oriented thinker like Martin Buber--both cases having social and political as well
as scientific implications.
But Professor Basave seems to have an open house for other models as well: "the
hierarchical order of the spiritual universe" remaining the same for all times;
the separation of the individual and the social as "two essential aspects of a
person"; the person as "an open being-in-himself" and yet as having a personal
mission; "the existential plan" (pace, Sartre); society has to accommodate both
body and spirit; and surprisingly, later on, states have rights. I find difficulty
in relating this eclectic hospitality to the original bold stand. Are these other
categories generated out of the basic ones, or are they approximations or
deteriorations, or systematically related in a supplementary way Without such an
explanation we are left with an unstable meta- categorial voluntarism on Professor
Basave's part. And yet if metaphysics is to have its central philosophical role--
to marshall and guide the form of our questions as we go from human domain to
human domain--it must show its principles of selection.
Central Moral Values
Professor Basave's catalogue of values is an exalted one: the autonomous spirit,
love, social freedom, dynamic self-development, the creative spirit, human
conviviality, in general the values of culture and spirituality. They are set off
against the imposed and the automatic. No sensitive spirit in the contemporary
world can fail to see the pressures for coordination, alienation, and reduction,
that bear heavily on human beings today stemming in large part from their
institutions. No reasonable being today could fail to conclude that the great
moral heresies of individual competitive self-aggrandisement and domineering
powers have shown their morally baseless character. Yet in some sense the profound
values that Professor Basave evokes are increasingly apparent to most
philosophical schools. How are they related to the metaphysical position he
espouses? Do they take on different character according to the type of metaphysics
involved? How, for example, does a dialogical individual autonomy differ from a
voluntarist one, or a Sartrean existentialist one, or for that matter a Marxian
one? Or does he envisage a chorus in which we all sing "autonomy" but each to his
own metaphysical beat?
Conceptual Structures in Ethical Theory
Professor Basave's discussion of the good and human rights gives a clear and
convincing answer to the old problem of the relation of the right and the good.
Justice rests on respect for the person and through this we come to the human
good. Professor Basave's "adequately human society," always capable of
improvement, "considers man in function of the common good without depersonalizing
him." Human rights are themselves an important part of the common good, but not
the whole of it. His list of rights and his analysis of democracy, his comments on
the developing character of rights, show a refined sensitivity to the moral needs
of the historical present and its problems. Why, for example, does he say that
"states have a right to an adequate standard of living" rather than individuals?
It is a striking departure from the traditional picture of the locus of rights and
he takes it in stride without comment. But it makes sense because the question of
the redistribution of resources among countries in the world is on today's agenda
of justice. Similarly, though he lists the right of property, he would have to
tell us whether it means property for consumption alone or also property for
large-scale production--in short, whether capitalist free enterprise is enshrined
among the human rights.
In the light of such comments I would like to suggest a greater dialogue between
the eternal and the historical than Professor Basave's metaphysical presentation
would seem to allow. It is actually the historical developments that refine and
make clearer to us the meanings of what we ascribe to the eternal order of human
striving. Is not historical reality stronger in Professor Basave's account than he
makes explicit?
To give a fuller scope to the historical development of human problems would also
help Professor Basave counter those who insist on the primacy of rights and the
right over the good. It could be carried into the study of the ethical structures
themselves. When in fact do people demand rights and when do they multiply the
lists of rights? One demands a right when the shoe pinches and the evil is great
enough. You are not allowed to speak your mind and you demand the right to free
speech. I give you the right and you talk, but nobody listens. You now demand the
right to be heard. You are now listened to but systematically misinterpreted. Do
you have the right to a fair report? (If I have misinterpreted Professor Basave,
surely he has the right to correct my interpretation). The right to clean air is a
modern right of which preindustrial man had no awareness. The growth of rights
lists is thus a measure of the growth of evils or the recognition of past evils
with some hope of moving toward their remedy. And if the idea of rights grows,
why should not the idea of goods grow comparably with the growth of human
knowledge? As to the much vaunted struggle between a rights approach and a
"good"--or utilitarian--approach, it is historically the case that each, at
different times, is the bearer of progress as Professor Basave envisages it. We
would have to ask why that is so.
Extension of Rights and Advancement of Society
The concepts of extension and of advancement embody a definite proposal about the
direction of social policy. Professor Basave goes directly from the formal lists
of rights with their slowly expanding content to the "need for a bold struggle for
the social, economic and technological progress of underdeveloped regions." And
this is seen as desirable for progress in "the realization of the essential human
values of truth, goodness, beauty, justice and, above all, love." In short, we are
called on to adopt an all-human global moral community and to translate old ideals
into contemporary programs. What needs to be made clear in this is that in such a
redirection of policy the very concepts of the ideal are undergoing development.
It is not merely the same ideal with a changing content, as for example some legal
philosophers have written of natural law with a changing content, but a real and
sometimes creative novelty in the development of human beings. For example, there
was no doubt a time when liberty as a human ideal first made its appearance on the
world scene, as in its time did the ideal of universal peace or that of a global
conscience and a global moral community. We would show little capacity for a
genuine dialogue of the world's cultures if we had always to subsume their ideals
under ours or see, for example, the demand for a global redistribution as justice
as simply a new expression of the old missionary charity attempting to convert the
colonial "heathen." We need that "courage to be" which can not only face fresh
ideals as well as fresh institutions, but can participate cooperatively in their
creation.
Back to Metaphysical Categories
I suggested at the outset that there was a hidden pragmatism in Professor Basave's
metaphysical procedures. For it seems to me that throughout the paper he was
invoking whatever metaphysical categories made sense in the specific problem at
hand. To overcome a selfish individualism one could ask for a polar individual-
social concept of the person. To attack a reductionist materialism in technology
and a domineering manipulative politics one could appeal to the eternal values or
pit the spirit against the body. To support the need for creativity one could
apply the existentialist touch. To keep at bay a relativistic subjectivity there
would be the basic good objectively inherent in the I-Thou dialogue.
I do not mean to suggest that Professor Basave is pursuing a metaphysical
opportunism. It only sounds that way when not rendered explicit as a theory of
categories. I submit that metaphysical categories are to be viewed as large-scale
experiments of thought stretching over the whole of human life and knowledge. If
so, we should not be surprised to find them refined, developed, modified, in the
course of philosophical history. The test for which to adopt and how to define
them is the basically pragmatic one of how they render coherent a system of
inquiry with its form of questions and its line of answers in the various domain
of knowledge and action. Professor Basave does precisely this in his evaluation of
democracy; he lists what kinds of advantages it has in promoting the character and
quality of human life. Why should he not be allowed to do the same in selecting
metaphysical categories--that is, list the advantages that will follow for the
growth of knowledge in all its reaches and the coherent and satisfying guidance of
human life?
In such a perspective what we now have is this: there is a revolution going on in
the contemporary world which calls for material reconstruction, institutional
reconstruction, moral reconstruction, metaphysical reconstruction. Let me repeat
Professor Basave's conclusion: "The future is in our hands; history is the work of
freedom."
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
CHAPTER XII
THE ROLE OF REASON
AND ITS TECHNOLOGIES
IN THE LIFE OF SOCIETY
ALWIN DIEMER
If it is true, as many philosophers of history say, that the spirit of the time
expresses itself in a specific philosophy which in turn expresses itself in brief
mottos, one could think that we are living now in a period of reason, an epoch or
era of rationality and rationalism. Beside slogans such as `the period of the atom
and automation' or `the era of scientific, industrial or technological
revolution', inside and outside of philosophy much is being said of reason and
rationality.
In this, it is crucial to note that the whole discussion takes place within the
framework of society. Society is not only constitutive of reason and rationality,
but simultaneously contains a tension between rationality and many other factors.
In various contexts reference is made to the tension between individuality as
inaccessible to all reason and rationality, especially in its modern form of
`technical' or `one-dimensional' reason. As the latter is seen as deorienting man,
whatever be said about reason and rationality, this indicates an ambivalence,
dialectic or even antinomy, in the Kantian sense, between individuality and
reason.
Since this requires, first of all, an elucidation of the basic terms and of their
related vocabulary, we will consider the significant terminological development.
This will show that the terms `ratio', `raison' or `reason', or `vernunft',
`rational', `vernunftig', `rationalistic', etc., involve new dimensions of meaning
and can lead to a number of important questions. From this we can proceed to our
central issue, which is not a question of differences in meaning, but a problem of
reality. Namely, what is the role of reason and its technologies in the life of
society?
"Reason" first meant two things, a universal principle and a human instance. From
their historical roots both have a common core of meaning. Basically, the word was
coined to indicate an element of the human being. Reason (ratio) was seen in the
Middle Ages as the human counterpart to belief and authority; the ratio,
therefore, is the specific mundane instance.
1. This implies that at the beginning of the modern epoch the divine ceased to be
the universal principle and was replaced by reason. This took place by the
establishment of the "principium rationis" as a new universal principle of being,
acting and thinking, along with the Aristotelian principle of contradiction which
then gradually diminished in importance. In the secularized world, especially as
conceived by German idealism, reason thus became the sole principle of the world.
When Hegel later established reason as the dominant "god" immanent to the world,
the total metaphysical content disappeared; though it retained its universal
relevance.
Today, reason is now the only accepted universal principle. Whether one believes
in God or adheres to atheism, we appeal to reason when we say that one must be
reasonable; that one should talk with others reasonably; and that only in this
manner can one achieve a reasonable solution to social conflicts in the family, in
society or in the state, or even in international politics. This "appeal to
reason" is the motto from which follow such other postulates as liberty, equality,
justice, peace, etc.
When we relate these notions to reason, its specificity appears clearly; the
notion of freedom, justice, equality, etc., which we have become accustomed to as
slogans, are always understood within dogmatic ideologies. The Marxist, be he a
philosopher or politician, undoubtedly understands by the term "freedom" something
totally different from one who would be called a bourgeois philosopher or
politician; similarly, an existentialist understands something different from a
positivist. Through all these metaphysical variants the notion of reason remains
stable. It would appear to comprehend three basic ideas:
a. the idea of sense (Sinn) and reason (Grund)
b. the idea of coherence and structure in correlation
and connection with the idea of totality
c. the idea of consistency and consequence
a) What is essential to the conception of reason is sense and the principles which
follow therefrom. The appeal to reason implies that one believes in a sense, that
is, in a factual and possible order of the world. This is understood in the sense
of an actual situation, but especially of the ideal which is the task of the
future. It implies the principium rationis, namely, that everything should be done
reasonably. This holds true both for discussion and for action. Since the
Enlightenment, the Greek `logon didonai' has been replaced by appeal to `thought':
one is supposed to `live reasonably' because only then is one a rational animal.
In the concrete, this postulate means that all action should be explicable and
this holds true in everyday life, e.g., in the workings of the U.N.O.
b) Reason as a universal principle also implies the idea of cohesion. This is not
only a matter of factual understanding; beyond that, it expresses the idea that
everything hangs together. This implies that if everything coheres with everything
else, reason can grasp all; and, as everything can be understood and explored
rationally (science), so everything can be made (technology).
c) To what extent the third idea of the concept of reason generally is accepted
remains a question. According to the older notion of the Enlightenment it might
seem to be more a postulate than a solid idea. It is the ancient principle of
contradiction, according to which a thing is what it is, from which it follows
that one cannot at the same time say both A and B, or even do non-A. This obtains
also for all consequences.
2. The great significance of the idea of reason, as also its possible doom, is
expressed in the conception of reason as human. In the Middle Ages the highest
human characteristic was the intellect understood as the power to see and to
receive God; in relation to this reasoning itself reason was secondary. Since the
beginning of modern times reason is not only the highest or supreme, but the
constitutive element in man; man quite simply is the rational animal. With this
begins the history of the man of reason in both his greatness and his misery.
This conception implies the following ideas:
a) the autonomy and maturity of man;
b) theoretical reason as the capacity autonomously to think and explore;
c) practical reason as the capacity to work autonomously in forming human, and
especially social, reality or in developing technology and industry;
d) rational reason as the capacity of argumentation and rationalization;
e) the capacity of self-consciusness, that is, of re- flection, both as the
subjective power to legiti- mize itself and render account in criticism and
counter-criticism, and as the objective power to organize these ideas more
closely.
Let us examine these ideas more closely.
a) The essential new factor is self-understanding by man as an autonomous and
mature being. No God, no demon, no king, no dictator, no party, nor any other
reality can give orders. Man as man has achieved adulthood. This is the basic idea
of freedom in the Enlightenment as formulated, e.g., by Kant; `Enlightenment' is
the emergence of man from his culpable immaturity or minority. This becomes the
formative principle for man throughout modern times in politics, science, etc.,
whatever interpretation it later receives.
Undoubtedly, this notion is `ambivalent,' though the term seems to be better than
such others as `antinomic' or `dialectic'. The ambivalence reflects two
possibilities. On the one hand, reason is the highest triumph of man; by it he is
free, he determines his destiny, he shapes his world. He is able to explore the
world because it is structured according to laws, that is, reasonably; thus, he
forms the world, etc. On the other hand, he is handed over to himself or self-
possessed. Having reason he insists upon his own will, especially when he
exercises power.
b) Man as rational being possesses the capacity to think, not only as a wise man,
but as an explorer because the world is determined by laws. Here one could even
point to the words of the Bible: subdue the earth. With this the idea of autonomy
achieves its essential expression. If man is master of the world, then it is true
that knowledge is for power (scientiam propter potentiam).
c) Theoretical reason is oriented to an object, whereas practical reason is based
on the principle that everything can be done or constructed, including the human
reality.
The results of this review now need to be summed up. Since the second half of the
18th century modern technology has been developed and, building on that, modern
industry. In addition, there is the human fact that on all levels of human
existence man rationalizes in the broadest sense of this term. This begins with
exploring and introducing laws. Then, man naturally attempts to diagnose and cure,
with important results in medicine, hygiene, etc. Finally, social life is
rationalized and structured and with this there begins a strong and ambivalent
development of modern society. On the one hand, everyone is declared to be equally
autonomous, which means that social life is possible only in terms of a modern
democracy. On the other hand, from this it follows that no member of society
should or could have a special position. Society should be understood rationally,
and hence should be rationalized. The foundation of rational sociology in the 19th
century in order to explore the laws of social life initiated a process from
exploration to the development of social engineering and social technocracy.
d) Through this triumph of theoretical and practical rationalism and
rationalizing, the earlier idea of getting to the root of things, reflected in the
principle of reason, unfortunately was greatly weakened. In its place, reason is
taken to mean that each man as man has the power, not only to think and act
independently, but especially to judge and criticize independently, that is, to
expect of others explanations or accountability. This situation must be understood
clearly. Independence and the demand for proofs and accounts takes place in a
secularized, that is, in a purely human world. It means that no one can or should
appeal to a so-called "higher authority," be it God, the people, society or the
party; anyone is suspect who comes "in the name of . . . God, the people, the
party, society" and appeals, acts, requests or orders. There is no need for
special proof that we have a deficiency of reason in the life of society today.
e) People often forget now that when we speak of reason as a human fact,
reflection is one of its essential elements. Reason as conscious being, is not
only awareness, but awareness of self. In basic contrast, for example, to the
Marxist theory of consciousness where it is seen as secondary to matter, reason or
self-awareness means that man has his special position in reality through the fact
that reason knows itself. He possesses this power to reflect on everything, even
on his own reason. Unfortunately, in the meantime, there has been a strong decline
in the appreciation of this reflective aspect of reason which was preeminently
expressed by the classical philosophers of idealism, sometimes in a onesidedly
idealistic manner.
What is meant by reflection? First, it is the knowledge of self, which implies
knowledge of one's own situation in relation to reason and to the reality of the
world. It implies also the possibility of self-criticism, which initially concerns
reason itself. This reflection makes it possible for reasonable men to become
aware of the greatness and misery of reason, and to criticize it. In fact, among
the classical philosophers of reflection it was practically onlt Kant who, as an
authentic Enlightenment figure, indicated not only the greatness but the limits of
pure reason. From him, we must learn that the strength of reason consists not
merely in the knowledge of the triumph of reason, but also in the knowledge and
understanding of the limits of reason. This is the meaning of the last thesis,
that human reason, which is the only one we now can acknowledge, always is
limited.
We will return later to this, but, following Kant, it is now possible to indicate
three limits. One is in contrast to rationalism's claim to unlimitedness and
totality. This was pointed out by Kant in his dialectics of reason.
A second limit, broadly developed by Kant but lost with Hegel, is the limits of
rational understanding. One should not overlook the fact that, besides and against
the triumph of rationalistic, scientific rationality, there exists also a reason
of which Pascal said "le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait pas." It is
this reason which Kant explicitates in his Critique of Practical Reason, and from
which he develops the categorical imperative of reason as a social postulate.
Perhaps it is time to bring this precise aspect of reason to the fore, as this
author postulates, in terms of a philosophical imperative.
The third limitation of reason is based on the postulate of reason itself. It is
the acknowledgement that no one can claim to represent reason, that no one can
constitute himself as the guard of reason. Fortunately, Hegel claimed this for
himself only theoretically, though today many politicians claim it for themselves
in the practical order.
In view of the above discussion concerning reason, we encounter several
difficulties when we consider the technologies of reason mentioned in the title of
this paper. To begin with, one could object that true reason knows and develops no
technology, that this is only the work of instrumental reason which is the slave
of modern technocracy and rationalism.
As the inner tension in the modern discussion of reason manifests itself in this
matter, one must proceed rationally. The first major question is, What is to be
understood by the term `technology'? If one departs from customary international
usage, it can be said that technologies are developments (in the modern
"technological" sense) upon the basis of theoretical insights (in science) of
methods, procedures, and products, which in their turn will be put in the service
of primary principles. An example is the total complex of information media,
including the computer, which has entered social life as scientific technology in
the service of reason.
If reason is taken in this broad pluralistic sense, one can develop distinct forms
of rationality which in turn provide the foundation for corresponding postulates
and technologies. Of the many ways of characterizing reason, one might mention as
essential concepts:
a) universal/human reason, moral reason;
b) logical reason;
c) social/political reason;
d) scientific reason;
e) technical reason.
It is not possible to complete these differentiations, but some remarks can be
made concerning the above.
a) Human reason has already been spoken of; it implies all the factors noted above
and develops postulates rather than technologies.
b) Logical reason includes all of the postulates grouped under the complex of
logic, both ancient and modern. Hence, the postulate of consistency is considered
essential. In addition, the question of a "dialectical reason" in the sense of
Sartre remains open.
c) The sense in which one can speak of a social reason is uncertain. It would
appear to be a specific manifestation of human reason. The ambivalence of all
social rationality is manifest in the concept or idea of political reason. It can
be understood, on the one hand, as the material orientation of the idea of human
reason to shaping political life and, on the other hand, as the expressed formal,
methodical, and technological-- not to say, technocratic--orientation to the
development of political or multiple individual interests.
d) This is manifest also in considerations of scientific reason. It oscillates
between the "scientific" and the "scientistic" reason. The first tests out
hypotheses and proceeds critically and methodically, while the other is a matter
of scientific beliefs in the advances of the "scientific-technical revolution"
especially of the 19th century, understood as setting man free and promising a new
utopian paradise.
e) This is analogously true for technical reason, which includes industrial
reason, though in different terms. Generally it is contained in the western anti-
capitalist critique of modern technology and hence is less a critique of reason
than of system. It is accompanied by the charge of alienation, one-
dimensionalization, etc.
Regarding the life of the society and the quality of that life there are the
following problems of reason:
a) basic provisions for life's necessities, such as food, clothing, shelter,
health, etc.;
b) regulation of the tension between universal security and individual freedom
beginning with occupa- tions and work areas and continuing through po-litical
life;
c) social communication and information;
d) the needs of culture;
e) guarantee for a human life as life of a rational being.
Clearly, in all areas of social reality reason, as characterized thus far, has a
role to play. As has been shown in man, reason primarily is not a given reality or
fact, but exists in the tension between ability, capacity, power or faculty and
the postulate. Certainly, the solitary individual has the capacity of reason and
of rationality, while postulating reason as the universal principle. The life of
society is ultimately the primary place for the realization of reason, including
its principles, postulates and technologies.
There is a second and still more important antithesis, that is, between
rationality, above all as rational technology, and the Aristotelian principle of
the mean between excess and defect. Let us take as an example the technology of
social communication in the specific form of information. One postulate of reason
is to regard man as a citizen who has come of age. This stipulates that every
single individual should be informed about everything, requiring, in turn, that,
ideally, all information be collected and made available, and hence that
appropriate media be developed, from newspapers, radio and television to computer
information banks.
If this is done on the basis of the claim for totality by an autonomous reason,
there results, on the one hand, total comprehension of human reality and, on the
other, the modern information avalanche. Obviously, this opens the door to
manipulation and raises the question: What is the rational solution, total
information inundation or special manipulation?
There does appear to be a solution; it lies in the recognition and formation of
the individual man as a rational being. The cases under consideration involve
exercising an appropriate power of judgment by citizens who were minors but now
have come of age in all areas governed by the information processes. They must
evaluate the current information, and have the courage to demand justification
from those who supply information.
Analogies hold true for other areas, nearly the entire complex of which can be
designated as social engineering, social technocracy, etc. Here, unfortunately,
the history of modern humanity since the 18th century has led to a disintegration
of the idea of reason. On the one hand, scientific and technical reason have been
applied to mastering reality, including the social, and have produced repeated
successes. Corresponding to the 19th-century belief in reason, and its related
ideology, this has led to a kind of technological-scientific religion. On the
other hand, man as man, especially in his orientation in culture and philosophy,
has been fractured and has abandoned belief in high speculative reason as caught
in excessive self-reflection and moving in an ideal realm of philosophical dreams.
What is needed today as an aspect of the philosophical imperative of reason is the
development of a conception of reason which will restore rational unity. This will
require new courage. As Kant noted, only thus does reason become really human and,
hence, practical. This conception of a "new-reason-philosophy" must include the
following:
a) Each man is to be regarded as a rational being, meaning that he possesses all
potentialities and that these are to be developed and recognized in him. This
begins with education and ends with critical reason and such postulates as
(social) self-responsibility. An actual example is contained in "developmental
politics" where it is believed that man is treated as man if he is helped by
having had provided for him the necessary means of life. This implies that man is
not regarded as a rational being. One must help; but, at the same time, self-
responsibility must be required of the one who is helped. This is true for present
political structures and applies also to the postulate of self-determination of
the individual citizens in the so-called Third World.
b) The highest principle and to a certain degree the highest law in the principle
of reason in the sense delineated above.
c) Reason, finally, is also reflection upon oneself, that is, upon man as reason
and rationality. This implies both possibilities and its limitations, from which
result the following postulates:
1) a twin openness:
(a) neither blind faith in reason howsoever this is understood, especially
technical reason,
(b) nor blind aversion to reason, whether as technical or as personal; and
2) an understanding of the limits of reason:
(a) that all reason as human is finite and therefore not all, whether in society
or in history, is subject to reason and hence to exploration and to being
produced;
(b) that reason has its limits within itself; e.g., in the personality of the
self, and
(c) that reason is also measured from above inasmuch as its ultimate foundation
lies in faith or metaphysics in whatever manner these be understood.
University of Dusseldorf
Dusseldorf
CHAPTER XIII
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
IN CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM
MASAO ABE*
It is said that human history began with the realization of evil. The problem of
evil is indeed one which is deeply rooted in human existence. Throughout human
history, both of the East and the West, evil has time and again been regarded as
one of humanity's most crucial dilemmas. However, the approach to and the
resolution of the problem of evil have in the East and the West not always been
altogether the same. To begin with an example of the East, it is a fact that
Westerners in general and Christians in particular often express the criticism
that Buddhists are rather indifferent to the problem of good and evil. Whether or
not their impressions are true must be carefully examined. On the other hand,
quite a few Buddhists whose lives are based on the realization of the as-it-is-
ness, or suchness, of man and nature often feel somewhat uncomfortable with
Christianity's strong ethico-religious character and its excessive emphasis on
righteousness and judgment. Whether or not such an impression reaches the core of
Christian faith must be carefully scrutinized. Giving up stereotypical
understanding of each other, and with receptive and responsive minds, both
Christians and Buddhists must try to enter into a deeper understanding of each
other's faith by striving to achieve a critical, mutual understanding. They may
then be in better position to discover both affinities and differences. In what
follows, I shall undertake a comparative study of Christianity and Buddhism from
the angle of the problem of evil. Although I am not unaware of the many important
attempts at new interpretations of Christianity which are now being written, I
will take up here only the traditional form of Christianity. The limitation of
space partly encourages this approach but more importantly, I believe that new
interpretations cannot be properly understood without the basis of traditional
Christianity. Therefore, this paper is a prolegomena to the "problem of evil in
Buddhism and Christianity."
GOOD AND EVIL IN CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM
In Christianity the good is not simply that which is desirable, such as happiness,
nor is evil merely that which is undesirable, such as misery. The good in
Christianity refers to an act, belief, attitude, or state of mind that obeys and
fulfills the will of God. Evil on the other hand is an act or state of mind which
disobeys and goes against the divine will. This is precisely because in
Christianity God is the creator, the ruler, the law-giver, and the redeemer of all
the universe, and the end for which human beings exist consists in establishing
and maintaining a relationship with God. The Ten Commandments, which form part of
the basis of Judeo-Christian ethics, are described in the Bible as given by God to
Moses on Mount Sinai.1 Moral transgression of the divine law is termed "sin" in
theology. Sin is an attitude, act, or inward state of the heart that is offensive
to God. As is well known, the origin of sin is to be found in the Genesis story of
Adam and Eve partaking, against the word of God, of the fruit of the knowledge of
good and evil.
For St. Paul, "sin was not just an act of disobedience to God's will and law; it
was open revolt against Him, the result of which was a state that was inimical to
God and would lead to death."2 For Paul then, "sin is something internal and
stable in man," that is, "a personal force in man that acts through his body. It
entered into the world with Adam's sin and exercised its deadly work by means of
the Law."3 In Romans, Paul declares that sin permeates the whole human race
through death, but its power is not equal to Christ's grace and justice: "For if
by reason of the one man's offense death reigned through the one man, much more
will they who receive the abundance of the grace and of the gift of justice reign
in life through the one Jesus Christ . . . ."4 By being baptized into Christ's
death and resurrection, one is freed from sin and begins to live by Christ's life.
After baptism the "old man" and the "body of sin" cease to be the instruments of
sin. Now the Christian has a new mode of being, a new mode of acting. He is no
longer in the service of sin; the Holy Spirit is present in him. The new man is
inspired, motivated by the Spirit to fight against the flesh; he passes from the
carnal state to a spiritual state. St. Paul's opposition between a life of the
flesh and a life of the spirit represents his belief that sinful flesh is God's
enemy while the life of spirit is God's divine gift.
Sin, then, is a personal force by which we are opposed to God, and sinful deeds
are its fruits. However, if one does not accept Jesus as the Christ and does not
believe in his death and resurrection as God's work of redemption, one will be
inflicted with eternal suffering. The sufferings of the damned in hell are
interminable. This eternal punishment, which is laid upon the souls of the
unredeemed at the last judgment, constitutes the largest part of the problem of
evil in Christianity.5 Thus, in the full range of Christian beliefs (from the
doctrine of creation to that of eschatology), the problem of evil is a primary
preoccupation and one which consists in a dis-relationship with God.
What is the Buddhist view of good and evil? From earliest times, Buddhism had its
own "Ten Commandments", or better to say "ten precepts," which are very similar to
the Ten Commandments of the Judeo-Christian tradition. These emphasize not
killing, nor stealing, not lying, not committing adultery, and so forth. A
remarkable difference between the Buddhist and Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments,
however, lies in the fact that although both equally prohibit the destruction of
life, that prohibition appears as the first commandment in Buddhism and as the
sixth in Judeo-Christian tradition. In the latter the first commandment is "You
shall have no other gods before me," a commandment whose equivalent cannot be
found in the Buddhist ten precepts. The differing emphasis in the item of the
first position in two lists indicates the strong monotheistic nature of the Judeo-
Christian tradition and the I-Thou relationship between persons and God in
Christianity on the one hand, and it also shows the Buddhist emphasis on the
boundless solidarity of life between persons and other living beings, on the
other. Without the notion of transmigration which links human beings to other
forms of life, there can be no proper understanding of why the destruction of life
in general is prohibited as the first precept in Buddhism. On the contrary, in the
Judeo-Christian tradition, not the boundless solidarity with other forms of life,
but personal obedience to the will of the one God, and the distinction between
creator and creation with humanity at the summit of the created order are
essential. This difference naturally reflects upon the different understanding of
good and evil in these two religions.
However, the emphasis on the solidarity between humanity and nature does not mean
that Buddhism is indifferent to human ethics. In the Dhammapada, one of the oldest
Buddhist scriptures, there is a well-known stanza:
Not to commit evils (But to do all that is good),and to purify one's heart--This
is the teaching of all the buddhas.6
This stanza has been held in high esteem by Buddhists throughout their long
history and is called "the precept-stanza common to the past seven buddhas,"
indicating that it is a teaching that was realized and practiced even before
Gautama Buddha lived.
In this connection, let me introduce a story concerning this stanza. In China of
the T'ang Dynasty, there was a Zen master, Tao-lin, popularly known as Niao-ke,
"Bird's Nest," for he used to practice his meditation in a seat made of the
thickly growing branches of a tree. Pai Le-t'ien, a great poet of those days, was
officiating as a governor in a certain district in which this Zen master lived.
The governor-poet once visited him and said,
What a dangerous seat you have up in the tree.
`Yours is far worse than mine', retorted the master.
`I am the governor of this district, and I don't see what danger there is in it.'
To this the master said,
Then, you don't know yourself! When your passions burn and your mind is unsteady,
what is more dangerous than that?
The governor then asked,
What is the teaching of Buddhism?
The master recited the above-mentioned stanza:
`Not to commit evils,
But to do all that is good,
And to purify one's heart.
This is the teaching of all the buddhas.'
The governor, however, protested,
Any child three years old knows that.
The Zen master up in the tree responded,
Any child three years old may know it, but even an old man of eighty years finds
it difficult to practice it.
The point of this stanza lies precisely in the third line, that is, "to purify
one's heart," and the first and the second lines, "Not to commit evils, But to do
all that is good," should be understood from the third line. And "to purify one's
heart" signifies to purify one's heart for avidy-a, the fundamental ignorance
rooted in a dualistic view, and thereby it indicates "to purify one's heart" even
from the dualistic view of good and evil. Eventually the text enjoins us "to
awaken to the purity of one's original nature" or "to awaken to the original
purity of one's nature"7 which is beyond the duality of good and evil. The problem
of good and evil must be coped with on the basis of awakening to the original
purity of one's nature--that is, the teaching of all Buddhas.
This Buddhist notion of "the original purity of one's nature," roughly speaking,
may be taken to be somewhat equivalent to the state of Adam before eating the
fruit of knowledge of good and evil. It is to be back where, according to Genesis,
"God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good."8 Therefore,
God blessed Adam because he was good. Does the term "good" in this connection
simply mean good in the ethical sense? I do not think so. The term "good" God used
to evaluate his act of creation is not good as distinguished from evil, but the
original goodness prior to the duality between good and evil, that is, the
original goodness prior to man's corruption of the primordially good nature of
mankind and the world. It is good not in the ethical sense, but in the ontological
sense. The goodness of Adam as created by God is, roughly speaking, equivalent to
the original purity of one's nature as understood in Buddhism. "The original face
at the very moment of not thinking of good or evil" requested by the sixth Zen
patriarch, Hui-neng, is simply another term for one's original nature which is
pure, beyond good and evil. Thus Buddhism often refers to our original nature as
"Buddha-nature," the awakening to which provides the basis for human ethics to be
properly established.
THE ORIGIN OF EVIL--A CHRISTIAN VIEW
The problem of evil in Christianity and Buddhism, however, is not so simple as I
have suggested. There is the serious problem of the origin of evil that must be
clarified.
The problem of evil in both traditions involves the contradiction, or apparent
contradiction, between the belief in the actuality of evil in the world and
religious belief in the goodness and power of the Ultimate. This problem is
especially serious in Christianity because of its commitment to a monotheistic
doctrine of God as absolute in goodness and power and as the creator of the
universe out of nothing, ex nihilo. The challenge of the fact of evil to this
faith has accordingly been formulated as a dilemma: "If God is all-powerful, he
must be able to prevent evil. If he is all-good, he must want to prevent evil. But
evil exists. Therefore, God is either not all-powerful or not all-good. A theodicy
(from theos, god, and dike, justice) is accordingly an attempt to reconcile the
unlimited goodness of an all-powerful God with the reality of evil."9
Accordingly, there are at least two questions to be addressed in this connection:
Why has an infinitely powerful and good God permitted moral evil or sin in his
universe? and Why has an infinitely powerful and good God permitted pain and
suffering in this universe? In Christian tradition, there are two main versions of
theodicy, the Augustinian and the Irenaean. Limitations of space constrain me to a
description of only the essential points of these two types of theodicy in
connection with the problem of moral evil.
Rejecting Manichaeanism dualism, Augustine insisted that evil has no independent
existence, but is always parasitic upon the good, the latter alone having
substantival reality. "Nothing evil exists in itself, but only as an evil aspect
of some actual entity."10 Thus, everything that God has created is good, and the
phenomenon of evil occurs only when beings who are by nature good (though mutable)
become corrupted and spoiled. Accordingly, to Augustine evil is nothing but the
privation, corruption, or perversion of something good.
How does this spoiling of God's initially good creation come about? Augustine's
answer is that evil entered into the universe through the culpable volitions of
free creatures, angels and human beings. Their sin consisted not in choosing
positive evil (for there is no positive evil to choose), but in turning away from
the higher good, namely God, to a lower good. "For when the will abandons what is
above itself, and turns to what is lower, it becomes evil--not because that is
evil to which it turns, but because the turning itself is wicked."11
When we ask what caused the Fall, Augustine's answer is his doctrine of deficient
causation. There is no efficient, or positive, cause of the will to evil. Rather,
evil willing is itself a negation or deficiency, and to seek for its cause "is as
if one sought to see darkness, or hear silence."12 "What cause of willing can
there be which is prior to willing?"13 According to Genesis, a serpent tricked Eve
and Adam to eat the forbidden fruit. Adam's sin was not absolutely the first. The
serpent was the evil tempter of Adam's innocence. Augustine was saying that Adam
had within himself the possibility of falling and that fallibility is not an evil
in itself.14 However the notion of fallibility explains only the possibility of
evil, not its reality. Thus, according to Augustine, the origin of moral evil lies
hidden within the mystery of human and angelic freedom. The freely acting will is
an originating cause, and its operations are not explicable in terms of other
prior causes.
This traditional theodicy has been criticized as an account of the origin and
final disposition of moral evil. For example, Schleiermacher argued that the
notion of finitely perfect beings willfully falling into sin is self-contradictory
and unintelligible. A truly perfect being, though free to sin, would, in fact,
never do so. To attribute the origin of evil to the willful crime of a perfect
being is thus to assert the sheer contradiction that evil has created itself out
of nothing. The final disposition of moral evil, that is the eschatological aspect
of Augustinian theodicy, has also been criticized. If God desires to save all his
human creatures but is unable to do so, he is limited in power. If, on the other
hand, he does not desire the salvation of all but has created some for damnation,
he is limited in goodness. In either case, the doctrine of eternal damnation
stands as an obstacle to a consistent Christian theodicy.
The second type of theodicy was developed by the Greek-speaking fathers, notably
by Irenaeus (120-202), prior to the time of Augustine. Whereas Augustine held that
before his fall, Adam was in a state of original righteousness, and that his first
sin was the inexplicable turning of a wholly good being toward evil, Irenaeus and
others regarded the pre-Fall Adam as more like a child than a mature, responsible
adult. According to this earlier conception, Adam stood at the beginning of a long
process of development. He had been created as a personal being in the "image" of
God, but had yet to be brought into the finite "likeness" of God. His fall is seen
not as disastrously transforming and totally ruining humanity, but rather as
delaying and complicating its advance from the "image" to the "likeness" of his
maker. Thus, humanity is viewed as neither having fallen from so great a height as
original righteousness, nor to so profound a depth as total depravity, as in the
Augustinian theology; rather, humanity fell in the early stages of its spiritual
development and now needs greater help than otherwise would have been required.15
THE ORIGIN OF EVIL--A BUDDHIST VIEW
In Buddhism there is no theodicy. There is no theory justifying God because in
Buddhism there is no notion of one God whose goodness and power must be justified
against the reality of evil in the world. Buddhism has no need of a notion of one
God because the fundamental principle of Buddhism is "dependent origination." This
notion indicates that everything in and out of the universe is interdependent and
co-arising and co-ceasing: nothing whatsoever is independent and self-existing.
This is the reason Gautama Buddha did not accept the age-old Hindu concept of
Brahman as the sole basis underlying the universe and the accompanying notion
-atman as the eternal self at the core of each individual. Rather, he emphasized
an-atman, no-self, and dependent origination. The universe is not the creation of
one God, but fundamentally is a network of causal relationships among innumerable
things which are co-arising and co-ceasing. In Buddhism, time and history are
understood as beginningless and there is no room for the idea of unique, momentary
creation. Since time and history are believed to be beginningless and endless,
there can be no particular creator at the beginning of history and no particular
judge at its end. Thus the sacred and the human are, in Buddhism, completely
interdependent: there is nothing sacred whatsoever that is self-existing. The
supernatural and the natural co-arise and co-cease: there is nothing supernatural
whatsoever which is independent of the natural.
The same is true of good and evil. Good and evil are completely dependent on one
another. They always co-arise and co-cease so that one cannot exist without the
other. There is, then, no supreme good which is self-subsistent apart from evil,
and no absolute evil which is an object of eternal punishment apart from good. To
Buddhists both the supreme good and absolute evil are illusions. In this respect
Buddhism significantly differs from Christianity, in which God is understood to be
infinitely good, and sinners who do not believe in God must undergo eternal
damnation. In his Enchiridion, St. Augustine says: "No evil could exist where no
good exists,"16 but he does not say that "No good could exist where no evil
exists." This is precisely because to Augustine, evil is nothing but the privation
of good. Evil does not exist in itself but is always parasitic upon good, which
alone has substantial being. Elsewhere in the Enchiridion, St. Augustine says:
"Wherever there is no privation of good there is no evil."17 Here we can see the
strong priority of good over evil. This notion is not peculiar to St. Augustine
but is common to Christian thinkers in general. Contrary to this, Buddhists
generally talk about the complete relativity of good and evil and reject the idea
of the priority of the one over the other. The emphasis is on the inseparability
of good and evil and even their oneness in the deepest sense. It is understandable
why, given this emphasis on the relativity of good and evil and the consequent
rejection of the priority of good over evil, Christians find an indifference to
ethics in Buddhism.
Whether or not this is the case must be carefully examined. We human beings must
seek good and avoid evil. To be human is to be ethical. Unlike animals, persons
can be human only when guided by reason and ethics in place of instinct. This is
an undeniable fact. Buddhists accept this without qualification. That is why, as I
said before, not to commit evil, but to do all that is good, is emphasized as the
teaching of all the buddhas throughout Buddhism's long history, as exemplified,
for instance, in the precepts of monks and laymen, including the ten precepts. "To
do good, not commit evil" is an ethical imperative common to the Easterner and the
Westerner. Wherever persons exist this ethical imperative must be emphasized. A
question arises, however, at this point as to whether it is possible for persons
to actually observe that ethical imperative. Can human nature be completely
regulated and controlled by that ethical code? If we can actually observe that
ethical imperative thoroughly only insofar as we try to do so, the problem of evil
is very simple. In actuality, however seriously one may try to observe the ethical
imperative, one cannot do so completely and instead cannot help realizing one's
distance from the good to be done.
This is the reason Niao-ke said to Pai Le- -t'ien, "Any child three years old may
know it, but an old man of eighty years finds it difficult to practice it." This
is also the reason St. Paul painfully confessed, "the good which I would do, that
I do not; but the evil that I would not, that I do."18 Because persons are flesh
as well as soul this is the inevitable conclusion of the ethical effort. To reach
any but this conclusion implies a lack of seriousness in one's ethical effort.
However strong the ethical imperative may be, we cannot actually fulfill it, but
rather must fall into a conflict, the dilemma of good and evil. Human nature
cannot be completely controlled and regulated by ethics, which is why we must go
beyond the realm of ethics and enter that of religion. The limitation of, and the
dilemma involved in, ethics are equally realized in Buddhism and Christianity. So
far, Buddhists share with St. Paul the painful confession mentioned above.
One primary difference between Paul and Buddhists lies in the following by saying,
"If what I would not, that I do, it is no more I that do it, but sin which
dwelleth in me,"19 Paul ascribes the ultimate cause of the problem to original sin
and finds the solution, or salvation, in the redemptive love of God working
through the spirit of Christ. On the other hand, Buddhists realize the ultimate
cause of the problem in karma and find the solution in enlightenment, that is, the
awakening to the truth of dependent origination and no-self. Since our present
existence is the fruit of a beginningless karma, we are involved in the conflict
between good and evil. However, if we go beyond such a dualism and awaken to our
original nature, we will be freed from karma as well as from the problem of good
and evil. In Christianity, the limitation of, and the dilemma involved in, ethics
and its religious solution are grasped in contrast to the absolute nature of God
who is all-good and all-powerful. In this sense, the religious solution realized
in the context of the collapse of human ethics still finds its orientation in the
problem of good and evil, although in a religious rather than an ethical
dimension. In Buddhism, on the other hand, the collapse of human ethics is grasped
in terms of beginningless and endless karma and its religious solution is found in
the realization of no-self which is neither good nor evil.
The Buddhist solution of the problem is not faith in God as all-good but the
awakening to one's original nature, which is free from both good and evil. In this
sense we may say that Buddhism has primarily an ontological orientation whereas
Christianity has primarily an ethical orientation.
This difference may cause Christians to feel an indifference toward ethics in
Buddhists and cause Buddhists to feel skeptical about the Christian emphasis on
faith. We must, however, inquire into the background of this difference to
elucidate the present issue.
THE NATURE OF EVIL IN CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM
The above-mentioned difference between Christianity and Buddhism comes from their
divergent understanding of the nature of evil. As seen in St. Augustine,
Christians understand evil as the privation of good or as the rebellion of human
beings against the will of God, who is viewed as infinitely good. Thus, in
Christianity, evil is understood as nonsubstantial, as not existing in itself, and
as something to be overcome by good. Accordingly, good has priority over evil not
only ethically but also ontologically. This conviction gives Christianity its
ethico-religious character and also gives rise to the problem of theodicy: that
is, the question of how to explain the reality of evil in relation to God as
absolute in goodness and power.
On the other hand, Buddhists base their beliefs and practices not on the ethical
dimension but on the ontological dimension by realizing that everything is
impermanent and interdependent, and understanding that evil is entirely relative
to good. Good and evil are inseparably related to one another. Therefore, what the
Buddhist is concerned with is not how to overcome evil by good, but how to
transcend the good-evil duality. To Buddhists, the problem of how to overcome evil
by good is a "wrong question," based on an unrealistic understanding of the nature
of evil and an unjustifiable assumption of the priority of good over evil.
Although, ethically speaking, good should have priority over evil, ontologically
and existentially speaking, good is not stronger than evil, and good and evil have
at least equal strength in their endless struggle with each other. Accordingly, it
is necessary for Buddhists to overcome the good-evil dichotomy itself and return
to their original nature prior to the divergence between good and evil. This is
the meaning of the third line of "the precept-stanza common to the past seven
buddhas," "to purify one's heart"--to purify one's heart from the duality of good
and evil. It is noteworthy that even in the oldest scripture of primitive Buddhism
what is emphasized is the need to go beyond good and evil. For instance, in
Suttanip-ata (547), it is said: "Just as a beautiful lotus flower being not
tainted with water and mud, you are not spoiled by either good or evil." In the
case of Mahayana Buddhism, it is emphasized even more strongly that we must go
beyond good and evil and attain the realization of s+-unyat-a, or "emptiness,"
which is neither good nor evil.
As I have indicated, in rejecting the priority of good over evil, Buddhists
emphasize their relativity. Buddhism is similar, at least in this respect, to the
Manichaean insistence on the dualism of good and evil. The central theme of
Manichaeism is that the world is an inextricable mixture of good and evil with
each force in constant combat with the other. Thus, Manichaeism proclaims two
deities in opposition, a good deity as the author of light and an evil deity as
the author of darkness. Insofar as good and evil are understood dualistically as
two different principles and as inextricably related to and fighting against each
other, there is great affinity between Manichaeism and Buddhism. The essential
difference between them, however, can be seen in the following three points:
1. Although Manichaeism emphasizes the fight between two opposed principles of
good and evil, it does not carry this opposition to its final conclusion. On the
other hand, Buddhism existentially realizes the final conclusion of the
contradiction of the two opposed principles as beginningless and endless karma,
and tries to overcome it.
2. Buddhism, thus, comes to a realization of s+ -unyat-a in which the duality of
good and evil is completely overcome and their nondualistic oneness is fully
realized. Contrary to this, Manichaeism remains a rigid form of dualism from
beginning to end, without any means of overcoming that conflict.
3. In Manichaeism, good and evil are two independent principles which respectively
have their reality and substance. In Buddhism, however, although good and evil are
two opposing principles, they are not understood as reality or substance but
rather as something non-substantial. Thus, in the awakening to s+-unyat-a, both
good and evil are emptied and the duality is overcome.
From the Buddhist point of view, the weakness of Manichaeism does not lie in its
dualistic view of good and evil as two independent principles but in the rigidity
of that dualism, which takes the two independent principles as substantial
realities. It is not a mistake for Manichaeism to take good and evil as two
equally powerful principles rather than emphasizing the priority of good over
evil. It is, however, a mistake for Manichaeism to end with this dualistic view
without attempting to transcend it.
In the history of Christianity, St. Augustine strongly rejected the ultimate
dualism of Manichaeism and insisted that only good has substantial being whereas
evil is unreal--hence, his theory of evil as the privation of good. Given the
belief that a good God is the sole ultimate reality, it is inevitable that evil be
interpreted as privation. However, if the monotheistic God is unambiguously good,
what is evil, and where does it come from? Theodicy thus becomes a serious
problem.
As we say earlier, Augustine emphasized evil will, that is, the ill-use of human
free will, as the origin of evil. Thereby God is freed from all responsibility.
However, Genesis suggests an evil even before Adam's ill-use of his freedom in the
form of the serpent's temptation. Since he was created free, Adam had the
possibility of falling or not falling. Although the possibility of falling is not
an evil in itself, Adam yielded to the temptation and actually fell. Why did God
not turn the human will toward the good without doing violence to its nature, so
that we can freely do good? To this Augustine replied, "simply because God did not
wish to." Is there not a mystery here?
Recently, the Irenaean type of theodicy has been reformulated in John Hick's book
Evil and the God of Love. The Irenaean theodicy, which regards the fall of Adam as
a virtually inevitable incident in humanity's development, is more acceptable than
the Augustinian one. However, I am afraid that in this type of theodicy the
problem of the Fall is understood somewhat from the outside, objectively, as a
problem of human development, while its existential meaning is more or less
overlooked. I personally appreciate the Augustinian type of theodicy, which
focuses on the problem of free will and thereby grasps the issue from within one's
being more existentially than the Irenaean one. And, in this sense, I think the
Augustinian approach is more appropriate and justifiable. Yet Augustinian theodicy
ends with the mystery of evil. To speak of the mystery of evil is, however,
nothing but to confess the insolubility of the problem of evil and God. For if God
is conceived of as the creator of all the universe, all-good and all-powerful, the
origin of evil is ultimately untraceable except to the "mystery of evil." This is
at best a half-solution. To complete the solution one must go beyond mystery and
radically reinterpret the notion of God. It is quite natural for Christianity to
reject the Manichaean form of dualism because Christianity is fundamentally
monotheistic. However, if Christianity is simply monotheistic and rejects any form
of duality of good and evil, Christianity becomes abstracted from human actuality.
Theodicy is an attempt to include the duality of good and evil within the
monotheistic character of Christianity without destroying the character. However,
there remains an essential tension between the duality of good and evil and the
framework of monotheism. Thus, as we see in Augustine's theodicy, the origin of
evil tends to be explained in terms of mystery.
In the history of Christian thought down to the present, there have been many
variations of these two types of theodicy. In my view, neither dualism nor
monotheism can solve the problem of evil satisfactorily. We must find a position
which is neither dualistic nor monotheistic.
HOW IS THE PROBLEM OF EVIL SOLVED?
Buddhists try to go beyond the duality of good and evil and to awaken to s+-unyat-
a, which transcends both good and evil. This is because, insofar as we remain in
the duality, we are involved in and limited by it. In the realm of good and evil,
an ethical imperative (Thou ought to do this) and the cry of desire (I want to do
that) are always in constant conflict. Thus we become slaves to sin and guilt.
There is no final rest in the realm of good and evil. To attain the abode of final
rest, we must go beyond the dichotomy of good and evil and return to the root and
source from which good and evil emerged. That root and source is grasped in
Buddhism as "emptiness" (s+-unyat-a) because it is neither good nor evil. When the
Six Patriarch, Hui-neng, was asked by the monk Ming what the truth of Buddhism
was, he said:
When your mind is not dwelling on the dualism of good and evil, what is your
original face before you were born?
"Your original face before you were born" is simply a Zen term for s+-unyat-a,
because only through the realization of s+-unyat-a do we awaken to our true Self.
Another important point raised by Hui-neng's answer concerns the words "before you
were born." This symbolic phrase does not necessarily indicate "before" in the
temporal sense, but rather "before" in the ontological sense, that is, the
ontological foundation, or root and source on which the duality of good and evil
is established. Therefore, this "before" can and should be realized right now and
right here in the depth of the absolute present.
We may translate Hui-neng's question into the Christian context by asking, What is
your original face before Adam committed sin? or even by asking, What is your
original face before God created the world? Adam is not merely the first man in a
remote past, or is his fall an event apart from us, one which took place far
distant from us in time. As Kierkegaard rightly said, we ourselves committed sin
in Adam. Adam is none other than ourselves. Adam is the first one of mankind and
at the same time is each of us. Thus the Zen question concerning "your original
face" may be understood as a question concerning "your original face" before you
ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. It may also be understood as a
more radical question; What is your original face before God said, "Let there be
light." For Zen persistently asks, "After all things are reduced to oneness; where
would that One be reduced?"20 God created everything out of nothing. God is the
only creator. All things are reduced to one God. To what, however, would that one
God be reduced? Everything comes from God. Where did God come from? This is a
question which must be asked.
God created everything out of nothing. Therefore, it cannot be said that God came
from something nor can it be said that God is reduced to something. Accordingly,
the only answer to this question is that God came from nothingness. God is reduced
to nothingness. However, this nothingness is different from the nothing out of
which God created everything. The nothing out of which God created everything is
nothing in a relative sense. On the other hand, the nothingness from which God may
be said to emerge, is nothingness in its non-relative sense. This nothingness in
the absolute sense is exactly the same as Buddhism's s+-unyat-a. This absolute
nothingness from which even God emerged is not unfamiliar to Christianity.
Christian mystics talked about the Godhead from which the personal God emerged,
and they described the Godhead in terms of nothingness, as seen, for instance, in
St. John of the Cross and the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing. However,
in Buddhism, this absolute nothingness from which even God came to exist is
precisely the "original face" of ourselves which is beyond good and evil. The
Buddhist solution to the problem of evil can be found in the realization of
absolute nothingness, or s+-unyat-a, as the awakening to true self. It is neither
dualistic nor monotheistic.
HOW IS THE BUDDHIST ETHICS POSSIBLE?
The final question is how ethics then can be established on the realization of s+-
unyat-a. Having transcended the duality of good and evil, to what moral principles
may one appeal that are in keeping with the spirit of this liberating experience?
First, in Buddhism, the realization of s+-unyat-a is not merely a goal to be
reached, but the ground on which everything in life is established. It is, indeed,
the point of departure from which we can properly and realistically begin our life
and activity. In other words, it is the root and source from which the duality of
good and evil and all other forms of duality have come to be realized.
Second, when we take the realization of s+-unyat-a as the point of departure as
well as the goal of our life, the duality of good and evil is viewed in a new
light, namely, from the viewpoint of s+-unyat-a or the awakening experience
itself. In this light, the distinction between good and evil is thoroughly
relativized by dropping away any and all sense of absolute good and absolute evil.
Furthermore, the distinction between good and evil is not only relativized, but
the two values are reversed. In this regard, however, the relativization and the
reversion of the distinction between good and evil does not destroy human ethics
as is often believed. Of course, one may say that if the relativization and
reversion of the good-evil distinction takes place within the context of an
ethical life, it will necessarily entail a loss of the firmness and intensity of
commitment to the ethical principles by which a person might give meaning and
integrity to his life.
However, in Christianity as in Buddhism, which goes beyond mere ethics to a higher
commitment to the will of God (consider Kierkegaard's "teleological suspension of
the ethical" in his interpretation of the Abraham-Isaac story), some
relativization and reversion of the good-evil distinction is necessitated. This
fact is clearly seen in Jesus' words, "I came not to call the righteous but
sinners," and "Why call ye me good: there is none good but the Father." Sinners,
therefore, have priority over the righteous (i.e., those who obey the letter of
the law, but neglect the spirit) in the light of salvation through Jesus Christ.
However, in Christianity, where God is believed to be the highest good and the
ruler of the world and history, the distinction between good and evil is not
completely relativized nor reversed. Given the belief that God is both righteous
and loving, the complete relativization and reversion of the good-evil distinction
is not acceptable. In Buddhism, by contrast, the complete relativization and
reversion of the good-evil distinction is totally realized without fear of
destroying the basis of the ethical life. This is due to the fact that the
"transvaluation of values" is realized not within a certain established framework
of ethical life nor under the rule and judgment of the all-good and all-powerful
God, but in and through the realization of the boundless openness of s+-unyat-a in
which there is no one God.
Third, in the awakening to the boundless openness of s+-unyat-a and the
relativization and reversion of the good-evil distinction, the basis of the
ethical life is not destroyed but is rather preserved, clarified, and
strengthened. This ultimate experience makes the distinction between good and evil
clearer than before because the distinction is thoroughly realized without any
limitation in the awakening to the boundless openness of s+-unyat-a. At the same
time, the relativization and reversion of the good-evil distinction in this
awakening leads us to the realization of the undifferentiated sameness of good and
evil.
The first aspect, that is, the clearer realization of the good-evil distinction,
indicates prajn+ a, or Buddhist wisdom. The distinction of things or matters more
clearly realized in enlightenment than before is well indicated in the following
discourse of Chi'ing yuan Wei hsin, a Chinese Zen master of the T'ang Dynasty:
Before I studied Zen, to me mountains were mountains and waters were waters. After
I got an insight into the truth of Zen through the instruction of a good master,
mountains to me were not mountains and waters were not waters. But after this,
when I really attained the abode of rest, that is, enlightenment, mountains were
really mountains, waters were really waters.21
The second aspect that is the realization of the sameness of good-evil through the
relativization and reversion of its distinction entails karun- -a, Buddhist
compassion. The compassionate aspect is emphatically expressed both in Pure Land
and Zen Buddhism as follows:
Even the virtuous can attain rebirth in the Pure Land, how much more so the
wicked!22
The immaculate practitioner takes three kalpas to enter nirvana, whereas the
apostate bhikkhu (monk) does not fall into hell.23
This twofold realization of the clearer distinction between good and evil on the
one hand and of the undifferentiated unity and reversion of good and evil on the
other, is nothing but a reappraisal of the good-evil duality in the new light of
s+-unyat-a. Herein, Buddhist ethical life is established in the light of prajn+ a
(wisdom) and karu.n-a (compassion) where, transcending the distinction of good and
evil, the distinction is clearly realized.
The distinction and unity, wisdom and compassion, are dynamically working together
in Buddhist ethical life because the boundless openness of s+-unyat-a is taken as
the ground of the ethical life. If, however, s+-unyat-a is taken as the goal or
the objective of our life and not as the ground or the point of departure, then
the Buddhist life falls into the indifference of good and evil and an apathetic
attitude toward social evil. The risk and tendency of falling into ethical
indifference is always latent in the Buddhist life. In no few instances, Buddhist
history illustrates this. In this respect, it is important and significant for
Buddhism to have a serious encounter with Christianity which is ethical as well as
religious.
In conclusion, let me quote a Zen story as an example of the dynamism of Zen
compassion.
One day a visitor asked Joshu, an outstanding Zen master of the T'ang dynasty:
"Where will you go after death?"
"I will go straightfowardly to hell!" answered the master.
"How could it be that such a great Zen master as you would fall into hell?"
retorted the visitor.
To this the master said:
"If I will not go to hell, who will save you at the bottom of hell?!"24
Haverford College
Haverford, Pennsylvania
NOTES
*This chapter originally appeared in Buddhist-Christian Dialogue: Mutual Renewal
and Transformation, ed. by Paul O. Ingram and Frederick J. Streng (Honolulu: Univ.
of Hawaii Press, l986), pp. 139-154.
1. Exod. 20.2-17; Deut. 5.6-21.
2. The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 13:239.
3. Ibid.
4. Rom. 5.17.
5. John Hick, Evil and the God of Love (London: Macmillan, 1966), p. 377.
6. Dhammapada 14.5.
7. Masao Abe, "The Idea of Purity in Mahayana Buddhism," Zen and Western Thought
(London: Macmillan and Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1985) pp. 216-222.
8. Gen. 1.31.
9. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 3:136.
10. Augustine, Enchiridon 4.
11. Augustine, City of God 12.6.
12. Ibid.
13. Augustine, On Free Will 3. xvii.49.
14. New Catholic Encyclopedia, 5:669.
15. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 3:138.
16. Augustine, Enchiridon 4.421.
17. Ibid.
18. Rom. 7.19.
19. Rom. 7.20.
20. Pi-yen lu (Hekiganroku), case 45, Taish-o 48:181c.
21. Abe, "Zen is not a Philosophy, but . . . ." Zen and Western Thought, pp. 4-24.
22. Tannish-o, A Tract Deploring the Heresies Thought of Faith (Higasji Honganji,
1961), pp. 4-24.
23. Zenmon nenjushu, copied by Seizan Yanagida, 2:120.
24. Chao-chou lu (-Joshuroku) ed. Ry-omin Akizuki, Chikuma edition, p. 170.
****
THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR METAPHYSICS
STUDIES IN METAPHYSICS, VOLUME III
PERSON AND GOD
Edited by
GEORGE F. McLEAN
HUGO MEYNELL
UNIVERSITY PRESS OF AMERICA
INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR METAPHYSICS
DEDICATION
This volume is dedicated to the memory of Prof. Richard M. Martin whose life of
work in the field of logic showed the highest genius and creativity. As can be
seen from his chapter in this volume, "On Some Theological Languages," the broader
concern of his work was life itself, up to its highest realization in life divine.
Like Descartes, he felt that logic can now make possible significant advances in
Metaphysics and even theology.
The presentation of this paper in Jerusalem, which Prof. Martin considered in some
ways the culmination of his service in philosophy, occasioned intensive debate
with Prof. John Findlay. That interchange was reflected by Richard Martin in his
"On Philosophical Ecumenism: A Dialogue," which has been added as a fitting
appendix to the present volume.
Prof. Martin has pointed the way. He presents an inviting challenge to a younger
generation of philosophers to develop the similar combination of professional
perfection and personal peace required to follow the pathways he pioneered.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Grateful acknowledgement is made to The State University of New York Press at
Albany for permission to reprint R.M. Martin, "On Philosophical Ecumenism: A
Dialogue," Chap. VIII of Primordiality, Science, and Value (Albany, New York:
State Univ. of New York Press, l980), pp. 120-136.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
PART I. METAPHYSICS AND GOD
1. God and the Problem of Being
by Ivor Leclerc 3-13
Comment: Salvino Biolo 15-21
2. Religious Experience
by H.D. Lewis 23-38
3. Critique and Hermeneutic in Philosophy of
religion
by Benoit Garceau 39-51
4. On Some Theological Languages
by Richard M. Martin 53-77
Comment: Jan Van der Veken 79-81
PART II. METAPHYSICAL TRADITIONS AND THE DIVINE
5. The Hindu Metaphysical Tradition on the
Meaning of the Absolute
by Jehangir N. Chubb 85-103
Comment: Margaret Chatterjee 105-110
6. Metaphysical Traditions and the Meaning of
the Absolute: The Locus of the Divine in
Chinese Thought
by Ellen M. Chen 111-131
7. God - To What, If Anything, Does the Term
Refer? An Eastern Christian Perspective
by Metropolitan Paulos Gregorios 133-143
8. God, Philosophy and Halakhah in Maimonides'
Approach to Judaism
by David Hartman and Elliott Yagod 145-180
Comment: Isaac Frank 181-189
9. Philosophy, Man and the Absolute God:
an Islamic Perspective
by Bahram Jamalpur 191-202
Comment: Francis Kennedy 203-205
PART III ORIGIN AND THEOPHANY
10. Origin: Creation and Emanation
by Richard V. DeSmet, S.J. 209-220
Comment: Hugo Meynell 221-225
11. Harmony in Nature and Man
by Ewert Cousins 227-238
Comment: Jan Plat 239-241
12. The World as Theophany
by Jean Ladriere 243-259
13. On the Reduction of Temporal Categories
Within the Process of Divine Intervention
by Evanghelos A. Moutsopoulos 261-263
Comment: F. P. Hager 265-271
PART IV. FREEDOM, THEOLOGY AND ETERNITY
14. Evolution and Teleology
by Evandro Agazzi 275-286
Comment: Susanne Mansion 287-291
15. Absolute Being and Freedom
by R.J. Njoroge 293-305
16. Freedom and Omnipotence: Love and Freedom
by Frederick Sontag 307-315
Comment: Thomas A. Fay 317-321
17. Philosophy, Religion and the Coming World
Civilization
by Leroy S. Rouner 323-331
Comment: Joseph Nyasani 333-335
18. Time and Eternity
by J.N. Findlay 337 -347
Comment: Kenneth L. Schmitz 349-353
APPENDIX
On Philosophical Ecumenism: a Dialogue
by Richard M. Martin 355-371
INDEX 373-377
INTRODUCTION
Classically, human understanding of oneself and of one's relation to nature has
been founded upon an awareness of one's relation to the divine. Though diversely
understood, this has constituted the source, the goal and the deepest meaning of
Being. As such, it has provided the basis of personal dignity and the inspiration
to strive for a life of harmony with others in justice and peace.
Many developments, in philosophy and beyond, have opened new possibilities for
understanding the implications of this for all facets of human life. Often,
however, they have implied an emphasis upon either the immanence or the
transcendence of the divine in a manner difficult to conciliate one with the
other. Further, issues implied in the resultant notion of progress have raised
anew questions concerning the nature of God. In turn, in the West this has implied
a renewed concern for the meaning found in earlier Eastern and Western religious
philosophies. In developing, as will as technologically advanced, societies this
has raised the question of the presence of God in all dimensions of human life.
The present volume presents a study of these issues by The International Society
for Metaphysics (ISM), hosted by Dr. Nathan Rotenstreich at the Israel Academy of
Sciences and Humanities in Jerusalem. It begins by situating the study of God in
relation to metaphysics, religious experience and logic. This is followed by a
search of the great religious and metaphysical traditions for their sense of the
divine. In this light God is studied as the source and goal of all, and
consequently as the context for human freedom in time and eternity.
This is the last volume in the ISM series on the person. It follows other works on
Person and Nature,1 and Person and God2. Upon completion of these studies the ISM
undertook an intensive series of investigations regarding society, and its issues
of unity, truth and justice, and the good. It extended these two series on person
and society to the field of culture and cultural heritage understood as personal
creativity in community and in history. Together, they constitute an effort to
promote the development of metaphysics as a living discipline in our day.
NOTES
1. George F. McLean, ed. (Washington: University Press of America and The
International Society for Metaphysics, 1988).
2. George F. McLean and Hugo Meynell, eds. (Washington: University Press of
America and The International Society for Metaphysics, 1988).
CHAPTER I
GOD AND THE PROBLEM OF BEING
IVOR LECLERC
INTRODUCTORY: THE ISSUES
We today have arrived at a juncture of thought at which both the question of God
and the question of being require basic reconsideration. Contemporary scientific
development has necessitated the latter, and this has inevitable implications for
the question of God.
Besides that, in our time it has become easier to see that in respect of God the
ontological issue runs up against peculiar features and also singular aporiae. For
example, the question can significantly be raised, whether God exists--by contrast
with other areas of inquiry, in which it would not be significant to ask whether
man, or nature, or society exists. In these areas the pertinent questions would
be, what is man? what is nature? what is society?; that is, the issue is
concerning the ontological status of man, etc., the kind of being which is to be
accorded to man, etc. Earlier ages raised the question of the proof of the
existence of God, but not whether God exists. That the later question has become
common in our time makes it more readily appreciable not only that there is a
singular significance about the question, namely that it can significantly be
raised, but that the question itself is singularly problematical.
What exactly does the question entail? What does "exist" mean respecting God?
Historically the verb "exist" and the abstract noun "existence" arose from a need
terminologically to distinguish "that it is" in contrast to "what it is." So to
ask whether it is or exists entailed that the "it" in question be something able
to stand out or forth, appears manifest itself. This implied, primarily, that the
"it" be a "being" which is the "subject" of "what," i.e., of properties or
attributes--the latter "existing" only in a derivative sense of the properties of
the being as subject. The question facing us is whether the terms "exist" and
"being" can consistently and coherently be used in the same sense with respect to
God as to natural beings. This is an old issue in the history of philosophy, but
it is facing us today with renewed urgency and puzzlement.
This issue has a twofold aspect: one is ontological and the other is categoreal.
These are, however, closely interconnected, and neither can be tackled in
disjunction from the other, nor can one be taken as unquestionably prior to the
other; on the contrary, they intrinsically involve each other. The recognition of
this is especially crucial in regard to the question of God. This point needs
special emphasis, for not only is there a long and powerful tradition that the
fundamental category is "being" --that is, what is ontologically primary is
"being," and that it is this which is categorially the subject in thought, so that
whatever is the subject is categoreally "a being"--but with regard to God this
tradition has in this century received an interesting and emphatic reaffirmation
by Whitehead in his Process and Reality with his proclamation that: "God is not to
be treated as an exception to all metaphysical principles, invoked to save their
collapse. He is their chief exemplication."1 Accordingly Whitehead explicitly
maintained that God is to be conceived as an "actual entity" or res vera,
categoreally no different from any other actual entity or being.2 This tradition,
however, cannot today be simply accepted as a presupposition; it has to be
critically examined and justified. For to accept it as an unexamined
presupposition constitutes begging the issue which we have seen to be crucial
today.
The question now is how we are to proceed with regard to this ontological and
categoreal issue. It is evident that fundamental in this is "being," and
accordingly that the prime requisite is clarification with respect to "being." The
requisite clarification is not simply one of the meanings of the word, for as we
are concerned with it the word occurs only as a term in philosophical thought; so
what we are up against is "being" as a philosophical problem, and one of singular
profundity, difficulty, and complexity. In tackling this problem it will not
suffice to take, or to seek to clarify, the conception of being in any
contemporary philosophical theory of system. For, in the first place, it is
precisely every such conception which it is necessary to subject to critical
scrutiny. Secondly, every such conception stands in the inheritance of some two
millennia of ontological thought, involving different theories and thus divergent
meanings of "being," much of which has come in the course of time to acquire the
status of tacit presuppositions; consequently the adequate clarification of
contemporary conceptions of being necessitates that these presuppositions be
brought fully to light and scrutinized. In this we have one of the greatest
difficulties involved in the inquiry into the problem of being.
In view of this difficulty it seems to me that the best, most satisfactory, and
perhaps the only effective way to tackle the problem of being is by an historical
inquiry. For, by examining theories of being in their origin and development we
can most readily become clear as to what is included in them and thus what has
come to be inherited in subsequent generations of thought. The historical
procedure is, however, fraught with a crucial difficulty. It is all too easy, as
the history of philosophy amply testifies, to interpret earlier thought in terms
of current conceptions and presuppositions, and to do so involves completely
frustrating a main purpose in adopting the historical approach, viz., to bring to
light current presuppositions. It is accordingly highly important for the inquirer
to be specially on guard against such insidious anachronisms. Of course the
difficulty will not thereby necessarily be eliminated; but it can be significantly
diminished and, in the course of critical scholarship, overcome.
The historical inquiry into being is unquestionably a considerable and complicated
task, to be fittingly undertaken in a lengthy monograph and not in a brief paper.
All that is possible here is the presentation of some conclusions which are the
outcome of such an inquiry.3
ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPT OF "BEING"
For the origin of the concept of "being" we have to go back to Parmenides. It is
true that to on and ta onta, as Jaeger has said, were used from the very beginning
of Greek natural philosophy in the sense of things immediately and tangibly
present.4 But it was Parmenides who for the first time became aware of the
philosophical import and implications of the words. The question of how and why he
was brought to that awareness, highly relevant as it is, cannot be entered into
here. For us now the point is that he discovered the singular significance of
saying: esti, "it is"--not, "it is something-or-other," i.e., using the verb in
its usual copulative function, but in a distinctly new sense; and that he went on
to bring out the implications entailed in that new sense. These implications,
Parmenides saw, were entailed in the Greek verb "be" per se.
This becomes clear by an examination of the verb. Fundamentally relevant here is
that the Greek verb einai, "to be," stands in contrast to, and excludes,
"becoming"--which is expressed in Greek by an entirely different and unrelated
verb gignomai, having the primary meaning of "to be born." In a recent highly
important and detailed study of The Verb `Be' in Ancient Greek,5 Charles H. Kahn
has shown that in this is exemplified a basic feature of the Indo-European verb
*es-, namely, that it functions to express "the stative aspect, by which it
contrasts with verbs meaning to become, arrive at, get, and the like."6 This
stative value is especially strong in Greek, for in this, as Kahn points out,7
"almost alone among European languages, the stem *es- has remained rigorously
durative, admitting no aorist or perfect forms like fui and been in the
conjugation of eimi." His investigation reveals "that the typical or primordial
use of the verb is for a living creature or more especially a person as subject
(as is always the case in the first- and second-person forms); and that the verb
itself indicates a station or position of that person's body at a given moment or
over a certain stretch of time."8 Thus the verb "indicates the extrinsic position
or presence of the person in a given place. If no place is specified, the verb
alone may indicate simply that the person is present somewhere or other, i.e., is
alive (at a given time)."9 From this analysis it becomes clear why the Greek verb
"be," in addition to its primarily copulative function, also has locative, vital,
and veridical uses,10 and that it has the fundamental sense of "presence."11
This fundamental sense is what Parmenides clearly saw: what is, is now present.
Therefore what is not there, present (e.g., the Pythagorean void) simply "is not"
at all. Further, since the verb "be" excludes "becoming," what is must be all
complete, what it is, now in the present. Parmenides having brought to
philosophical consciousness what basically is entailed in the Greek verb "be"--
viz., that what is, to eon, "a being," implies its immediate presence and its
exclusion of all becoming--this determined subsequent ontological thought till
Plato, and beyond.
Advancing from the new philosophical approach of Socrates, Plato concluded that it
was necessary to admit duo eide ton onton, "two kinds of things,"12 but he was
then faced with the problem of what was entailed in saying that both are "onta."
Evidently they both were onta in the sense of "things present"; but when account
was taken of what is entailed in the verb "be" as established by Parmenides, it
became clear that only that kind which is eidos, "form," since it alone was
without becoming, could be regarded as on alethes, "true being," as to ontos on,
"beingly being."
Plato was responsible for a further, most important advance in respect of the
concept of being. For this he adopted and adapted the word ousia to a new
philosophical meaning. The ordinary meaning of ousia was that of "property,
possession, what is one's own."13 The argument in the early Dialogues establishing
the eide (forms) sometimes required Socrates to make the point that things have
each their individual form, whereby they are distinguished as each that particular
thing, and that this meant that the individual form is idios, "its own,"
pertaining to that individual itself, and he began using the word ousia to express
this, thereby generalizing the meaning of property, possession, as what is "one's
own," "proper to," "exclusively individual to," beyond what is ordinarily
considered "property."14 In this context ousia is usually, but not quite
adequately, translated as "essence" - essentia was a coinage from the Latin
infinitive, esse, to render the Greek term ousia in its later, fully developed
sense.
In these early Dialogues it is quickly argued that each "form-itself" also has its
ousia, in the sense of what is its own, of what properly belongs to it.15 Then
from the Republic onward it is evident that Plato had become increasingly aware of
the implications of the fact of the word ousia having derived from the verb "be,"
more particularly that it entailed a fundamental connection between what in a
thing is "its own" and the "to be" (to einai) or "being" (to on) of the thing. In
the Republic, ousia mostly continues primarily to express "what is its own"
(essence), but at 479 c and in most instances of its use in the Theaetetus, ousia
has the meaning of "being," but in a new sense. In this the word ousia is not
merely an alternative to the participial action noun to on, "the being"
(analogously to "the thinking," "the running"), but expands that meaning of
"being" to include the sense of "what is its own."
This new compound sense of ousia is that which is prevalent throughout the later
Dialogues. Moreover in these, this compound meaning comes to be extended also to
to on, so that in these late works to on is, in the crucial instances, not
adequately rendered by esse, "das Sein," "l'etre," or "Being" (the gerund in
English replacing the infinitive), or by "existence," for these catch only part of
the new sense.
It is this new fully developed sense of ousia and to on which is taken over by
Aristotle, as is clear from his analysis in Book VII of the Metaphysics. The
appreciation of this, however, tends to be blocked by the traditional translation
of ousia in Aristotle by "substance," a word which most inadequately renders the
meaning of the Greek term. In Ch. 1 Aristotle makes clear that the question, ti to
on ("what is being"), is the question tis he ousia ("what is ousia").16 That is,
he was acknowledging the full connotation of to on ("being") as developed by Plato
and expressed by the term ousia. Starting the chapter with the reminder that to on
has many senses, Aristotle points out that first it indicates to ti esti ("what it
is") or tode ti (a "this" or "individuality"), which means that which is primarily
(touton proton on) is the "what" (to ti estin), and that this is the very thing
which is indicated by ousia (hoper semainei ten ousian).17 In other words, the
"what" is that which Plato had argued is "its own," which is "individual to it"
and to indicate which he had used the word ousia. The fundamental connection of
the "what" which is "its own" (entailed in the word ousia) with "being" Aristotle
brings out more fully in a phrase (which became for him a technical term) viz., to
ti en einai, "the what it is to be." That is, this phrase denotes the "what" which
is peculiar to it, its "own," whereby it is.
BEING AND THE CATEGOREAL ISSUE
But Aristotle was aware of an important incongruity in Plato's doctrine of ousia,
in which ousia, what is "its own," is ascribed to both physical things and the
forms. Aristotle argued that while a physical on is manifestly a singular
individual, its to ti en einai or ousia thus appropriately indicating it as tode
ti (a "this"), a "form-itself" (eidos auto kath auto) is not thus singular, for it
is that which is "participated in," which entails that it is fundamentally
universal. But a universal indicates "a such" (to toionde) and not "a this" (tode
ti), and therefore a universal could not be ousia.18
Aristotle was thereby brought to a most important conclusion in respect of
"being." Plato's theory of the forms per se as "being" had to be rejected; on the
contrary, it was the other kind of onta, which Plato had denied the status of to
ontos on, that had to be regarded as to proton on, "being" in the primary sense,
for ousia properly pertained to it alone. This meant that for Aristotle it was the
physei on, the physical or natural being, that which is in "becoming," which
strictly is to on and ousia. That is, Aristotle found it necessary to reject the
conception of "being" deriving from Parmenides and which was grounded in the verb
"be" as excluding "becoming." He had arrived at a new conception of that which is
a "being" in the primary sense as essentially "in becoming," and which had
therefore to be conceived as in a process of change (kinesis) from dynamis
(potentiality) to energeia (actuality).
What did this entail in respect of the status of form? He agreed with Plato that
in a physical being eidos (form) is to be identified with to ti en einai
(essence), and thus the ousia, of the being. Categoreally considered, this meant
that form constituted the predicates of the being as subject. That is, a form "is"
only as a quality, quantity, etc., of "the being" which is its subject.
But Aristotle saw that the categoreal issue was quite crucially raised in another
respect. Since a physical being is in becoming, in kinesis, this entails a
substratum, not only as the recipient of the forms, but as underlying the
supersession of forms, without which one could not think or speak of "it" as
changing. This meant that a physical being had necessarily to be "composite"
(synolos) of hyle (matter) as the substratum and eidos (form). Now hyle and eidos
could not be "constituents" or "parts" in the sense in which elements are
constituents of a compound whole, for the "elements" (by the very meaning of the
word)19 of a natural being would themselves have to be natural beings.20 Therefore
hyle cannot have the status of "a being" (to on); it is "that which in itself is
neither a particular thing nor of a certain quantity nor assigned to any of the
categories by which being (to on) is determined."21 As itself not "a being" it is
therefore not known as beings are known, viz., in terms of the categories; it can
be "known" only analogically and relatively.22 The other component of natural
being, viz., eidos, likewise has to be accorded the status of an arche (source) of
being--that eidos cannot have the status of "a being" is amply evident from his
critique of Plato. Further, analogously to hyle, there is also a peculiarity in
regard to the "knowledge" of eidos; since the forms are that in terms of which
there is knowledge, they themselves cannot be known in the way the physical things
are: eidos is the arche (source) of knowledge as well as of to on (being). In thus
distinguishing between to on (being) and the archai (sources) of being, Aristotle
had attained a formulation of a categoreal insight of the utmost importance, which
Plato had been able to state only in terms of mythos or simile.23
This insight was inherited by Plotinus. In common with the new movement of thought
of that era he had accepted a single, divine, arche (source) of all things, in
place of the three archai of Plato and Aristotle, and maintained that this One, as
the arche (source) of being and of the forms (in terms of which there is
knowledge) accordingly cannot itself be known and transcends being (ou me logos,
mede episteme, o de kai epekeina legetai einai ousias).24 For Plotinus "being" (to
on, to einai, and ousia) is identified with the first emanation, nous,25 the
enaction (energeia) of whose ousia is the second emanation, psyche, which is to
ontos on.26
Augustine took an importantly different position on this, one which has been
determinative of most subsequent thought. Plato had identified form as to ontos
on, because only form was in itself changeless, immutable; Augustine held that
only God was supremely immutable and perfect, so that only God deserved the title
of Vere Esse.27 For Augustine God is "the being" which most completely "is," whose
essentia signifies perfection.
GOD, BEING, AND THE CATEGOREAL PROBLEM
This Augustinian ontological position, which became the accepted doctrine of most
Christian theology, namely that the source of being is "a being," was found to
involve many aporiae with which thinkers struggled for a millennium. Central and
basic to these is the issue of "being." Augustine had followed in the ontological
tradition of Parmenides and Plato. In this the approach is from the meaning of to
on ("being") to the identification of that which accords with that meaning. Plato,
following Parmenides in holding that the fundamental connotation of "being" is
immutability (since the Greek verb "be" excludes "becoming"), identified the forms
as "beings" in the basic sense. This connotation of "being" as immutability was
inherited by Neoplatonism and accepted by Augustine, who identified God as "being"
in that sense. The Augustinian position therefore maintains "a being" as the
single source of all other "beings."
Important difficulties in this position soon emerged. If "being" fundamentally
connotes immutability, how can physical things, which are manifestly in
"becoming," be regarded as "beings" at all? God could not then be the source of
being, since God alone is "being"; God could only be the source of "becoming." But
if "being" and "becoming" stand in mutually exclusive contrast, this entails the
absolute transcendence of God, with no relation to "becoming." The Neoplatonic
solution to this difficulty was to identify "to be" (to einai, esse, "das Sein,"
"l'etre") with form as ousia, essentia. Then a natural thing in becoming "is" by
virtue of its form, its "essence." But this involved further difficulties. First
the Arab and then Western thinkers saw that this deprived "being" of the feature
of its meaning which had been basic in Greek philosophy, namely "presence." In
other words, a separation of "existence" from "essence" had occurred. Accordingly,
if "being" means "essence," there is no way to account for "existence," and for
the "individuality" (tode ti) which "to be there, present," "to exist," primarily
entails, as Aristotle had correctly insisted. Aquinas sought to remedy this by
emphasizing the features of act" (which Neoplatonism had originally identified
with "form," but which had, analogously to "existence," became lost to "essence")
and identified "act" with "esse," "to be." But with this new conception of "being"
the original difficulty still remains, for "being" still retains the fundamental
connotation of immutability, standing in exclusive contrast to "becoming," and
thus the problem is not resolved of how "being" can be the source of "becoming."
Another most important aspect of these difficulties emerges in the categoreal
issue. With the conception of God as "a being," the source of all other "beings,"
it was entailed that, categoreally considered, the same mode of thinking pertained
in respect of God and the other beings: each is "a being" of which attributes are
predicated. Early however it became evident that attributes could not be
univocally predicated of God and creatures, and from the Pseudo-Dionysius, with
his "superlative theology," to Thomas Aquinas, with his doctrine of analogy, a way
out of this categoreal problem was sought. Though both were thought of as
"beings," a fundamental difference between them as "beings" had to be
acknowledged, and to meet this situation Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Occam developed
the theory of transcendentals as predicates pertaining solely to God.
But in this we are up against a singularly difficult issue, namely, whether the
"source" of being can at all validly be thought in terms of the categories, which
manifestly pertain to physical things, i.e., in terms of "a being" of which
attributes are predicated. Aristotle was more profoundly aware of this issue than
was anyone, not only before but also since. He saw that the fallacy basic to the
thought of the physical philosophers was that they had conceived the arche
(source) of physical things as itself a physical thing (e.g., water, etc.). He saw
that the same error vitiated the Platonic doctrine, which maintained eidos (form)
as the arche of the changing physical onta, beings, but conceived form as itself
to on, "a being." Plato himself was indeed aware of the fallacy of the "third man"
involved in this and, it seems to me, made an important attempt to overcome this
difficulty in the Timaeus through depicting the forms, along with the demiourgos
and the receptacle, as the archai of the physical world. Aristotle was clear that
not only hyle, but also eidos was not to be understood in terms of the categories,
for eidos is the arche of the categories; for him the gnosis of the forms could
only be meta noeseos,28 by direct intuition.
It seems to me necessary today to face the question whether the aporiae involved
in the dominant doctrine of God as "a being" which is the source of all other
beings, are not grounded in the same basic mistake which Aristotle saw in
Platonism. I would suggest that this is the case.
The alternative is that we conceive God as "source of being." In our conception of
God we have therefore to proceed from "being," and thus how "being" is conceived
is crucial. The "being" in question is evidently that of the entities validly
understood in terms of the categories. It is to be noted that the word "being"
here is the participial action noun; I shall distinguish29 it typographically as
"being." This "being" entails "presence"; but it entails more than simply
"presence" ("existence," Dasein). Primarily, the "being" must be that of "a
being." This means that "being" entails "individuality," in the double sense of an
individual and of what is individual to it, i.e., "essence" in the sense of its
own peculiar definiteness. It is to be emphasized that "being" does not connote
only "essence," and that essence does not constitute "being," for "being" entails
"acting." Also, this "being" cannot exclude "becoming," but rather includes it.
Now this "being" necessarily entails "source," in a threefold respect. There is
required a source of its "definiteness," and equally so of its "acting." Further,
since "acting" entails "end," also required is a teleological source. The question
then is whether these three "sources" can validly and coherently be combined into
one. It seems to me that this cannot be done without falling back into the error
to be avoided. Also involved in this is that while "source" of being entails
transcendence of being, "transcendence" here cannot validly entail temporal
precedence, for this would imply "a being" as precedent. "Source" has to be
transcendent and immanent. The Divine, I would say, is more particularly to be
identified with the teleological source, but we should not fall into the error of
completely separating the three sources from each other.
Emory University
Atlanta, Georgia
NOTES
1. A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: Macmillan, 1929), p. 521.
2. Ibid., p. 28.
3. Ivor Leclerc, The Theory of Being, An Inquiry into Ontology. (In preparation).
4. Werner Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers (London: Oxford
University Press, 1947), p. 197, note 2.
5. Charles H. Kahn, The Verb `Be' in Ancient Greek, Part 6 of The Verb `Be' and
its Synonyms, ed. W. M. Verhaar (Dordrecht/Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Co.,
1973).
6. Ibid., p. 217.
7. Ibid., p. 219.
8. Ibid., p. 224.
9. Ibid., p. 224.
10. Ibid., pp. 156ff; 233-35; 330-70.
11. Cf. Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers, p. 197, note 2:
"Homer and Hesiod speak of ta eonta as that which exists at present and contrast
it with ta essomena and ta proeonta, things as they will be in the future and as
they were in the past. This very opposition proves that the word originally
pointed to the immediate and tangible presence of things."
12. Plato, Phaedo, 79 A.
13. Cf. R. Hirzel, "Ousia," Philologus 72, 1913, pp. 42-52.
14. Especially interesting as illustrative of this is Gorgias 471 B, in which
Socrates says: ekballein me ek tes ousias kai tou alethous (to drive me out of my
property, the truth).
15. Cf. Protagoras 349 B; Euthyphro 11 A; Cratylus 423 A, 424 B; Phaedo 65 C., 76
D - 77 A.
16. Aristotle, Metaphysics, VII, 1028 b 4.
17. Ibid., 1028 a 14-15.
18. Ibid., 1038 b 34 - 1039 a 2.
19. Aristotle, De Caelo 302 a 16-18.
20. Aristotle, Metaphysics 1028 b 8-13.
21. Ibid., 1029 a 20-21 (Ross tr.).
22. Aristotle, Physics 191 a 8-12, 194 b 9.
23. Plato, Timaeus 29 D; Republic 308.
24. Plotinus, Ennead, V, 4, 1.
25. Cf. Ennead, III, 8, 8: all ousia kai to tauton to einai kai to noein einai.
26. Cf. Plotinus, Ennead, IV, 7, 85.
27. Cf. Augustine, Confesiones, Bk. VII, ch. 11: "For it is only that which
remains in being without change that truly is."
28. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics 1036 a 5-6.
29. It is important to distinguish "being" as a nominalized participle from
"being" as a gerund substituting for the nominalized infinitive, and thus from des
Sein and l'etre.
COMMENT
On Ivor Leclerc,
"God and the Problem of Being"
SALVINO BIOLO
The thought-provoking report of Professor Leclerc about the fundamental problem of
being, that invited us to a "basic reconsideration," convincingly emphasizes from
the start the close relationship of the two metaphysical aspects of the central
topic: the ontological aspect that considers being as such, and the theological
aspect with its consideration of God.
1. In regard to his introductory remarks, it seems essential to propose some
preliminary questions closely connected with the fundamental problem of the
existence of God.
Prof. Leclerc points out that contemporary scientific development gives a rather
negative meaning to the question: "whether God exists." This seems to be the
predominant attitude also of most modern philosophy. Is possible to see in the
traditional distinction proposed by Leclerc between "that it is" and "what it is,"
the implicit transcendental opposition between, and mutual relationship of,
essence and existence?
I feel rather perplexed in observing how Leclerc, who seems strongly influenced by
the thought of Whitehead, states the basic question as follows: "whether the term
`exists' and `being' can consistently and coherently be used in the same sense
with respect to God as to the natural beings." The term same means "identical"
rather than "similar but different," and could insinuate at the beginning an
attitude suggesting a univocal knowledge of being that would lead in turn to a
pantheistic conception of God.
Another crucial point is the twofold aspect of being: ontological and categorial.
Why are these two terms so closely interconnected, when the term "categorial"
seems to imply a deviation from the correct transcendental and analogical notion
of being? I doubt that it is philosophically justified to use the term
"categorial" in referring to being, particularly in the usage of Whitehead quoted
by Leclerc. In this quotation referring to God he says: ". . . res vera
categorically not different from any other entity or being." I would like to
specify my difficulty in this way: being as such transcends everything, that is,
it penetrates and supercedes all reality since it involves and is involved in all
being, in every aspect and mode of being. Thus it embraces and overflows every
category. Being is immanent in all its determinations and may not be confused with
any determination whatever: "it is neither a thing nor an idea, it constitutes the
profundity of things and the objectivity of ideas."1
2. Concerning his interpretation of Greek philosophy,
Prof. Leclerc quite correctly emphasizes the enduring stability of being as found
in Parmenides, but neglects the differences found in later thinkers.
Considering the explicit ontological and theological nature of the topic, it would
have been helpful to consider more deeply the metaphysical aspects of God as
supreme Beauty found within the Symposium of Plato. This work reaches heights of
sublime transcendence in the field of Greek philosophy, which embraces not only
aspects of absoluteness and uniqueness but also multiplicity and becoming, as in
Heraclitus. Both aspects are reconsidered by Plato and explicitly developed by
Aristotle. Although Leclerc gave the two great masters special consideration, he
might have more clearly focused their thought to allow an interpretation closer to
the traditional one.
Referring to Plato he provides an initial orientation to the analogy of being when
he reveals his fundamental distinction between the identical and the different in
both things and ideas. Does Plato exclude completely the real and true nature of
being in the things of this world, even if they appear like shadows in comparison
with the reality of ideas? If so, what do the typical Platonic insights of mimesis
(imitation) and of metexis (participation) imply, considering the terms of their
operations? These basic insights, because they imply a doctrine of analogy, should
not be neglected; they include both a certain similarity and a greater
dissimilarity in regard to the respective reality of things and ideas. This holds
to a much greater extent when we consider the supreme ideas of the Good and of the
Beautiful?
I agree with Prof. Leclerc's acknowledgement of Aristotle's fundamental
contribution to our central problems. As one who is in agreement with the
"perennial philosophy," I would like to suggest that the metaphysical principles
of Aristotle should be developed in a different and more coherent direction. For
example, his solution of the classic dilemma of Parmenides (being either is or is
not) rests upon the basic distinction of potency and act, that suggests an
ontological difference between beings as they are this or that, but an ontological
similarity between beings as they simply are. This opens a pathway to the future
development of the logical and ontological aspects of intrinsic analogy.2 It is
true that every material thing in this world is a "composite" sunodos of matter
and form. But "matter and form" are the principles of intrinsic causes within the
natural constitution of material being. The "composite" also demands, as Aristotle
explains, the extrinsic "efficient and final" causes of that composition.
Considering further Aristotle's interpretation of the knowledge of being, Prof.
Leclerc makes a fundamental point: "eidos is the arche (source) of knowledge as
well as of to on" (p. 9). Certainly in answer to the question: what is being?
Aristotle replies that the cause of being is its immanent form (Met. Z, 17). But
allowing that such an interpretation is possible and coherent, I would like to
suggest a development in the line of Thomas Aquinas' thought and founded upon an
Aristotelian insight. Let me explain further: the eidos is a proximate formal
principle of the knowledge of being and not an agent. It is of being as known, but
not of being as made to be.
3. Regarding his brief consideration of both St. Thomas and St. Augustine, his
brief mention of St. Augustine is correct but is too partial, both for what it
says and what it does not say. Augustine has not only provoked struggles among
thinkers, but both as a theologian and a philosopher he suggested a radical
solution to the problem of the origin of being from God.
The passage from the Confessions quoted partially by Leclerc, in its completeness
certainly affirms the absolute being of God, but also attributes being, that is
relative by participation, to other things:
Also I considered all the other things that are of a lower order than yourself,
and I saw that they have not absolute being in themselves, nor are they entirely
without being. They are real in so far as they have their being from you, but
unreal in the sense that they are not what you are. For it is only that which
remains in being without change that truly is."3
The relationship of beings to God is one of dependency in their common reality,
but opposition in their similar yet different being. Some lines earlier Augustine,
in one of his most brilliant insights, had explained this very similar idea about
the dependency of created things, including the mind itself:
What I saw was something, quite different from any light we know on earth. It
shone above my mind, but not in the way that oil floats above water or the sky
hangs over the earth. It was above me because it was itself the Light that made
me, and I was below because I was made by it.4
Augustine accepts the transcendence of God from Platonic philosophy but develops
it differently in order to accommodate God as Creator according to the Jewish-
Christian revelation. It is metaphysically important for our common problem to
emphasize that this Doctor of the Church also uses the term `source' (fons) about
God to explain that he is the Principle of all: . . . these knowing God, found
that in Him was both the cause of the whole creation, the light of all true
learning, and the source of all felicity."5 "Source" is here clearly used in a
metaphorical way to express the metaphysical category of first cause, that is the
Creator.
Considering Prof. Leclerc's treatment of St. Thomas, whose conception of analogy
is very different from that of Duns Scotus and Ockam, I would like to stress that
he further explains the doctrine of creation systematically with an explicit
distinction betweem--but not by separating--essence and existence. Therefore being
is not only identified with "to be" but also implies "it." Thus Thomas both sought
and found a mode of expression that would resolve the supposedly rigorous contrast
between the being and becoming of creatures. He could say that the Creator is "a
being," but such a singular being that He is the Pure Act of being, who freely
makes beings that are capable of, and contain the reality of becoming. In a
similar way there is no reason to be frightened of the "same mode of thinking"
being used in regard to God and other beings. The correct way of thinking about,
and predicating value of, God and creatures is analogous not univocal. Nor is it
equivocal but similar and different, although the difference is a major one
because He is the cause propria of all things.
What is such through the essence is the proper cause of what is such by
participation. But only God is being through his essence, while all other things
are beings through participation, because only in God `esse est sua essentia'.
Consequently the `to be' of every existing reality is a proper effect of God, in
such a way that every thing that produces some existing thing does so insofar as
it acts in the power of God."6
Therefore, strictly speaking, God is not "Wholly other" but "simply different."
Total difference is repugnant because it would create an abyss between God and
creatures who are related to Him.
4. Regarding the principal conclusions to be reached and the final problems that
need to be resolved, it seems that when Prof. Leclerc affirms that: "there are
aporiae involved in the dominant doctrine of God as `a being' which is the source
of other things," he multiplies rather than resolves the problems. It is not clear
to what dominant doctrine he is referring. He formulates the question by focusing
on the problem of the origin of beings from God, beginning from a conception of
being.
In order to clarify my interpretation and to discover some solution for the main
problem, I would like to propose two questions and two possible solutions.
My first question in the form of dilemma regards the origin of beings from God: Is
it by emanation or creation? My dilemma is proposed both in reference to the
missing solution in Aristotle, whose fundamental principles I can accept, and also
in order to seek a further clarification from Prof. Leclerc about the term
"source" in reference to God. "Source" more strongly suggests a metaphor than a
technical philosophical category. Only if that word means "active cause," and in
this context creative cause, is it acceptable. Otherwise I cannot see any way of
overcoming almost impossible difficulties. It is precisely here that we have need
of the doctrine of analogy where we try to use the fundamental and universal
category of "cause."
Leclerc finally asks about individual being which includes becoming: "Now this
`being' necessarily entails `source' in a threefold respect."
The first aspect: "there is required a source of its definiteness." The word
"source" here is overburdened with too much meaning, considering the delicacy and
importance of the fundamental question of the origin of being. I therefore think
that in this context "source" may be (a) the substantial form which is the
intrinsic principle determining and specifying being as this or that substance or
essence; (b) an accidental form which is a further actual determination of the
substance; or (c) the extrinsic efficient Principle, which is the first Cause of
singular beings.
It is essential that we do not confuse the constitutive intrinsic principles with
the extrinsic transcendent first Principle who is God. Here is the crucial aspect
of the entire question. If by "source" Leclerc means the creative Cause of being,
then I am in agreement with him. However, if by "source" he means something less
as immanent in this world, then I cannot agree with his vague use of the word.
This is not to deny that the transcendent first Principle is also immanent, but
actively and creatively immanent. Such a first Principle is not to be identified
with beings who are relative in their dependence.
The second aspect: "and equally so of its acting." Because "to act is the
consequence of to be" (operari sequitur esse) it is necessary to make some further
distinctions that are a logical application of those we have already made.
First of all: If "source" means the first Cause that makes every being exist and
consequently act, then the expression is acceptable. However, if by "source" he
means an intrinsic principle like substance or accident, then the logical
consequence must be a type of pantheism.
The third aspect: "Further since `acting' entails `end', (there is) also required
a teleological source." Because "every agent works for an end" (Omne agens agit
propter finem) in a determined manner, and this indicates the ultimate existence
of an intellect, we must still distinguish: (a) if "teleological source" means
final, extrinsic Cause as an ultimate end to which all is oriented and ordered, it
is acceptable. In this instance this final cause must therefore be identified with
the first Principle from which every thing originates. This first Cause or
Principle makes the teleological order residing in every contingent being, and
must be both the first Intelligence and Will that thinks and wills the existence
of beings. However this does not appear to be what Leclerc means. (b) On the
contrary, if "teleological source" means some principle internal to beings as a
constitutive element of their very natures, then it must simply be denied, because
it inevitably leads to pantheism.
Finally it seems to me that the crucial point we must always emphasize is that God
is both transcendent and immanent. He is transcendent because, insofar as He gives
being to all creatures, He is superior to all relative beings. But by this very
same fact of creation He is also immanent, in that He is intimately present
causing what is most intimate in beings to be: "Yet you were deeper (intimior)
than my deepest self and higher (superior) than the topmost height that I could
reach."7
In regard to his final statement: "The Divine is more particularly to be
identified with the teleological source," I prefer finally to explicitly call that
"source" God, insofar as He is the creative "source" which makes the teleological
order of the universe including man. But let us not call God "source" if by this
we mean an internal principle that is identified with the nature of created
things. This seems to be the error that should be avoided at all costs because of
the danger of pantheism.
As far as the second question is concerned I would like to refer briefly to the
general conception of God and being and to the presuppositions related to these
questions. What fundamental conception do we have of man as far as he conceives
and knows being, and finally God? Only if we are grounded in a sound epistemology
and methodology of the knowing and conscious subject can we be capable of both
certainty and truth. Unless we are intellectually open to the notion of being and
consequently to self-transcendence, and to the absolute transcendence of the Ipsum
Esse, we cannot have any answer to the problem of being and the mystery of God.
Gregorian University
Rome, Italy
NOTES
1. "L'etre apparait comme le sens des phenomenes, ce qui le pose et permet de les
affirmer. Il n'est ni chose ni idee; il fait la profondeur des choses et
l'objectivite des idees." Joseph De Finance. La connaissance de l'etre. (Paris:
Desclee de Brower, 1966), p. 36.
2. "The notion of being penetrates all other contents, and so it is present in the
formulation of every concept. It cannot result from an insight into being, for
such an insight would be an understanding we have not attained. It is, as has been
said, the orientation of intelligent and rational consciousness towards an
unrestricted objective." Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., Insight (London: Longemans,
Green and Co., 1957), p. 360.
3. Confessions, VII, x, 17.
4. Ibid. VII, x, 16. It is very significant: " . . . sed superior quia ipsa (=lux)
fecit me, et ego inferior quia factus ab ea."
5. The City of God, VIII, 10.
6. St. Thomas, III C.G., 66, 6.
7. St. Augustine, Confessions, III, vi, 11. "Tu autem eras intimior intimo meo et
superior summo meo." It belongs to the brilliant genius of Augustine to have
recognized the intimate relationship existing between the immanence and
transcendence of God.
CHAPTER II
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
H.D. LEWIS
The notion of religious experience appears to me central to all discussions of
major religious issues today. It is however a notion about which there appears to
be a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding. There are terms like `Nature',
and `Freedom', which admit of such a wide variety of interpretation (some of them
sharply contradictory) that their use tends to become almost pointless. `Religious
experience' is apt to fall into this class. It is sometimes used to refer to any
religious activity or practice whatsoever, and thus to become quite otiose. This
is the use that some have in mind when they say that they have never had a
religious experience; they just mean that they are agnostics. For others
`religious experience' means some very peculiar type of experience, like having
visions or hearing voices, or having a distinctively mystical experience. For some
the term is associated, with some but only very limited justification, with an
excessively emotional religious indulgence. In its main use, and in the profound
importance ascribed to it by devout persons in all ages, the term stands for none
of these things. It is important therefore to indicate just what we should
normally understand by `religious experience'. I shall attempt to do this as
fairly as I can within a limited space, and I shall also try to give a brief
indication of how this relates to other major concerns.
I shall waste no time over those who think of religious experience primarily, and
perhaps exclusively, in terms of paranormal phenomena. Such occurrences need not
in fact be properly religious at all. To what extent they may be I have discussed
in Chapters XIV and XV of my Our Experience of God.1 Those who have had paranormal
experiences in the context of their religious life, ascribe importance to them
only in relation to other aspects of their faith; usually they minimize their
importance and treat them as quite peripheral to their essential commitment. This
is why it seemed to me so unreasonable for a critic of the standing of Alasdair
MacIntyre, in a well known book2 some years ago, to make such heavy weather over
claims to have had visions of the Virgin Mary, etc. Did she `speak Aramaic', did
she `remember Galilee'? Questions of this kind seem to me to show a total, indeed
obtuse, insensitivity to what religion is essentially like, even in the contexts
where visions and voices and other forms of `the marvelous' are in fact invoked.
But we must be equally careful not to think of religious experience merely in
terms of some features of human experience as a whole or some generalizations or
deductions from what our situation as human beings is like. Religious experience,
in essentials, is not incipient metaphysics, however important it may be for
metaphysical reflection. Its peculiar significance derives from its being a
distinctive experience which people undergo, as they may have a moral or an
aesthetic experience. This does not mean that it is always easy to recognize or
delimit, as in the case for example, of some forms of pain. But it would be quite
wrong to identify it with features of experience which all can recognize, or with
natural occurrences to which some further religious significance may be ascribed.
Religious experience is essentially religious, a distinct ingredient, to my mind a
vital one, in an essentially religious awareness, and identifiable as such.
I go out of my way to stress this because of a prevailing tendency, in current
philosophy of religion, to think that so much of religion is initially neutral,
even the sense of the numinous according to some. In my view, we cannot produce
any proper form of religion out of non-religious elements. There is indeed a place
for the interpretation of experience; perception for example looks very different
as the philosopher considers some of its extraordinary features. The last thing I
wish to do is to discourage reflection on religious awareness, or to present it as
a raw datum which some may accept, others not, and no more. We need in fact to
think more carefully about it than anything else in religious commitment at
present. But we must not, in the process, so dilute it that it is nothing
recognizable in and for itself.
The same goes for some fashionable views which equate religious experience with an
alleged contentless relation with God sometimes known as an `I-Thou relation'. I
have a very great regard for Martin Buber, and I wish more heed were paid by those
who refer to him to my fairly close discussion, in Chapter XIII of The Elusive
Mind, of what emerges in a positive way from all that he had to say on this theme.
But I make no sense whatsoever, in human or in divine relationships, of a mere
relation to which no kind of a distinctive precise significance can be attached.
The nearest we get to this is the insight or intuition into the inevitability of
there being God, and of this I shall say more shortly. But an encounter which is
no particular kind of encounter, a `meeting' which cannot be characterized in any
way, appears to me to be just nothing. To make the invocation of it a way of by-
passing all the hard epistemological problems is just an escape from our
intellectual responsibility, it plays into the hands of contemptuous agnostics.
For related reasons I dismiss all accounts of religious experience in exclusively
emotional terms. Emotion plays its part, but the core of religious experience, I
submit, is essentially cognitive. How then should we understand it?
At the centre, it seems to me, is the enlivened sense of the being of God or, if
that at this stage is too theistic a term, of some supreme transcendent reality -
as involved in the being of anything at all. This is what lies behind the
traditional arguments. We all know their inadequacy as arguments, notwithstanding
all the refinements attempted in recent times. But they still haunt us, and this
seems to me to be because they reflect in different ways the conviction that there
can be no ultimate fortuitousness in the being of things. We seek explanations of
the way things are, not as a mere psychological compulsion but as rational beings.
We do not give up when no sort of explanation is possible, we insist that it must
be available somewhere; but no finite explanation is fully adequate, each proceeds
in terms of the way we actually find that things cohere, but there remains the
question why they should be this way at all, or why anything at all should exist.
We can, at least without sheer inconsistency, say that it all just happened, that
somehow things began to be out of a total void and took the remarkable course
which enables us to manipulate and understand our environment, in terms of perfect
concomitant variation even to the astonishing vastness and complexities of
macroscopic and microscopic science of today. We may not contradict ourselves if
we say that all this just came into being out of nothing, but is it credible? Why
should anything start up at all, much less take the remarkable intelligible shape
they have out of just nothing? On the other hand it is equally unintelligible to
suppose that the world has always been, that in no sense has there been any sort
of origination. `Always' in this sense becomes meaningless. Aeons beyond all
computation, and certainly beyond imaginative realization, we can at least
comprehend, but a strictly infinite past is just not intelligible.
It is these radical antinomies that compel us to recognize some more ultimate
reality in which all that we can, in principle, comprehend is rooted, but which is
not itself comprehensible beyond the recognition of its inevitability, a mystery,
not partial but total, in which everything there is is invested, but not the
mystery of mere bewilderment, the mystery of real transcendent being.
Philosophers put this in fairly sophisticated terms. But the sense of it, however
imperfectly expressed, does not require great sophistication. It is elicited in
various ways, not least by what Jaspers has called `limit situations', and I have
ventured myself elsewhere to indicate in more detail how the sense of the
transcendent is awakened in the minds of the most naive as well as of
sophisticated persons and societies. It can be traced back as far as recorded
history goes. Art and practice as well as intellectual reflection involve it. But
granted some intimation in this way of a supreme or transcendent reality, how do
we go from there?
It is at this point that I would wish to invoke the idea of religious experience.
I wish to stress very much that I do not appeal to the notion of religious
experience as such to establish the existence of God, least of all in the naive
form of insisting that there must be God because we experience him. That would
clearly not do without indication of the sort of experience this is and how it is
warranted. It could be a gigantic begging of the question. Religious experience
properly comes in at the point where we ask, how we go further than the sense of
some ultimate all-encompassing mystery involved in all that we are or find.
There are of course some who do not seek to go further. They stay at the sense of
profound wonderment at the essentially incomprehensible source of all there is,
sometimes almost to the point of the repudiation of finite being. In practice
actual religion has rarely been able to remain at this rarefied level. Present
existence claims its rights and our attention. Finite existence cannot be denied
any more than the infinite, even if it finds no better place than some mode or
articulation of the infinite. At some level there appear, from the remotest times
to our own, particular practices, attitudes, obligations, varied and suggestive
symbolism, all intimating that the sacred which, in one sense, we cannot approach
and whose essential mystery we cannot fathom, is nonetheless peculiarly present,
`in thy mouth and in thy heart', as one scripture puts it, that it involves a way
of life for us, a purpose, a formative influence in personal and social history, a
meaning and a presence articulating itself in all manner of ways and leading, in
some instances, to highly refined formulations of belief, even to the curiously
presumptuous intimacy of petitionary prayer. Men speak of meeting God, of
`walking' with him, of hearing his voice, of turning away from him, of
encountering his wrath and, in the same awareness almost, finding him a seeking,
reconciling God who draws all men to their ultimate fulfilment `in him'. They even
speak of God incarnate as a living, limited finite creature who died in a
scandalously shameful way. How is any of this to be warranted, affirmed or
rejected? What meaning can it have?
It is here, in my view, that religious experience is the seminal and vital
consideration. I do not, of course, wish to deny, that the `insight' into there
having to be God, along the lines indicated, is itself an experience. But it is so
in the sense that all cognition is experience. To apprehend that twice two is
four, or that the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees, is experience. But
no one would claim, in these cases, that we know from experience, on the basis of
what we find or observe, that these things are so, as we know that grass is green
and fire is hot. `The appeal to religious experience', as it is sometimes called,
is not a strictly empirical one, in the sense of empiricism which confines it to
presentations of sense, but it has more in common with it than strictly a priori
knowledge.' Certain things are claimed on the basis of certain things that have
happened.
The one qualification of this, and it is a vital one, is the point already noted,
namely that at the core of religious experience, is the enlivened insight into the
being of God. We do not know this because things happen in any particular way,
but, essentially, because they happen at all. The insight involved is peculiar but
certainly not quasi-empirical. On the other hand, the enlivening of this insight
in peculiar conditions, and the repercussions of it on other crucial aspects of
particular experiences, seem to me to be the raw material out of which all other
genuine religious awareness is built - and by which it is tested.
At this point there is a very close analogy between the way we know one another
and the way we know God. We do not know the existence of other persons generally
in any a priori or in any intuitive way, though some philosophers do make that
strange claim. We know all we know about other persons, I submit, in some mediated
way, however close and intimate this may be. Without some evidence we would not
know the existence of anyone. But the being of God we know quite differently, as
indicated. It is in no sense a matter of evidence as this usually goes. But all
the rest is, and it is along these lines that I, at least, react to the familiar
challenge of empiricist critics - what would count for or against your belief? For
the existence of God I answer `nothing'. It is not that kind of awareness, it is a
quite peculiar insight about which nonetheless much may be said, again along the
lines indicated. But for all other affirmations, the live particularization of
profound devotion, we turn to specific evidence, to what counts for or against, to
what can, in some respects at least, be analyzed and set forth, though by no means
in exclusively sensible terms.
I make a special point of stressing this, as so many who are concerned about
religion, at highpowered professional levels or more simply, fall back before the
fashionable challenge on either blind appeals to authority or some vague
noncognitive attitude or commitment for which there is no rational justification.
Interest in religion may be revived today, in fleeting and transitory ways, by
simple-minded appeals to emotion or hysteria or palliatives to those who hunger
for spiritual sustenance - or we may make do for a while with attenuations which
but thinly disguise the essential secularity of our attitudes. But this will not
last. Religion needs justification, most of all in a sophisticated age like out
own. No great religion can survive without it.
It is this justification of what is distinctive in the claims of the great
religions, and the means of assessment and the basis of dialogue, that is to be
found essentially, in my view, in religious experience, rightly understood. The
points of convergence as well as the differences can be much better understood in
these terms and a means made possible of maintaining our distinctive stances while
entering with genuine empathy and appreciation into the religious devotion of
others. It will also be a very great gain indeed, in all religions, to show that
we are fully equipped to confront the demand for justification and fully take the
point of empiricist critics, though by no means entirely on their own terms.
Let us return, then, now to the question what a religious experience involves
besides the enlivened sense of the being and mystery of God. I want first to add
here that, if the transcendent is to function adequately as the ultimate answer to
our `why questions', or as explanation in the very special elusive sense
indicated, it must be deemed to be complete and adequate in all respects in
itself, in other words perfect in the evaluational sense as well as self-
sustaining. I do not see how anything less than supreme perfection could meet the
case, and in this context I would like to refer you to a quite admirable, but not
I suspect sufficiently regarded, book by Professor Sontag entitled Divine
Perfection (Student Movement Press). The sense of the holy is essentially
evaluational, and does not become so, as is implied in some readings of Otto, by
further schematization. This point I must leave as it is for our purpose.
The main point to be stressed now is that the sense of ultimate being, mysterious
beyond any fathoming in what it must be in itself other than ultimate perfection,
has a distinctive impact on other formative features of the total experience in
which it occurs. It corrects the perspective in which we view the world around us,
it highlights what is of greatest import for us, it makes us see the familiar
anew, as in art and poetry; and it does this under the insistent sense of
transcendent being unavoidably having its place in our thought. The transcendent
claims what it stimulates for its own; and God, whom no man hath seen, the
impenetrably Holy, removed and remote as infinite being from finite, becomes a
closely intimate articulate presence in the very core of our own essentially
finite awareness.
The substance of what we come to learn about God in this way is finite. It may
present difficulties but no difficulties beyond our understanding and resolving in
the normal exercise of finite intelligence. What we learn is finite and has no
irresolvable mystery in it, much is indeed very simple, however astonishing on
occasion. The peculiarly divine factor comes in when these exceptional insights
into our own situation and its requirements are seen to be induced in a very sharp
way, deepened and refined, under the impact of the movingly enlivened sense of the
Holy and the transcendent. As I have put it elsewhere, God puts his own imprimatur
on certain insights and sensitivities, he underlines, as it were, certain things
in our experience and writes his own mind into them. They come to carry his
authority additional to their own. They are what he specifically wants us to note.
The devout acquire the art of listening and heeding what is communicated thus
within our own sensitivity and concentration.
One feature of exceptional importance in this process whereby our understanding is
extended in the enlivened sense of the involvement of our lives in a supreme and
transcendent reality is the refinement and deepening of moral awareness. The view
has often been advanced that we cannot ascribe genuine objectivity to ethical
principles unless they are considered to be expressly dependent on some religious
reality. This seems to me to be dangerous doctrine. It is plain that persons with
no religious awareness or commitment can have profound appreciation of moral
ideals and splendid devotion to them. There is no inconsistency or logical
impropriety in their being so. The objectivity of morals is autonomous, as I have
stressed myself on many occasions, and some of the most notable and persuasive
defenders of moral objectivity have been prominent agnostic philosophers such as
G. E. Moore and C. D. Broad. Their case, a very convincing one to me, does not
rest at all on religion. Ethics has no more direct dependence on religion than
mathematics or science. But this does not preclude morality from being, as most
persons would take it to be, at the very heart of reliion.
It is so not just because the ultimate is also supreme perfection, and commitment
to it is also therefore commitment to what is surpassingly good, but also because
it is in the refinement of ethical understanding, in the sharpening of conscience
as it may more popularly be put, that the peculiar disclosure of divine intention
for us takes place. It is in the voice of our own conscience that the voice of God
is most distinctly and significantly heard. This does not make conscience an
essentially religious faculty, but it does make it the pre-eminent medium within
which the articulation of the mind of God to us takes place. It is here above all
that we find our exceptional clue to what God is like and what is our own
involvement and special relation to him.
None of this means that devout people are morally infallible or have a monopoly of
all good sense and advance in ethical understanding. There are perversions of
religion and profound misunderstandings about its nature that have been very
gravely detrimental to ethical good sense and which have from time to time brought
religion itself into serious discredit. The refinement of moral understanding
involves moreover a great deal besides the sharpening of ethical insight as such;
it requires sound appreciation of the facts and circumstances in various
situations and the over-all consequences of various policies. On these matters the
devout may not always be the best authorities, and religion certainly confers no
immunity from error on matters of fact. Nor does it always carry with it the
guarantee of the finest ethical insight as such. The agnostic may sometimes excel
in both regards.
What we can say however is that, other things being equal, the enlivened sense of
the transcendent carries with it essentially a refinement of moral sensitivity and
that it is moreover to this source that the most impressive advances in ethical
principles over the years have been due. This is not the place to justify the
latter submission in detail. My concern at the moment is more with the general
contention that, while it is inherently impossible for us to rise beyond our
finite nature and comprehend the being and mind of God as it is for him, we find
the incursion of the divine into specific human experience, and thereby a
preeminent clue into what our relation to it should be, in the peculiarly
religious toning and refining of moral experience.
This is not the only example, far from it. We may speak in similar terms of our
appreciation of the world around us and its significance, and of the impetus this
has given, among other things, to the advance of science. The artistic attitude is
in the same way close to religion here, and each has immensely fructified the
other for that reason. But it is not primarily a matter of general affinity as of
moments of profound religious awareness in which the deepening of religious
insight as such takes its course in the blending of itself with perceptions and
sensitivity in other secular regards which thereby afford distinctive matter,
apprehensible in the normal secular way by us, out of which the fullness and the
richness and the intimacy of genuine religious existence is shaped, and by which
it is also corrected and criticized.
Correction and criticism are indeed of very great importance here. For the
distinctively religious factor, in a total religious experience, operates upon and
within the other secular features of our situation. These often have faults of
their own, and this is how it comes about that we sometimes sincerely ascribe to
the voice of God items which are only too grievously marked by our own limitations
and failings. It would be fine in some ways if the mind of God were disclosed to
us in some indelible and wholly unmistakable way, written in the sky or on tablets
of stone or of gold in some inscription which is indisputably divine. Dispute, and
presumably doubt, would be at an end. But it does not happen that way. Short of
being God ourselves what sanction could we invoke, what are the credentials of a
message so conveyed? There is indeed no such way for the voice of God to be heard
by finite beings. He speaks in the ways we can understand in his peculiar
obtrusion into the normal exercise of the faculties with which he has endowed us.
But it is not the mere exercise of finite powers that is involved. There is the
peculiar transformation of them which we have the reasons indicated for ascribing
to divine intervention in the enlivened sense of the transcendent already
described.
A genuine prophet can, for these reasons, be sincerely mistaken, and devout
persons have always to be searching out their own minds and hearts to be as sure
as they can that what they take to be the voice of god is not the voice of their
own errors and failings, or at least tinged by these. That does not preclude
firmness of conviction and deliverance. The prophet may speak with authority, but
he must be mindful also that he is but a medium, a vessel that is often cracked
and broken.
One particular feature of the fallibility of genuine prophetic awareness is the
involvement of all of us in the particular circumstances of our age and society.
When, as in societies at a relatively low level of moral development, the sense of
the divine impinges upon their attitudes, the progress they make will be
correspondingly limited and sometimes distorted. If the ethical understanding of a
community has not advanced beyond the level of crude retribution and collective
guilt, there may well be a genuinely religious ingredient in the perpetuation of
ideas which a more enlightened age would find morally abhorrent. What we have to
be constantly heeding is the intertwining of genuine religious disclosure and
insight with other all too fallible aptitudes and interests of finite creatures.
Much in the sacred scriptures of various religions will become more intelligible
to us and can be viewed judiciously in their proper setting if we think, as
indicated, of divine disclosure as a leaven in the totality of our own aptitudes
and aspirations. At the same time the distinctiveness of the transcendent
influence must not be lost or wholly merged in the finite media on which it
operates.
The precise moment of genuine religious awareness, operating within the functions
it claims for its own operation, may not always be easily delimited. It may be
sharp as in sudden conversion, but even in these cases there is often a period of
subtle maturing in which truly religious elements come to their open and more
explicit formulation. More commonly, although religious awareness and sensitivity
may be clear and explicit, it has its own ebb and flow, it merges itself in other
concentrations of attention, it may be gentle and unobtrusive, in acts of worship
or meditation, much as aesthetic awareness is not always easily delimited and
isolated from the observations and attentiveness which it takes up into itself. It
is for these reasons that some may even fail to detect the moment of live
religious awareness or allow it in retrospection to be lost in the media which it
embraces. This, in particular is where very careful thought is needed in our times
to detect and uphold the element of genuine religious awareness against crude and
bogus travesties of it.
This is all the more the case because the live religious awareness lives on in
other experiences and practices and also perpetuates itself dispositionally in our
way of living as a whole. Its occurrence may be known obliquely and indirectly,
and this in notable cases is no mean assurance of its presence. It may well become
apparent by its fruits. But we can never rely on that alone. The enlivened
individual awareness is the indispensable religious factor, and it is out of it
preeminently that the distinctively religious shape of any faith is formed.
In my fuller discussion of these matters, in my book Our Experience of God, I also
ascribed particular importance to what I described as the patterning of religious
experience. There are significant recurrences and variations which I sought to
describe. It has often been found, for example, that the enlivened awareness of
transcendent being often comes about in situations where we have least
justification for expecting it, for example in states of an overwhelming sense of
guilt. The latter, especially a sense of grievous wrong-doing, comes between us
and one another and between us and God, it drives us on our own inner resources
which dry up without the sustaining sense of the world around us and of other
persons. It is in this debility that we find the real penalty of sin. But,
surprisingly, it is often in just this situation of despair and desperation that
men have found the onset of the renewed awareness, sometimes gentle, sometimes
disturbing, of infinite being as the end and sustainer of their own existence; and
life as a whole becomes renewed again and transformed. The recurrence of this, its
variations and the extension of it into the religious consciousness of various
societies, builds itself up over the ages into the sense of God, not as mere
remote sustainer or `Unmoved Mover', but as a seeking reconciling God peculiarly
involved in what we are and in our relationship with him. This is, to my mind, a
very important aspect of the emergence of the more theistic forms of religion.
The same may be said of other situations of desperation, whether we bring them on
ourselves or not. It does not follow that distressing circumstances and evil are
straightaway resolved. Appalling evil is still with us and presents the severest
tension and strain for religious commitment. It is not a problem I can lightly
deviate into now. But in these situations also men have found the sustaining and
recurring sense of God invading their attitudes as a whole and giving them renewal
of strength. God comes to be known as `an ever present help in trouble'.
My submission, without pursuing any of these illustrations in further detail here,
is that it is in the substance and the patterning, which I would also much stress,
of the moulding and refining of otherwise neutral sensitivities and attitudes by
the insistent impact of the transcendent rather than in a priori and essentially
empty attempts to determine abstract properties of God, that we find the
vindication and shaping, as well as the appropriate critique, of the more
particular affirmations and practices of actual living religions. The parallel
with `other minds' is here very close. We do not, as I have persistently
maintained elsewhere, know the minds of other persons as we know our own; however
close our relationships may be, however intimate, there is an essential element of
mediation. The relation we have with God is no less intimate and close because it
comes in the mediation of the peculiar modification of our own experience, it is
as close as finite-infinite relationships can be, and to those who experience it
profoundly there is no barrier that matters.
For many who persist in an agnostic or skeptical view of religion I suspect that a
major determinant of their attitude is the expectation that religion must
vindicate itself for them, if at all, in some form of supernatural experience of
which finite beings are not capable at all. This is the sophisticated version of
the expectation that the astronauts may discover God for us. What we need is to
know better where and how to look, and to persevere more in the demanding
discipline of looking in the right way. Far too often we take it all to be a
matter of a few formal considerations one way or the other when in fact it is a
matter of living committed lives in the closest association with the witness of
profound experience over the ages.
Closely related to the same mistake is the supposition that religious experience
is essentially and wholly a private matter. It has to be initially and in itself
private, but what matters most is not the intimations of God that we may chance to
have in our more exclusively private existence, but rather the absorption into our
individual awareness of the wealth and significance of the sustained and
developing religious awareness of men down the ages. It is not in a void that we
encounter God but in all the rich diversities of our cultures and the formative
part of religion within them. This is what must come alive for us in our
individual experience.
This is what is sustained for us in various ritual and symbolic practices. How
these function, and where they are genuine and healthy, is a subject in itself.
There can clearly be perversions and parasitic imitations, just as there can be
over-intellectualized treatments of practices where the true significance is
closely bound up with the figurative and symbolic expression. Symbolism is not a
thing apart, a decorative superimposition, it is a major, and often indispensable
way of articulating what is profoundly perceived and felt and finds its
appropriate depth in the fertilization and sustaining of one another's experience
within a continuing social unit. At the same time the symbol is not final, and the
ritual must not become an end in itself, much less be exploited for purposes
extrinsic to its proper motivation, indeed as has sometimes happened evil
purposes.
All the same, in the last resort, the symbol is not final and it does not exist
for itself. It derives its proper power from the continuity of the experience it
expresses. The same is true in art. Poetry, or other forms of art, which depend
entirely on lively image or emotional overtones, is not the finest. It palls
unless it high-lights or exhibits something distinctive and notable, however
impossible it may be to distil the meaning from its figurative expression. The
symbol must not, in religion, take wing on its own, it must be anchored in
experience.
The same is true of the more formally credal expressions of religious truth. There
is a place for sophisticated formulation, acutely difficult though it is and full
of pitfalls, but it is not, alas as has too often been assumed, an a priori
intellectual exercise. It proceeds on the basis of what is taken to be conveyed in
the medium of live experiences enriching and extending one another in a variety of
social contexts. This means that the theologian has a peculiarly difficult task
and requires a greater variety of skills and aptitudes than is usually realized,
least of all by the practitioners themselves--a point which I much stressed
elsewhere.3 It is particularly hard because one has to be responsive to the
symbolism, and the appropriate artistry, and also to the critical assessment of
all which these convey.
A very serious pitfall, most of all for Western theologians and religious
thinkers, is to take some striking religious symbol or story out of its context in
the total themes of the scriptures in which it appears. This has happened, for
example, when juristic metaphors in the New Testament have been made the basis of
doctrines of retributive punishment and vicarious suffering in ways appalling to
any moral or intellectual sensitivity. Creda1 affirmations do have their important
place, most of all in religions in which the historical factor is important. They
help to concentrate attention in the right way. But they must proceed on the basis
of what is initially made evident in the formative disclosures in experience.
In Semitic religion there is usually accorded an exceptionally important place to
a distinctive form which divine disclosure in human experience is alleged to have
taken in a particular stretch of history. This is not the place to assess that
claim or the even more astounding claim that the one transcendent reality was
able, in some way which baffles all comprehension, to so limit itself as to enter
into a fully human limited form in the culmination of the process which had been
taking shape in Hebrew history. This remains the central Christian affirmation and
I myself make very little sense of recent attempts to retain the formulae and
ritual practices of the Christian faith if these central themes, as they seem to
me, of the New Testament and traditional Christian understanding are so eroded as
to bear little relation to the sources from which they came and the meaning they
would normally be given. Far better, it would seem to me to abandon them
altogether, though that is far from what I myself commend.
At the moment the question is not the soundness of the distinctive claims of the
Christian faith or any other. But there is one point I do want to stress, namely
that the assessment of these and like affirmations must, in the last analysis, go
back to the profoundest appreciation of the subtle interlacing of normal
sensitivity with divine intimation. If this adds up, in the available evidence
about Jesus and his background, to the central affirmations of the New Testament
and traditional Christian thought, so be it - it is what I myself think. But if
the central claims are not to be sustained along those lines I know of no way in
which they can be so sustained that can stand in the light of open reflection and
criticism today.
It remains most important, however, to recognize that, which ever way the evidence
points in respect to the distinctive stances of various religious, this is no bar
to the profound recognition of one another's insights and achievements. We have
learnt much better today how much of mutual enrichment of one another's experience
and insight is possible in this way. The differences, where they remain, must not
be blurred, any more than they must be hardened by misunderstanding. We can reach
across to one another's practices and histories to the great deepening and
enlivening of our own experience, and the gain in this way to the West today is
much too evident for me to need to underline it now. We have learnt enormously
from varieties of experience that were new to us, and the range of our sensitivity
has been much extended. Meditation has acquired a new depth for us, and flights of
religious imagination opened up that were little known before. My contention is
that the major clue for understanding and assessment, when expertise and
scholarship has done its work, is the religious toning and directing of religious
experience along the lines indicated.
There is one point of considerable substance which I would like to add. It refers
to what I was saying at the beginning about the initial awareness of the
transcendent. In my understanding, the transcendent is altogether beyond and other
than finite being. Creaturely existence, though wholly dependent, is not any part
or mode of ultimate being. This is however much in dispute, not only in extensive
features of Eastern thought but in Western philosophies from Plotinus to Hegel and
contemporary mystical philosophers like W. T. Stace. This again is a vast issue in
itself and the opposition of view varies a great deal in its sharpness. I
maintain, however, that this is the crucial issue for today in religious thought.
It is not an easy one, and we all have our attachments to entrenched positions
which we find hard to surrender. My own allegiance has been made plain in one
publication after another. I strongly insist on the distinct reality of finite
existences and especially on the peculiar distinctness of persons. On the line we
take on this issue will turn, more than on anything else at present, the ultimate
understanding we have, and even the sensitivity to genuine religious reality as
such. It is an issue we must firmly face, though the last thing we must fall into
is the temptation to settle the question lightly out of hand to ensure easy
accommodation and good will. The right sort of good will does not call for that
sort of price, and is contaminated by it. But we must have this central issue
steadily before us, and it is on our success in coping with it, I maintain, that
the best eventual progress will be made with all our other major problems and our
power to share the wealth of one another's insights and experience.
I have spoken mainly of communication and assessment of truth. No space is left to
consider the part which our own responsiveness plays in the process as a whole.
The wind may blow `where it listeth' but `prayer and fasting' has its place too.
An age committed to exclusively secular pursuits, and those not always the most
elevated, can hardly expect to be well appraised of things that have to be
`spiritually discerned'. What Simone Weil and others have brought to mind for us
about heeding and `waiting on God' is immensely relevant, and this means more than
being religiously attentive in a general way, it means also the continual
response, in practice as in thought, of individuals in the ebb and flow of the
illumination they have in their own religious experience and what they assimilate
from the religious life of their community. It is in these terms, in the exchanges
of genuine response, in the part we play ourselves in the formulation of our own
religious awareness, that we come again, if I may further reflect my personal
allegiance, to our understanding of the more theistic approach to religion and our
proper participation in it.
Religious experience, so conceived, is not passive, and it does not under-rate the
essential mutuality of living, personal relationship as involved centrally in it.
The language of prayer and devotion, of struggle and surrender, as well as the
essential serenity, bring us to the vitally personal character of religious
existence which we are also apt to overlook, even though some like myself may be
inclined to over-stress it. The `God of the living', even of the wayward and
rebellious, the relentlessly seeking God, is the God I have encountered in my own
experience.
I hope such an element of personal testimony is not out of place. What matters for
us here is that, in discussion and amity, we should enter into one another's views
and sensitivity with as much imaginative insight and empathy as we can. Where the
gaps can be closed let us hasten to do so, but our main concern is with the truth
and `the wind of the argument withersoever it takes us'. We must understand as
much as we can across the boundaries, with humility as much as with firmness.
There is no place in true religion for confrontation or rancour, there is all the
place in the world for empathy and humility.
King's College
University of London
NOTES
1. See also Chap. 3 of my Persons and Life After Death (London: Macmillan, l978).
2. New Essays in Philosophical Theology, Chap. XI.
3. "What is Theology?" Freedom and History, Chap. XVII.
CHAPTER III
CRITIQUE AND HERMENEUTIC
IN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
BENOIT GARCEAU
When called to reflect on religion, as on other works of man, the philosopher
seeks to understand it. But there are many ways to understand a phenomenon,
firstly, to grasp its meaning and to express it in clear and distinct concepts;
secondly, to explain it or to sort out the conditions which make it possible;
finally, to judge its value. Any search to understand a phenomenon must attempt to
answer three questions: What is it; Why is it thus; and Is it as it ought to be?
These three questions call upon three different yet indissociable functions of the
intellect: its hermeneutic, explanatory, and critical functions.
The philosopher who has decided to try to understand religion soon discovers that
he is entering a domain dominated by a separation of the methods of understanding
and a fragmentation of religious language. This discretely respected division of
labor reserves for the theologian the hermeneutic of religion, for the
psychologist and the sociologist its explanation, and for the philosopher its
critique. This fragmentation of language arises not only from the fact that each
of these disciplines employs a particular mode of understanding, but also from the
fact that within each of these languages there are numerous and varied concepts of
religion.
It is necessary for philosophers to confront this situation with courage and
lucidity, recognizing that their principal task by which they have something valid
to contribute to the understanding of religion is to seek to overcome this
fragmentation in the human understanding of religion. Guided by this fundamental
intent, the only way open is to redo on one's own each of the three questions
which religion raises for the intellect--to carry out a repetition of the three,
hermeneutic, explanatory and critical functions of the understanding in relation
to the religious fact. This implies that the philosopher of religion begins to
listen to the theologies, the religious sciences, and the critiques of religion in
order to be sure how religion is understood. Above all one must examine closely
the presuppositions and consequences of each of these groups of disciplines and
thus prepare the elaboration of a theory of religious practice.
What is thus sketched out is nothing less than a new type of philosophy of
religion which has become necessary by reason of a break-up of religious language.
It is new in contrast to the two principal ways in which, in the western
tradition, philosophers have studied religion by using either hermeneutic or
critique. Whereas the former was a reflection from within the faith and aimed at
understanding its content, the latter dealt with religion as a given which did not
escape the rule of reason. It submitted religion to a model of rationality with
the more or less explicit goal of guaranteeing the autonomy and freedom of reason
in relation to religion. This is not the occasion to write at length on the
difficulties raised by each of these approaches to a philosophical study of
religion. It is sufficient to note that each employs a particular function of the
intellect--either hermeneutic or critical. The hermeneutic of religion only
partially answers the questions asked of the intellect by the religious fact. The
critique of religion, when separated from a hermeneutic, risks being satisfied
with generalities which reduce the religious given to a pre-established rational
framework. Both lead to a very impoverished language--a kind of Logos without
Praxis.
In this initial sketch of a "repetition" of one mode of discourse on religion, I
propose to reflect on a particular type of critique of religion in order to show
how it is impossible for the critique to isolate itself from the hermeneutic: how
it is necessary at a certain stage for a critique to appeal to a hermeneutic. I
have chosen the critique developed in these times especially in the Anglo-Saxon
context of empirical philosophy. In order to situate this, I shall begin by
comparing it to other existing types; then I will show the manner in which this
critique, which is entirely taken up with judging the value of religion, finds
itself driven, despite itself, to restate a presupposed question regarding the
nature of religious faith.
THE EMPIRICIST CRITIQUE OF THE LANGUAGE OF FAITH
The empiricist critique of religion took the form of a critique of the validity of
religious language, that is to say, it disputed the right of such language to be a
candidate for truth or falsity. That questioning was carried out in two different
manners; first, in the name of a theory of meaning which stipulates the criteria
to which all language must conform in order to be considered as a possible
candidate for truth, and second in the name of a theory of knowledge or of a
general epistemology. The critique of the meaning of the expressions of faith is a
relatively recent enterprise developed by analytic philosophy of religion. It
questions something prior to the truth of the expressions of faith, namely, their
aptitude for being held to be sensed--the only type of expressions concerning
which one can ask if they be true or false. The skepticism that inspires this is
not a theological one, questioning in the name of historical data or of a
philosophical worldview the truth of religious faith. Rather, it is a "meta-
theological" skepticism which questions the validity of the language of faith
uniquely in the name of a logical analysis of language. Only with difficulty can
this critique of meaning, though it depends ultimately upon a theory of meaning,
be isolated from a general theory of knowledge, in particular from a model of
knowledge borrowed from the practice of science and rationally justified only on
the basis of the fruitfulness of science.
In contrast, the critique of the validity of theological language or discourse
based upon a theory of knowledge manifests greater sincerity and clarity regarding
its presuppositions, and is practiced today by some followers of the critical
rationalism of K. Popper. It does not stop at the language of faith, nor is it
preoccupied with judging whether or not it has meaning. Rather it sees in
religious faith a transgression of the essential function of reason, namely, to
submit to criticism all hypotheses, to try to refute all conjectures without ever
pretending to have ethical certitude and without any other manner of approaching
truth than through its passing the test of falsification.
I would like to attend to the first form of the critique of the validity of the
language of faith, that which is based upon a theory of meaning. According to this
theory, which has been reformulated several times since the heydey of logical
positivism, a statement can be held as declarative or having a referential value--
and therefore being a candidate for truth--only if in principle it is able to be
controlled, or subject to verification or falsification, on the basis of empirical
evidence. The critique itself consists in judging that statements made by a
believer regarding God have only the appearance of declarative statements, since
the believer is incapable of showing the manner in which these statements could be
verified or falsified. Hence they should be eliminated from all language which
claims truth.
One could think that this critique of the validity of language regarding faith
presents the believer with a much less serious challenge than the critique of the
genesis of religion1 introduced in our culture by the three masters of suspicion,
Marx, Freud and Nietzsche, which seem to create a much more profound crisis for
religious faith. This consists in holding the language of faith to be that of a
consciousness which is false or not really as it appears; that it is language
which has been elaborated with the aim of concealing and justifying the
unrecognized interests of one's consciousness. The Marxist theory of ideology, the
Freudian analysis of illusion, the Nietzschean genealogy of morals do not consist
in questioning that its statements are true or that they are possible candidates
for the truth. More radically, they consider them to be residues of the
unconscious, whose origin must be reconstructed, even in its material conditions,
in order to explain them and to allow consciousness to become independent of them.
The radical character of this critique is clear for, as S. Breton has shown, it is
the critique not only of a principle, but of all principles. Any discussion on the
truth or falsity of a theological statement is prohibited when from the outset it
is held to be ideological or illusory, and explicable by illogical individual or
social factors.
What gives the critique of the validity of religion its importance is that without
it the critique of its origin is not justified, for it is the critique of validity
as a necessary presupposition for the critique of origin. When the critic of
ideology or of illusion undertakes to retrace the origin of a thought in order to
explain it, he is convinced that this research has interest and promises useful
results. But this research can be of interest only if he is convinced that
religious thought, which he wants to explain by the material conditions of its
possibility, does not have the right to be held as true and that despite this it
nonetheless persists in being cultivated by many. From the beginning among critics
of ideology or of illusion there is always an implicit value judgment on that
which one attempts to explain as being an anomaly or a symptom of a sickness which
must be explained by him in order to free the patient. This value judgment, unless
it be only a prejudice, rests upon a critique of the validity of the language of
religious faith.
In Marx, one finds one of the most significant examples of this necessary
dependence of the critique of the origin of religion upon a critique of its
validity. He is convinced that religion is both a false substitute for true
happiness and a form of protest against human misery, and hence that it will
disappear when man takes into his own hands the direction of his existence. But
this conviction depends upon another which is less explicit in Marx's work, but
constantly necessary to justify the first. This is the conviction common to all
rational atheists that religion has its source in ignorance of the powers of
nature and of society, and that it would disappear with the progress of science,
just as did alchemy and astrology with the progress of chemistry and astronomy.2
Only this rationalist postulate--which, it is necessary to insist, deals with the
validity of a language of faith--explains that among the products of consciousness
enumerated in the German Ideology--religion, morality, art, philosophy--only
religion must completely disappear. Morals, philosophy and art can be transformed
and become moments of human praxis; only religion cannot be retained, precisely
because it is presupposed to be irreconcilable with scientific progress. This
means that the Marxist critique of the origin of religion is based upon a prior
critique which the Enlightenment proposed as its program and which the meta-
theological skeptic of our era takes up once again in order to assure its success,
namely, the critique of the validity of the language of faith.3
A CRITIQUE OF THE EMPIRICIST CRITIQUE OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE
Therefore, let us examine more closely this critique of the validity of religion
which is carried out in the name of a theory of meaning. This is not the place to
present a history of the debates provoked by this critique since it first was
formulated in a precise manner by A. Flew.4 Nor is it the place to examine all the
strategies employed to demonstrate, either against this critique the validity of
the language of faith, or in agreement with this critique that its result has been
to purify religious faith from unsuitable language. I prefer to focus instead on
an answer to this critique which I consider most satisfactory because it comes
from analytic philosophy itself in which the critique is rooted, and because it
submits each of its two principle theses to scrupulously careful examination. This
is R.S. Heimbeck's reply in his work Theology and Meaning.5 For reasons I do not
understand this has received little attention by analytic philosophers of
religion, though it offers the most convincing criticism of the empiricist
critique of the validity of the language of faith.
The first thesis of meta-theological skepticism, according to Heimbeck, cannot
withstand criticism. It is not true that an expression must be verifiable or
falsifiable in order for it to have a referential value or to be used to express a
proposition. To believe so is to fail to note the difference between the criterion
of meaning of a statement and evidence of the senses. The criterion of meaning
designates the conditions which must be fulfilled in order that a statement may
serve to express a true or false proposition, while evidence of the senses
designates the sensible conditions which must be satisfied in order that we might
know or have the right to believe that this proposition is true or false.6 Now,
the sufficient and necessary condition in order that a statement might express a
true or false proposition is not that it be controlled by verification or
falsification: its verifiability and its falsifiability only constitute
sufficient, but not necessary conditions for its referential value. The fact that
a statement is verifiable or falsifiable, that is, controllable, suffices for one
to suppose that it says something about what is real, but it is not necessary that
it be controllable in order for it to have such meaning. The sufficient and
necessary condition of its referential value consists rather in the fact that it
has with other propositions relations of implication or incompatibility.7 Applied
to theological language, this criterion allows one to recognize among the
statements used by the believer those which are declarative propositions and hence
candidates for truth or falsity. The statement "God is love," for example, has
referential value if it is used by the believer in such a way that it entails
relations of implication or incompatibility with other propositions. That is to
say, if the believer, in making this statement, implies that "God knows all men,
wants their well-being and in order to realize it is prepared to give himself,"
and if it excludes that "God wants the eternal misery of all men."8
Having shown that the requirements of verifiability or falsifiability imposed on
theological expressions so that they may have meaning result from an unfortunate
confusion between verification and semantic entailment, between falsification and
semantic incompatibility, between sensible evidence and criterion of meaning,
Heimbeck attempts to prove that the second thesis of meta-theological skepticism
is equally untenable, and that theological statements are as a matter of fact
verifiable and falsifiable in a decisive manner on the basis of empirical givens.
Let us note immediately that this task is not strictly necessary in order to
refute the empiricist critique of the validity of theological statements; this
refutation was already accomplished when it was shown that these expressions do
not have to be controllable by verification or falsification in order to be held
as valid. If they maintain relations of implication or incompatibility with other
propositions these statements have a referential value; they serve to express
propositions and are candidates for truth. But Heimbeck wants to do more.
For the skeptic who is steadfast in claiming that a statement has cognitive value
only if there exists in principle a way of controlling it empirically, he takes up
the task of showing that in theological language there are propositions (and
precisely those which provide the foundation of this language) which are not
withdrawn from the requirements of falsifiability and verifiability. If his
argument succeeds in convincing the reader, then one can see what it promises: to
justify one's recognizing objective value for statements of faith which serve as
principles for all theological discourse. In this sense, such discourse, far from
being reduced to what Wisdom and Flew called a "picture preference,"9 would have
the value of propositions susceptible to being empirically controlled.
A theological system, according to Heimbeck, is formed from two different kinds of
propositions: those which admit of no relation of implication or incompatibility
with empirically verifiable or falsifiable propositions (for example, "God
exists," "God is triune," "God is omnipotent"), and those which maintain such a
bond (for example, "God raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead, near Jerusalem, at
time2" which implies the truth of the following two propositions: "Jesus of
Nazareth died near Jerusalem, at time1," and "Jesus of Nazareth was alive in the
vicinity of Jerusalem, at time3").10 In traditional Christian theism, propositions
of the second kind, grounded on empirical data, serve as the foundation for the
first. Heimbeck finds it strange that in recent meta-theological debate one is
exclusively occupied with the first.11 An abstraction has been performed upon the
language of faith, retaining for submission to logical analysis only the
propositions not having any relation of implication or of incompatibility with
empirically controllable propositions. However, when he asserts "God loves all
men"--a proposition without empirical incidence--the believer bases the assertion
on this other: "God sent His own Son in order to offer his life for the sins of
the world," and this on still another: "The Word was made flesh in the person of
Jesus Christ," and this finally on this other which implies empirically verifiable
propositions and excludes others: "God raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead,
near Jerusalem, at time.2"12 It is necessary therefore, holds Heimbeck, to reverse
the flow and apply logical analysis on those propositions anchored in statements
of observable facts which serve as principles procuring for all others their
positive legitimation.
Heimbeck has no trouble showing the falsifiability of these empirical theological
propositions. If a theological proposition has a purely empirical consequence and
if this consequence is falsifiable in a conclusive way on the sole basis of
empirical data, then the antecedent proposition (by analogy with modus tollens) is
ipso facto falsifiable in a conclusive manner on the sole basis of empirical data.
If there is some purely empirical factor which is incompatible with a theological
proposition and if this incompatible is verifiable in a conclusive manner solely
on the basis of empirical data, then the antecedent proposition (by analogy to
modus pomendo ponens) is ipso facto falsifiable in a decisive way on the sole
basis of empirical data.13 For example, the proposition "God raised Jesus of
Nazareth near Jerusalem, at time2" is falsifiable in a decisive way on the basis
of empirical data from the fact that it implies "Jesus of Nazareth died, in the
vicinity of Jerusalem, at time1", and "Jesus of Nazareth was living, in the
vicinity of Jerusalem, at time3". These are falsifiable propositions on the basis
of empirical givens, or on the basis that they exclude that "Jesus of Nazareth was
dead at moment3", which is itself verifiable in a conclusive manner on the basis
of empirical data.
Are such theological propositions having consequents or empirical incompatibles
equally verifiable in a conclusive manner? Are they controllable to the extent of
being able to be verified by empirical evidence? Yes, maintains Heimbeck, on
condition that one acknowledge the originality of the reasoning employed by the
believer in order to adhere to this kind of proposition. It is no longer a
question of a reasoning by implication or incompatibility, but by inference
proceeding from an agglomeration of the signs of that which is found signified
therein.14 To exclude this type of reasoning, under the pretext that it is never
conclusive, is, in his opinion, to hold a monolithic conception of reason, to
acknowledge only one method, and to be obliged not to recognize the validity of a
process which is used not only by clinical psychology and history, but also by the
physical sciences.15 Certainly, this reasoning from signs to the thing signified
implies an a priori. The choice of empirical data serving as signs signifying the
truth of a theological proposition is itself determined by the context to which
belongs the theological proposition which empirical data are able to verify. But
this circle in which reasoning by signs moves is not unique to the believer; even
the scholar cannot avoid selecting empirical data on the basis of a theoretical
proposition which the same date serve to control or justify.
The effort made by Heimbeck to show that theological language is empirically
controllable led him to defend three closely related theses: 1. In theological
language, everything depends upon an aggregation of empirical propositions joined
to propositions which are conclusively controllable on the basis of empirical
evidence; 2. These propositions, which give all the others their positive
justification, are falsifiable and then empirical incompatibles are verifiable; 3.
Finally, these propositions are verifiable to the degree that they are the result
of an inference from signs to what is signified. Of these three theses, the second
is unassailable if the two others are true. In effect, if there are empirical
propositions at the source of theological language, which are obtained by
inference from an agglomeration of signs and which are verifiable by those signs,
there is no difficulty in allowing that in this language there are propositions
which are falsifiable in a conclusive manner on the basis of the evidence of the
senses.
HERMENEUTIC AND RELIGIOUS FAITH
But does theological language truly rest upon an aggregate of empirical
propositions, and are these obtained by inferences based upon an agglomeration of
signs? This question is raised by Heimbeck's reply to the critique of the validity
of the language of faith. Evidently, this is a question to be resolved by research
on the nature of theology and faith, which is a matter for theology. This means
that at this stage in its development, the critique of the validity of theological
language calls upon an hermeneutic of religious faith, and that the philosopher
must therefore suspend his critique and question the theologian in order to learn
how religious faith understands itself and how it judges its own language.
M.L. Diamond's16 recent reaction gives important evidence that the question raised
by Heimbeck's work concerns the nature of theology. One of the rare
representatives of analytical philosophy of religion to take Theology and Meaning
into account, Diamond's brief commentaries help to understand the silence which
surrounds this book. In Diamond's view, Heimbeck's position rests on an extremely
naive conception of theology, that of the "fundamentalist" who presupposes that
everything in Scripture is to be taken according to the letter and that Scripture
has unquestionable authority. With such a conception of theology, Heimbeck
excludes himself from the debate on the verification of statements of faith and
condemns himself to not being heard by the participants involved in this debate.
Though they recognize that "fundamentalists" have no difficulty in verifying the
statements of their faith, fundamentalists remain of no interest because their
criteria of credibility are irrevocably outdated by the development of science and
have been abandoned by more enlightened theologians.17
This reaction is very significant. Heimbeck's answer to the critique of the
validity of theological language is criticized and rejected in the name of what
theology ought to be. Because it employs a conception of theology which one judges
no longer to be in agreement with the criteria of rationality developed by
scientific thought, Heimbeck's thesis does not have the right to be heard in
discussions on the validity of theology. This reaction reveals a more or less
conscious decision at all costs to keep the debate on grounds of validity. This
concerns no longer, however, the validity of the expressions of faith, but that of
a conception of theology which is to be kept or done away with according as it is
or is not in conformity with the criteria imposed by scientific reason.
However, Heimbeck's thesis raises a question of truth--more precisely, a double
question of truth: (a) Is it true that theological language depends upon an
aggregate of empirical propositions obtained by inference from an agglomeration of
signs? and (b) Is this language itself true? The first question calls, as we have
underlined, for a hermeneutic of theology and of faith; the second calls for a
critique of the language of faith, no longer as to its origin or validity, but as
regards its truth.
What does a philosopher engaged in the debate on theology and verification learn
from a hermeneutic of religious faith? One learns two elementary truths without
which this debate will be poorly oriented from the outset. One learns, in the
first place, that religious faith cannot be reduced to the inevitable outcome of a
challenge which would be imposed from without, as would be the case of just any
fact. If the Jewish faith is never separable from the experience of the Exodus, if
the Christian faith always refers to witnessing the resurrection of Christ, they
are, for all that, not understood by those who live them as inferences proceeding
from empirical data, similar to the adherence of an historian or psychoanalyst to
an hypothesis suggested by reading documents. To liken it to the attitude of a
scholar who concerns himself with a theory which can be abandoned and replaced as
soon as it no longer succeeds in giving an account of all the facts would be to
misunderstand faith. To acknowledge in theological language, as Heimbeck does with
good reason, the utilization of the criteria of falsifiability and of
verifiability in a manner which is not very different from that which one finds in
scientific language, does not necessarily imply that faith itself is inferred from
empirical data and is able to be certified or controlled by such date.
Though its certitude is always without evidence, faith never does without signs.
This is the second elementary truth which a hermeneutic of faith would bring to
light. The presence of signs is necessary for the birth and maturation of faith in
another person. In this, faith in God does not have a different status. Whether
furnished by the sensible universe, by Scripture, or by the intimate life of the
believer, signs are necessary mediators of religious faith. Understood by the
believer as an invitation from God who is taking the initiative to address himself
to his creature and as communion with him--and not only as an adherence to a
discourse on God--faith, like any other communion between subjects, is possible
only if based upon communication by signs. It is therefore not altogether wrong to
conceive the language of faith as resting on elementary propositions which, in
turn, are based upon a reading of signs by one who is disposed to believe signs.18
Is this reading of signs by the believer shielded from criticism? No, no more than
it escapes the question of truth. But the type of critique that it calls for is
not primarily the critique of its origin or that of the validity of its language.
It needs a critique of its truth. This is more exigent than the other two for it
does not restrict itself to evaluating the language of faith on the basis of an
aggregate of objective criteria of validity, nor to judging faith on the basis of
the material conditions which seem to explain it. Anticipating in a way both of
these critiques, it seeks overall to judge the language of faith on the basis of
what is ultimately intended by faith, and to judge faith itself on the basis of
the signs by which it is nourished.
This certainly is a critique immanent to the life of faith, and carried out by the
faith and for the faith. That the first critique of religion comes from faith
itself, is a fact too often ignored by many analysts of religion. Religion is
poorly described if its originality is not taken into account. One considers one's
faith to be an absolute and exclusive certitude: absolute because it is the result
neither of a system of thought nor of social or psychological factors, but of a
conversion based upon God's initiative; exclusive because it does not present
itself as the establishment of one meaning among others, but as the sole
affirmation of the ultimate sense of the universe. Much more, one is convinced
that only one's faith is apt for critiquing its own expression, for deciding on
the value of all that one can imagine, conceive, or say of the God envisaged by
one's faith.
Moreover, not only do enlightened believers claim the critique of the language of
their faith as a task for which they alone are fitted, but they see in it an
indispensible task for the health and development of their faith. Without it faith
soon succumbs before one or another of the two crises through which it will
inevitably pass: (a) that which is produced by the transcendence of its object,
that is, of God who must never be assimilated to a being of the world nor thought
of as if he were a being among others; or (b) that which is produced by the
refusal of the non-believer to admit that what the believer holds as true, with
absolute certitude, has meaning and can be true.
If a philosopher judges the truth of the language of faith, they can do so only in
the name of the first principle of his philosophy which they consider evident. Any
philosophy worthy of the name founds itself, in the last analysis, on a particular
answer to the question: "what is the real?", an answer which is commonly called
one's "ontology." It is clear that not all ontologies are equally hospitable to
the affirmation of God. One who holds a materialist ontology, for example, cannot
avoid judging to be false any statement of faith affirming the existence of a God
that is the creator of the universe. He will make it seem that he is appealing to
a logical analysis of faith language to show that it is unintelligible or
incoherent, but he will already have decided, by the type of philosophy he has
decided to employ, that the language of faith is an error. Other ontologies could
come to a more nuanced judgment--e.g., certain idealist ontologies--and lead to
the decision simply that, though the language of the faith is not true, it
symbolizes at the level of representation what philosophy knows to be true.
There is, however, a way in which the philosopher and the believer can share the
critique of the truth of theology. If they agree to admit that theological
language rests on a believing reading of signs, they both are faced with the
crucial question: based upon what conditions does the interpretation of signs
become possible? This reflection aimed at explicating the a priori of
communication by signs is an urgent task for philosophy of religion, preliminary
in all cases to the apparently more rigorous, but less decisive, disputes on the
validity of the language of faith.
University of Ottawa
Ottawa, Canada
NOTES
1. For a further study of the relations between a "critique of the validity" and a
"critique of the genesis" of a language of faith, see Stanislas Breton, Du
Principe (Paris: Aubier, 1971), 289ff. Also see, by the same author, "Critique des
ide+ ologies et crise de la foi," in Foi et e+ pistemologie contemporaines
(Collection "Philosophica," 7; Ottawa: Editions de l'Universite+ , 1977), 71-89.
2. This aspect of the Marxist critique of religion has been brought to light by N.
Lobkowicz, "La critique de la religion chez Marx," Les Etudes Philosophiques, 3
(1976), 317-330.
3. A good example of the critique of the validity of religion aimed at
establishing its falsity and assuring the truth of the skepticism of the
Enlightenment before undertaking the critique of its genesis, is to be found in
Kai Nielsen's Contemporary Critiques of Religion (London: Macmillan, 1971), p. 1.
See my work on this subject, "La philosophie analytique de la religion:
contribution canadienne 1970-1975," Philosophiques, 2 (1975), 307-308.
4. "Theology and Falsification," New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. by A.
Flew and A. MacIntyre (London: SCM Press, 1955), pp. 96ff.
5. R.S. Heimbeck, Theology and Meaning: A Critique of Metatheological Scepticism
(London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1969). I know of only two brief commentaries by
analytical philosophers of religion on Heimbeck's book: A. Flew's "Theology and
Falsification in Retrospect," in The Logic of God: Theology and Verification,
edited by M.L. Diamond and T.V. Litzenburg (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company,
1975), pp. 275-79, and M.L. Diamond's, "The Challenge of Contemporary Empiricism,"
Ibid., p. 45. Note also the excellent article of Jacques Poulain, "Proble- mes
logiques du langage the+ ologique," in Les quartre fleuves, 6 (1976), pp. 54ff,
which sees in the work of Heimbeck "one of the most convincing" responses to the
empirical critique of theological language.
6. Heimbeck, Theology and Meaning, p. 48.
7. Ibid., p. 56.
8. Ibid., p. 91.
9. See Flew, "Theology and Falsification," p. 97.
10. Heimbeck, Theology and Meaning, pp. 172-73.
11. Ibid., p. 174.
12. Ibid., pp. 175-76.
13. Ibid., p. 167.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., pp. 245-46.
16. Diamond, "The Challenge of Contemporary Empiricism" (cited in fn. 5), p. 45.
17. ". . . they [contemporary empiricists] regard fundamentalism as so hopelessly
outmoded by the development of scientific standards of believability, that they do
not even bother to challenge the thrust of its factually meaningful statements"
(ibid.).
18. Note that Thomas Aquinas, who saw a triple sense to the word religio (i.e.,
religare, reeligere, and relegere), conceived of religion as an attitude by which
man joins himself with God by choosing him as his supreme end and by ceaselessly
rereading, as in a book, that which God expects of him. See Summa Theologica, II-
IIae, q. 81, a. 1.
CHAPTER IV
ON SOME THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGES
RICHARD M. MARTIN
Nas+ yami aham bhu- nas+ yati lo+ ka:
Sruyata- m dharma, Bhagawat.
I
Important steps in the study of linguistic structure have taken place in recent
years. By `linguistic structure' is meant here deep structure, logical structure
or logical form, semantic structure, "source" form, or whatever. The deep form is
usually contrasted somehow with so-called surface form, but just hwat the
difference is supposed to be is far from clear. In any case, the exact study of
logical form has recently come to the fore and now occupies a very central role in
contemporary linguistics. And on the more philosophical side, there has been
sufficient progress to provide genuine guidance in the analysis and reformulation
of the metaphysico-theological aspects of our language. Because of the obvious
alternatives here, in terminology and in the semantics involved, let us speak of
theological languages, in the plural, each of which may be regarded as a
specialization of some one basic linguistic format or "source" system.1
It would be unwise, I think, and not conducive to conceptual progress ("progress
in clarification") to disregard in metaphysics and theology these recent
achievements in the exact study of language. As we enter the last decades of the
twentieth century, not to take account of them, it would seem, is to remain
retardataire and to rest content with horse-and-buggy procedures and concepts in a
day of highly sophisticated methodologies. In taking these achievements into
account, indeed, in embracing them as our best guide in the formulation of
theories, we must not think that the great traditional views are therewith
threatened or to be abandoned. On the contrary, they are threatened only when we
fail to bring them into harmony with contemporary knowledge. Here, it seems to me,
is a great shortcoming in recent theology. There had been all manner of talk about
God's being dead and then found again, about the emotive need but cognitive
unacceptability of talk of God in general, of God's revelation in the historicity
of man's experience, of demythologization, of God and out of process, of the
hermeneutics of theological language, of the "peculiar" or "odd" character of much
of it, and so on and on. No doubt valuable points have been raised in such
discussion, of which account should be taken.
Unfortunately, however, there has been little really deep study aimed at
harmonizing theological discussion with the methods of mathematics, logic, and the
empirical sciences, with the results, yes--countless attempts, most of them rather
spurious, it is to be feared. What is urgently needed, it would seem, is a
profound methodological seriousness in theological discussion, to bring it to the
high level of logical sophistication from which it should never have been allowed
to decline in the first place. The subject is of infinitely greater seriousness in
human life than those in which scientific techniques have won the day hands down.
Modern science has, after all, been a tremendous theoretical as well as practical
success, whereas theology has had a great fall, at least in the popular view. Let
us never forget, however, that success is a kind of "bitch goddess," to be pursued
and ravished only at one's peril.
What is God? Jesting and unhappy humanity has been asking for several millenia and
not sufficiently tarried the answer. Of course, all manner of attempts have been
made to approach this most fundamental metaphysical question, but most of them
have been but partial, emphasizing this or that feature at the expense of others.
Volumes have been written on these partial answers, as the history of
philosophical theology and metaphysics amply attests. And much that is precious
from these volumes must be retained. We should not reject valuable insight and the
dearly won progress, however slow, that constitutes the history of these subjects.
But at the same time we should not be slavish imitators of it, paying no heed to
newer and vital developments of relevance. Unfortunately, much of the
philosophical theology of our time, as already in effect suggested, has been
written as though no progress had been made in the logical analysis of language
since the time of Aristotle or even St. Thomas. Such study is dismissed as
irrelevant, or in any case not helpful. And, still more unfortunately, where such
study has been taken into account, it is not the real thing that is used but some
illicit surrogate. The real thing is not easy to come by, and hence it is no
wonder that so little recent progress has been made in the use of serious logico-
linguistic theory in philosophical theology.
Form to most is a secret, Goethe has told us. Yet without it--order, system,
structure, logical connection, rationality--we can do no discursive thinking
whatsoever. We could perhaps do all manner of mental things--perceive, feel,
believe, rejoice--but nothing that could be dignified as thinking in any ordinary
sense of the word. So we should pay some attention to form, logical form, right at
the start of our discourse. And the curious fact is that the more attention we pay
to it, the less we seem to know about it. Form is all fine and tidy only to those
who inquire little concerning it.
The comments here in Par. I are merely introductory. In Par. II items in the
logical machinery needed are enumerated. In Par. III we glance at some recent
analytic work on Plotinus. In Par. IV some comments concerning the language needed
for St. Anselm's ontological proof are given. Attention is called, in Par. V, to
important work on the ex motu argument of St. Thomas. In Par. VI we turn to
Whitehead and the seminal notion of a primordial valuation. A discussion of the
logical foundations of metaphysical idealism occupies the remainder of the paper.
The comments in Par. VII are introductory. In Par. VIII a few fundamental
principles are laid down, and generalized somewhat in Par. IX. In Par. X the
problem of harmonizing the language of modern science, including the mathematical
theory of sets, with the language of idealism is discussed. St. Thomas's five
signs of will are introduced in Par. XI, and it is shown how an adaptation of the
theory of them may be accommodated upon an idealist basis. The theory of the
divine will is made somewhat more exact in Par. XII. In Par. XIII there are a few
somewhat general comparative comments, and in Par. XIV, there are some glimpses
beyond, concerning science, faith, and aesthetic feeling, the theories of which
cry out for further development on the basis of what has preceded. The reader may
choose for himself the sections that interest him most.
II
For the necessary logical background throughout, let ususe the crisp, standard
first-order theory of quantification with identity, with virtual classes and
relations added as merely notational conveniences. (Virtual classes, remember, are
almost as good as real ones, but, of course, we can never quantify over them
directly, although sometimes we can do so with suitable technical artifice.2 To
this framework it is useful to add the theory of the part-whole relation as
between individuals (Les+niewski's mereology or calculus of individuals). And of
course it would be foolish to try to do without the resources of logical syntax
and semantics as developed in recent years. For these let us assume first-order
formulations, with the semantics based on suitable relations (especially
denotation) taken as primitive. To this a method of handling intensionality must
be added, as well as a method for accommodating entities such as events, states,
acts, and processes. To handle intensionality, let us adapt Frege's notion of
taking entities under a given linguistic mode of description or Art des
Gegeberseins. We can then distinguish between the individual x and x taken under
some mode of describing it. (This latter might even be taken as the ordered couple
of the entity and some one-place predicate applicable to is). And for the
characterization of events, states, etc., it is un- doubtedly best to introduce a
new style of variables, and then squarely face up to the need for new kinds of
predicates, the event-descriptive predicates, and for general logical principles
governing them. But all this is readily available, to some extent anyhow.3 (If
notions of higher-order logic or set theory are needed here or there, attention
will be called to them in situ).
III
By way of a preliminary, let us note very briefly how logico-linguistics has been
helpful in enabling us to clarify some of the historically great theological
views. And let us consider, first, the system of Plotinus (which has had so
profound an effect on the Islamic world). It may well be contended that Plotinus
as the first really systematic theologian in the West.
The fundamental relation in the Plotinic system is that of emanation, so that we
may let
`x Em y'
express that x emanates into y. Em is presumably a totally irreflexive,
asymmetric, and transitive relation. In addition. let `One' be a proper name for
the Plotinic One or Unity, and `All Soul' for the Psyche or All-Soul. And let
`Int' be a one-place predicate so that `Int x ' expresses that x is a Form or that
it is a member of the Intelligible Realm, of Nous. And let `Obj x' express that x
is an object of the lower cosmos, of the lower world of Nature or of the
Sensibles, among which are included human bodies. Roughly, then, we have these
four expressions for the four Plotinic levels; two of them, note, are proper
names, and two of them are predicates. The proper names are for the
multiplicities, which, however, also have a kind of unity, a secondary unity or
fusion, let us say.
Clearly these four realms are mutually exclusive in appropriate senses, and
jointly exhaustive of the whole cosmos. Concerning the One, there are some special
principles as follows.
|_(x)(~x = One One Em x),
|_~(Ex)(~x = One. (y)(~y = One x Em y)),
|_(x)(Int x One Em x),
|_One Em AllSoul,
|_(x)(Obj x One Em x).
And also
|_(x)(Int x x Em AllSoul).
|_(x)(Obj x AllSoul Em x),
and
|_(x) (Obj x ~(Ey) x Em y).
Concerning the One, very little can be truly said not said in terms of `Em.' Thus
also
|_~ F One,
for most precidates F not containing `Em.'
The converse Em of the relation Em enables us to handle the "return to the One,"
which plays so central a role in Plotinus' ethics and theology. (Recall that x
bears the converse of R, R, to y if and only y bears R itself to x, for all x and
y.) We can read ` Em' as `aspires to the condition of', `desires to return to the
purity of', and the like. The Plotinic theology is implicit in the theory
concerning Em and Em as regards the One.
A very fundamental problem in Plotinus is to provide for the multiplicity of
individual souls in terms of the unity of the All Soul. Roughly this is done in
terms of the "Couplement" of the All Soul with individual bodies. The individual
souls are thus handled as intensional constructs of a certain sort.4
IV
Let us reflect next for a moment upon the celebrated argument of St. Anselm,
concerning the existence of God regarded as id, quo maius cogitari non potest.
Note what must be provided even to formulate this definition in an exact way: a
Russellian singular description ofor some unique entity, a theory concerning the
relation of being greater than, a theory of knowledge concerning concepts or
conceiving, a theory concerning ability or capability, and then of course some
doctrine as to how all these are interrelated.5 Think how complicated all this is
when we look at it from close to, much more complicated than ordinarily thought.
It is failure to come to terms with the complications involved that has vitiated
most recent discussions of the subject. And until we have looked at the subject
closely we cannot be said to understand it in any very deep sense. Gott wohnt im
Detail, as an old German adage has it, whether we like it or not.
Let `Per x' express that x as a human person, and `x Able e, `F'' express that x
is able (capable) of doing e as (intensionally) described by the one-place
predicate `F'. And let `x Cncv e, `G'' express that x conceives of e under the
predicate `G', and `e1 Gr e2' that e is greater than e2. Also `a Des e' (or `a Des
x') expresses that a designates e (or x). We may then let
`Uns e' abbreviate `~(Ee') (Ex) (Ea) (Eb) (a Des x . b Des e . Per x. x Able e',
<a, Cncv, b, `{e1 (Ee2) e2 Gr e1} `> )'.
Here the cormers are used in the sense of Quine's quasi-quotesand `{e1 --e1 ---}'
stands for the virtual class of all e1's such that --e1--. And `<---->' is a
suitable event-descriptive predicate. The definiendum may read, following
Hartshorne, `e is an unsurpassable entity'.
In any steady gaze ar Anselm's view, certain principles must be assumed, some of
them to be gotten out of the actual text of the text of the Proslogium or
elsewhere, and some of them to be supplied as necessary addenda. These latter
perhaps are too obvious to have been written down, or perhaps are to be presumed
as taken for granted, or perhaps are principles the need for which has not been
recogmized heretofore. And so it is with all of the historically great
philosophical views. Considerable latitude must be allowed to make the
reconstructed theory fit the text. The fit is not given automatically and
considerable ingenuity is often needed to make it even approximative. The fact, as
sad one perhaps, is that we always have to be content with approximations; and,
even more annoyingly, there are always alternative approximations that assert
themselves with perhaps equal cogency. Thus, we should never claim very much
victory even if the fit we achieve seems fairly close. The same is true,
incidentally, whether we use methods of modern logical analysis and reformulation
or not. The best that we can ever say, it would seem, is that a given historical
view is mertely the disjunction of the most likely alternative readings of it,
howsoever formulated.
In order to prove that God exists uniquely, i.e., that there is one and only one
unsurpassable entity, it must hold that soeone ("even the fool") conceives of
something under the predicate `Uns', that every unsurpassable entity (if there are
any) exists, that there areno two unsurpassable entities, and that anything
conceived as unsurpassable is in fact unsurpassable. With these principles
provable fro prior principles governing `Able', `Cncv', and `Gr', it may be proved
that
|_E! ( e . Uns e),
where `E!' is construed essentially as a Principia Mathematica, *14.02. Whether
such prior principles are acceptable, and whether the primitives here are suitable
for the intended purposes, are of course questions that remain open -- here asfor
any theological, or indeed even scientific, theory.
V
Important logico-linguistic work on the ex motu argument of St. Thomas has been
carried out by J. Salamucha.6 Very briefly and somewhat simplified, his work may
be described as follows. Let `Mx' express that x is one of the entia realia in
loval physical motion, and let `x M y' express that x moves y or is the cause of
motion in y. Concerning these notions some assumptions are made, that
(Ex) Mx,
(x) (Mx (Ey) y M x),
(Ey) (y C`M . (x) ((x C`M . ~x = y) y M x)),
(x) (y) (x M y ~ y M x),
(x) (y) (z) ((x M y . y M z) x M z),
(x) (y) ((x C`M . y C`M . ~x = y) (x M y v y M x)).
Here C`M is the campus or field of the relation M, i.e., the class of entities
that bear M to or are borne M by some entity or other. These assumptions then
state that there is an entity in motion, that evey moving entity is moved by some
entity, that there is a "first" entity in the campus of M that moves every other
entity in the campus of M, and that M is an asymmetri, transitive, and connected
relation. From these assumptions--not all of them are actually needed--it is
provable that
(Ey) (~My . (x) ((x C`M . ~x=y) y M x)).
Salamucha discusses in some detail the justification of the assumptions here on
the basis of Aquinas' text, especially as in the Summa contra Gentiles, I.c. 13.
He also considers proofs of some of the assumptions, and a number of alternative
approaches tot he proof as a whole. His concern is primarily with the validity of
the argument given the premisses. This indeed was the primary concern also in the
remarks above about Anself. In both cases, of course, a deeper discussion is
needed to determine the acceptability of the assumptions, and indeed of the entire
linguistic frameworks, in the light of modern scientific knowledge. In the case of
Anslem, it is doubtful that appropriate scientific meanings of `greater than' and
`conceivable' can be found. In the case of the Iex motuR argument, the theory of
motion involved is probably at best naive in the light of modern physics. However,
such judgements are by not means final, and the essential contents of these proofs
may well be forthcoming in other ways.
VI
From St. Thomas to Whitehead is a leap of several centuriesin time but a natural
next step for systematic theology. Much that is St. Thomas is obscure because
clarified on a Whiteheadian basis.7 And it may well be that the notion of a
primordial valuation is the reatest single contribution to theology inall the
years from St. Thomas to the present. Unfortuanately, however, Whitehead does not
characterize the notion explicitly, scarcely if ever givesan example, and says
nothing concerning the structure of the language in which the primordial
valuations may be expressed. Nor does he subdivide them in any way but treats them
rather isocephalically, gaining therewith a rather unpliable theory. Later on we
shall try to broaden it somewhat in order to gain more flexible notions, with
which to characterixe the divine will. But for the present, let us consider only
primordial valuations as they occur in Whitehead.
The primordial nature of God, it will be recalled, is "the unconditioned
conceptual valuation of the entire multiplicity of eternal objects" with respect
to their "ingression" into, or applicability to, each and every "actual
occasion."8 Thus where a is an n-place predicate standing for an n-adic eternal
object, the "propositions" a e1...en is "valuated" in the primordial nature,
perhaps even to just such and such a degreee, where e1,...,en are any actual
occasions. To express this we may write (with the numerical superscript 'i')
a PrimVal1,...,en .
The primordial naute then is just the totality of all (acts or states of)
primordial valuating. Where Fu `F is the \ifusion of the virtual class F, we may
let
`png' abbreviate `Fu `{e (Ea) (Ee1)...(Eek)(Ei) (O <= i <= 1 . ((PredCon1 a . <a,
PrimVal1, e1>e) v (Pred/Con2 a . <a, PrimVali, e1, e2> e) v ... v (PredConk a .
<a, PrimVali, e1, ...,ek>e))) '.
Here `PredConja' expresses that a is a j-place predicate standing for a j-adic
eternal object. Here j is said to be the degreeof the eternal object. We need not
assume that there are eternal objects of degree greater than some pre-assigned
`k'. So k here is the degree of the eternal object of highest degress admitted, in
the sense of having a name for it as a primitive.
Note the really stupendous all-inclusiveness of the png. Every hair of one's head
is primordially "valuated" with respect to every eternal object, and this to just
such and such a degree. The fundamental meaning of `ought' is presumably provided
for here. Every actual occasion ought to have just the properties, to speak
loosely, ascribed it in the primordial valuatings. The png is thus more the source
of value, however, then of fact or of scientific law. It might be thought then
that the definition is too restricted, not providing the png with sufficient
breath or power. It is all-inclusive with respect to value, but that is all. In a
moment we shall broaden the notion considerably, in connection with the discussion
of absolute idealism. In terms primarily of `Primvali' essentially the whole of
Whitehead's theology may be formulated, so that little more concerning it need be
said here.
In the articulation of these various historical views emphasis has been placed
upon the primitive vocabulary needed. It is the choice of this that is crucial,
and differences here of course may result in radically different theological
systems. Some modicum of clarity concerning the primitive vocabulary must be
achieved before we can frame fundamental principles or axioms. Strictly, of
course, the two must go hand-in-hand, but in practice the choice of primitive
notions usually comes first. But this is only the beginning, the foundation, and
should not of course be mistaken for the full edifice.
VII
The foregoing comments, about Plotinus, Anselm, St. Thomas, and Whitehead--chosen
in part because of the availability of technical studies concerning the language--
structures implicitly employed--are merely preliminary to the main intent of this
paper. Let us try now, in what follows, to do what is commonly thought impossible,
namely, to reconcile--nay, to bring into indissoluble union--the basic insights of
philosophia perennis with logico-linguistics. The latter, as we have already seen,
is "subject-matter neutral," and hence metaphysically so; it should be as useful
for the articulation of any one theological view as well as any other. In any
case, this reconciliation is the theme to be explored. If we succeed, at least to
some extent, we shall be close to a conception of God, suitably characterized
formally and rationally, embracing all fact and value in its "real internal
constitution," and of such grandeur and majesty that we would all do well
faithfully to surrender our whole lives to comprehend it, and "above all things in
the words of Peirce in a related context to shape the whole conduct of our life,
and all the springs of our action into conformity . . . " with it.9 In this way we
should be well on the road to a meeting not only of east and west, but also to
characterizing in a most intimate way the union of religion and science, on the
other. An overambitious goal, perhaps, but at least one for which it will be
worthwhile to help prepare the way, in this ecumenical metaphysical congress
devoted in part to the notion of God.
"What is that, knowing which, we shall know everything"? It is not easy to know
the real, internal constitution of God's nature, and perhaps no one has ever known
it fully. Perhaps no one has ever known it even partially, although this is
doubtful. Beliefs, intimations, surmizes, and the like, have often sufficed. No
matter, the notion of God should be characterized, it would seem, in so grand a
fashion as to contain, in some specific sense, all knowledge of all beings and
happenings, here, there, and everywhere, past, present, and future. In particular
God's nature should contain, in a most intimate way, all scientific law, both
causal and stochastic, as well as all boundary conditions. Hence implicitly it
should contain all factually true statements. But God is not merely the repository
of truth, but of value, of beauty, and goodness, as well. Science and value,
whatever the shortcomings or defects of our knowledge about them, should be
properly fused, it would seem, in any satisfactory characterization of the real
internal constitution of God's nature. Failure to attain this fusion is to rest
content with an only partial and hence inadequate characterization.
The perennial theme "that being is one and identical with God the creator," as
Richard Taylor puts it, ". . . is rediscovered in every age and in every corner of
the world. It is at once terrifying and completely fulfilling. It will never
perish and nothing will ever replace it. Nothing possibly can; its endurance is
that of the stars."10 But even the stars may come and go and still be terrifying.
Only if we add the insight of philosophia perennis, that being is in its real
nature akin to mind or spirit, in some sense, do we have the basis for a view of
the kind described. Whatever spirit is, being is "identical" with it, and being
one, so also is spirit. "There is only one river, which here and there assumes new
forms or is modified in this way and that, either briefly or more lastingly. Here
it assumes the form of a ripple, there of a waterfall, and numberless other forms
in other places." Being here and now is a material object, but there and then a
mental act perhaps. No matter what forms or shapes it assumes or however it is
modified, it still may be regarded as identical in character with God the creator,
"that from which the origin, subsistence, and dissolution of this world proceed.
VIII
Let `AS' be a primitive individual constant designating Absolute Spirit or Mind.
Immediately we note, as a first metaphysical principle, that AS exists.
Pr l. |_E!AS.
The existence of individuals is handled here predicatively, where
`E!x' is short for `~x = N'.
N being the null undividual.11
It is interesting that Hegel, at the very beginning of his Pha¦ nomenologie des
Geistes, differentiates "Subjective" and "Objective" Spirit from the AS.12 The one
is a "manifestation" of AS, the other, we might say, is an "embodiment" of it. The
farious objects of nture are embodiments of AS, those of the mental realm,
manifestations. Accordingly, two new primitives are needed for these notions. Let
us symbolize them by `Manif' and `Emb'. Clearly the following principles should
obtain concerning these notions.
Pr 2. |_(x) (y) ( (x Manif y v x Emb y) x = AS).
Pr 3. |_~(Ex) (x Manif AS v x Emb AS).
Thus AS alone manifests or embodies enything, and nothing whatsoever manifests or
embodies it. Also nothing is both manifested and embodied by anything.
Pr 4. |_~(Ex) (Ey) (x Manif y . x Emb y).
We may now define
`SubjSp' as `Fu `{x AS Manif x}'
and
`ObjSp' as `Fu`{x AS Emb x}'.
Thus the realm of subjective spirit is the fusion of (the virtual class of)
everything manifexted by AS, and objective spirit is the fusion of (the virtual
class of ) everythig embodied by AS. These definitions give a very natural way of
providing for the two Hegelian realms. Should they be regarded as mutually
exclusive? If so, we need to postulate that every part of a manifested or embodier
individual is also manifested or embodied, respectively. Thus, where P is the
part-whole relation, we have also that
Pr 5. |_(x) (y) (z)( ( x manif y . z P y) x Manif z)
and
Pr 6. |_(x) (y) (z) ( (x Emb y . z P y) x Emb z).
Also it should then obtain that
|_~(Ex) (~ x = N. x P SubjSp . x P ObjSp),
that SubjSp and ObjSp have no non-null part in common.
If thst two spheres are taken to exhaust the cosmos, we have also a Principle of
Completeness, that
Pr 7. |_ (x) (~x = AS (AS Manif x v AS Emb x)).
IX
But perhaps there are realms of derivative being other than these two, or even
altogether different. Perhaps the two Hegelian ones are themselves unjustifiable
on the basis of modern science, and constitute an illicit dichotomy. These
difficult questions we need not attempt to answer for the moment, but we should
note that the foregoing material may easily be extended to allow for any number of
derivative realms of being--or even for none at all. But let us assume at lease
one. And let us speak of manifestation in a wider sense for the moment, so as to
include embodiment, as well as whatever further kinds of process are appropriate
for generating the given kinds of entities. Thus we let `Manif1', `Manif2', and so
on, be primitives, and we let
`U1' abbreviate `Fu {x AS Manifi x '.
Thus the universe of entities i is merely the fusion of the entities to which AS
bears Manifi, for each i. For each relation Manifi we then have principles
analogous to Pr 2 and Pr 3, and an appropriate extension of Pr 4.
If i = O, absolute monism results. AS is the only reality and there is nothing
else except m-ay-a. Even the name `AS', the very inscriptions of Pr 1-Pr 4, and so
on, would be dropped. They would all be items of m-ay-a and thus presumably not
worthy of rational discourse. But even if i>O, we could still hold to a form of
the doctrine of m-ay-a in regarding the entities of U1, U2, and so on, as m-aya-
items but allow rational discourse about them. However, if the discourse is to be
in accord with modern logic and science, it will quickly be seen to be so
important for our human life, and so insistently objective and compelling--and
indeed so difficult to come anywhere near getting it right--that the point of talk
of m-ay-a at all is seen lost. Surely the AS is not the less great, the less
worthy of our total and all-absorbing effort to grasp it, if we regard the
derivative entities to be genuine in some sense, if only as manifestations of it.
In fact, the situation is the other way around. Let us embrace the derivative
entities as worthy of our love and respect, and make every possible effort to come
to see most intimately how they are interrelated one with another. It is in this
way, in part, that we can come to know the grandeur and munificence of the AS
itself. However, our "knowledge" of it need not be exhausted therewith, but rather
enhanced.
The manifested objects of the Ui's are to comprise whatever it is that our cosmos
contains. Precisely how we are to populate them is of course an incredibly
difficult matter. Surely they must contain the objects needed for the sciences in
their most developed stages. We must not rest content with the ontology of
centuries back nor even with the "stale" science of yesterday. But to spell out in
detail the ontology of even one science, at its present state of development,
would be very difficult, and would tax even the greatest practitioners.
Nonetheless, we may suppose it to consist of a presumably small number of Ui's in
terms of which the desired assertions of that science can be made. And similarly
for other sciences. And we must never suppose that any characterization of the
Ui's needed for science would ever be final or complete. On the contrary, they
would always be semper reformanda, and would exhibit enormous variation in the
hands of different practitioners in the same field even at the same time.
X
Of particular interest for philosophers of logic and mathematics is the Ui, or the
Ui's, needed for both. If logic is taken as standard, first-order logic, as
throughout this paper, no assumption concerning the Ui's needed be made. On the
monist view, our only individual is AS, plus the null and world individuals. The
latter, however, would be identical with AS, and the null individual N has the
proper that
~E!N,
that it does not "exist" in the appropriate sense. (Of course N is a value for a
variable, but that is something else again). And if i>O, the Ui's are merely those
of the sciences as already provided.
Logic as such has no ontology. For mathematics, however, the situation is very
different. Let us think of it set-theoretically, in terms of the Zermelo-Fraenkel-
Skolem system. Here two Ui's are needed, one for individuals or Urelemente--
Zermelo himself insisted upon their admission, it will be recalled--and one for
the realm of sets. No harm need arise from admitting the Urelemente, the very
entities that may be presumed to populate the cosmos. The admission of a domain of
sets, however, postulates entities that do not populate the cosmos in any obvious
sense. Even so, this matter need not deter us, for we may use merely our
Urelemente but allow set-theoretic talk about them in the manner of the "moderate"
realism of Duns Scotus.14 In this way classical mathematics in the set-theoretical
sense may be preserved, and used, moreover, as a basis for the other theoretical
sciences. For this, of course, a new primitive is needed, and for applications to
the sciences, such new primitives as those sciences require.
The question arises as to whether, once the Ui's required for the sciences have
been arrived at, any further ones are needed. Do the ontologies of the sciences
suffice for all discourse?--other of course than that concerning the AS and its
possible manifestations in SubjSP? Well, surely yes, if `science' is construed
widely enough. Note that the question is merely one about ontologies, not about
the modes of discourse allowed concerning the items admitted in that science. One
and the same act, for example, may be said to occupy such and such a place-time in
one context, but to be immoral or illegal or prohibited or whatever, in others.
Mental entities are the occupants of the realm of SubjSp, and any interesting
metaphysical idealism may be presumed to admit such entities. The basic items here
are no doubt individual souls or minds, and mental acts are presumably dependent
upon these fundamentally. It is a bit mysterious as to just what an individual
mind is and how it is to be individuated. You have one and I have one, and they
are alike in both being minds. Let yours be m1, and mine m2, and let m3, m4, and
so on, be those of others. The calculus of individuals allows us to form then the
"group" mind
(m1 m2 m3 m4 -----).
Even this group mind does not of course exhaust the AS, the latter being
infinitely greater. Is this group mind a part of the AS? If so, then each
individual mind is also, each being a part of the group sum. Equally difficult is
the question as to how the individual souls or selves are related to the mental
acts of or pertaining to them. And this in turn leads to the problem as to how
such acts themselves are to be individuated.
Individual minds result from the AS by one kind of manifestation, bodies by
another. Does the human person, a unique complex of mind and body, result by still
a third kind of manifestation? Some idealists might well contend so. To bring then
a mind, a body, and a person together, we need the Of-relation of possession.15 It
is not clear whether the mind possesses the body, or the body the mind, or the
person the mind, or the mind the person, or the body the person, or the person the
body. Perhaps there is possession in all of these ways. In any case, if bodies,
minds, and persons result from separate kinds of manifestation, a suitable way of
bringing a body, a mind, and a person together must be at hand to provide for a
concrete human person.
The idealist, of course, regards minds as par excellence the real entities, they
being like unto the AS itself. Rather than to regard the other types of entities
as arising by other kinds of manifestation, perhaps they should be regarded rather
as the result of the concentration of soul-stuff in some particular way or other.
Each material object is merely soul concentrated in a certain way. The notion of
concentration, the very prototype of mental activity, then would play the role of
the relations of manifestation. But concentration is mental in a way in which the
relations of manifestation are not. And if "subject" and "object" are alike, both
must be mental. Thus the following "principle," where Conc is the relation of
concentration, might well hold,
namely,
||_(x) (AS Conc x x Like AS).
Everything that results from the AS by concentration is itself like or similar to
AS. And likewise,
||_(x) (x Like AS x P AS),
that everything like AS is itself a part of it. The former principle might well
hold without the latter. If the two principles are taken together, a genuine
monism, even a pantheism, is achieved. The development of idealism in terms of the
theory of concentration would be more Vedantic that Hegelian. Principles akin to
Pr 2-Pr 4 and Pr 6-Pr 7 would obtain, with `Conc" in place of `Emb", no change
being required in Pr 1 and Pr 5.
For the purposes of the subsequent discussion, and to simplify, lit us presuppose
the theory above as developed in terms of the Hegelian `Manif' and `Emv'. But
whatever modifications ofthis might be thought desirable can easily be presupposed
equally well.
XI
Howsoever the fundamental ontology is arranged, the AS has remarkable tasks to
perform and must be given some remarkable properties, akin to those of the
Thomistic God and the Whiteheadian primordial nature. To see this let us consider
again the primordialvaluations constituting this latter, which will be helpful as
a heuristic, enabling us to flesh out the theory underlying St. Thomas' "five
signs of will."
The five signs of will, it will be recalled, are operation, permission, precept,
counsel, and prohibition, but St. Thomas is nt too clear as to precisely how these
are to beconstrued. The words are used analogically. "A man may show that he wills
something . . ." by doing it "directly when he works in his own person; in that
way thesign of his will is said to be an operation. He shows it indirectly, by not
hindering the doing of a thing; . . . In this the sign is called permission. He
declares his will by means of another when he orders another to perform a work,
either by insisting upon it as necessary by Iprecept, and by prohibiting its
contrary; or by persuasion, which is a part of counsel."16 St. Thomas goes on to
note that "since thewill of man makes itself known in these ways, the same five
are sometimes called divine wills, in the sense of being signs of that will. That
precept, counsel, and prohibition are called the will of God is clear from the
words of Matt. vi. 10: Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That
permission and operation are called the will of God is clear from Augustine, who
says: Nothing is done, unless the Almighty will it to be done, either by
permitting it, or by actually doing it." These very dignificant but difficult
comments should be helpful in attemptingto characterize the divine will, whether
sonstrued Thomistically or not.
Among the operations we should surely include all the manifestations and
embodyings. These operations concern only the ontology. In addition, there are the
primordially ordained circumstances, lawsand do on. Let
`AS PrimOp a,x1,...,xn'
express that the AS primordially operates or has it obtain that the n-place
predicate a, standing for a virtual class or relation, apply to or denote x1, ...,
xn, in this order.
That the AS is the "creator" of all entities (other than himself) is in effect
provided by Pr7 above. But he is also the ordainer of all scientific, moral, and
aesthetic law, and this aspect of the divine activity can be stipulated only by
bringing in the relation PrinOp. Thus suppose ax1...xn obtaind, for fixed x1, ...,
xn, and a, not just factually but as the result of, or as an instance of, some
scientific law. Then it would obtain that
Pr 8. |_AS PrimOp a,x1,...,xn,
for such a, x1,...,xn. Nor need Pr 8 be restricted to just scientific law. It
should be extended to instances of whatever laws are thought to obtain in any of
the spheres of knowledge. And if one or more of the xi's are allowed to be
numbers, natural, real, or complex, even laws of a probabilistic kind may also be
included here. Think what a staggering principle Pr8 then is, incorporating as it
soes all the laws governing the cosmos, construed in the most inclusive possible
sens. But surely the AS must be conceived as so great as to incorporate no less.17
Clearly also it holds that
Pr 9. |_(y) (a) (x1)...(xn) (y PrunOp a,x1,...,xn y = AS,
so that the AS is the only entity capable of the primordial operations. And also
Pr 10. |_(a) (x1)...(xn) ((AS PrimOp a,x1,...,xn . a Desvc F) Fx1....xn).
Whatever is primordially ordained to obtain does actually obtain. But the converse
need not hold. Not all that obtains is primordially ordained to do so. (The
`Desvc' here is the sign for the designation of virtual classes, where `a Desvc F'
is short for `(PredCon1 a . (x) (a Den x =_ Fx))', `Den' being the primitive for
denotation.18
The primordial operations need not be confined to just the demands of scientivic
law, as already noted. Moral and aesthetic laws, if there are such, are included,
and even such boundary conditions as might be thought to obtain independently of
law. Perhaps even there are miracles in some sense as the direct result of a
primordial operation. If so, the stipulation of such is presumed included here
St. Thomas speaks of prohibition in a somewhat narrow sense, of prohibiting the
"contrary" of a precept. Here let us speak rather of prohibiting the contradictory
of an operation. Thus we may let
`AS PrimPrhbtOp a,x1,...,xn' abbreviate `AS PrimOp -a , x1,...,xn'.
where -a is the negation of a. There are other kinds of prohibition, which we
shall meet with in a moment.
The primordial operations concern all objects whatsoever, including human persons,
actions, events, states, processes, and the like. The precepts and counsels, on
the other hand, may be thought to concern only human beings and their actions. Let
`p' be a variable for persons and `e' for actions of trhe kind humans are capable
of performing. And let P be a virtual class of persons satisfying such and such
conditions, and A a class of suitable actions. Thenwe may let
`As PrimPrcpt `P',`{p (Ee) (p Prfm e . A e)}''
express that it is a primordial precept that persons of the kind P should be
persons who perform actions of the kind A, under appropriate circumstances.
Presepts alway seem to be general in this way applying to all perfons and actions
of given kinds. Counself, on the other hand, may always be regarded asspecific,
applying to a given person with respect to a given action.
Are all counsels covered by a precept? It is tempting to think so, whether the
precept is explicitly known or exhibited or not. If so, we may let
`AS PrimCnsl p,e, `P',`A'' abbreveiate `(AS PrimPrcpt `P', `{q (Ee') (q Prfm e' .
Ae')}' . Pp . Ae)',
so that p is counseled to do e relative to P and A just where it is precepted that
all P's do A's and p is a P and e an A.
More general definitions, with variables in place of the constants, may be given
by letting
`AS PrimPrcpt a, {p (Ee) (p Prfm e . b Den e)} '
be the primitive form and then letting
`AS PrimCnsl p,e,a,b' abbreviate `AS PrimPrcpt a, {q (Ee')(q Prfm e' . b Den e)} '
. a Den p . b Den e)'.
Note that by means of precept the AS in effect "orders" a person "to perform a
work" by "insisting upon it as necessary," in some social, moral, or aesthetic
sense. And surely some generality must obtain as a condition for the necessity.
Hence the use of the class terms `P' and `A'. Cousel, however, is always specific
and "persuasion is a pate of it." Only a person, even a sum of persons, can be
persuaded and hence counseled in this sense.
There are relevant kinds of prohibition corresponding with precept and counsel.
Thus we let
`AS PrimPrhbtPrcpt `P',`A'' abbreviate `AS PrimPrcpt `P', `{p ~(Ee) (p Prfm e .
Ae)}'',
so that persons of the kind P are prohibited in this sense from being persons who
perform actions of the kind A. And there are also prohibitive counsels, so that
`AS PrimPrhbtCnsl p,e,`P',`A'' abbreviates `(AS Prim- PrhbtPrcpt `P',`A' . Pp .
Ae)'.
More general forms of these definitions, with variables in place of the constants
`P' and `A', may also be given.
Clearly, corresponding with Pr 9, we should have that
Pr 11. |_(x) (a) (b) (x PrimPrcpt a,b (x = AS . (y) (a Den y Per y) . (y)(b Den y
Per y))),
when `Per' is the predicate for persons.
Also where
`p Oblg a'
expresses deontically that p is obliged to be a person of the kind denoted by a,
we whould have that
Pr 12. |_(a)(b)(p) (AS PrimPrcpt a,b, . a Den p) p Oblg b).
This principle assumes that whatever is primordially precepted, so to speak, is
deontically obliged. This at least should hold, but not the converse. There are
surely obligatory acts not determined so primordially.
No doubt much takes place in the cosmos that is primordially neutral, in hte sense
of being neither the result of an operation not operationally prohibited. Thus,
where `PredConna' express that a is an n-place predicate constant,
"AS PrimNtrlOPa,x1,...,xn' nay abbreviate `(PredConn a . ~AS PrimOp a,x1,...,xn .
~ PrimPrhbtOP a,x1,...,xn)'.
And similarly for human actions that are neither covered by precept nor presept-
wise prohibited. Thus also
`AS PrimNtrlPrcpt `P',`A'' abbreviates `~AS PrimPrcpt`P',`A' . ~AS PrimPrhbtPrcpt
`P',`A')'.
Here too, a more general definition may easily be given.
Note that in the foregoing only `PrimOp' and `PrimPrcpt' have been needed as
primitives, in addition of course to `Manif', `Emb', and `AS'.All the other
primordial predicates have been defined within the linguistic framework embodying
quantification theory, identity, nereology (or the calculus of individuals), and
of course some semantics and event theory. The deontic notion `Oblg' is also
presumed avaiable, either primitively or by definition, but it is not a purely
primordial notion, beint relative always to a given social group and a specific
deontic code.
There is also the all-important notion of a primordial permission, to which we now
turn.
XII
It is clear, if nothig is done other than its being done either by the Almighty or
being permitted by him, that the operations and permissions exhaust the divine
will and that the other "signs" are to be handled as subdivisions.The operations
and permissions are thus to be mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive. Under
the primordial operations are included the manifestations, embodiments, operations
proper, and the operational prohibitions. These operations are all such that their
results, so t speak, must obtain if our cosmos is to be the way it is. All the
other primordial notions are included inthe permissions, whose results may be
violated in our cosmos. Note the implicit distinction here between the operations
and permissions, on the one hand, and their "results," on the other. The results
of the one must obtain, but those of the other need not. On the other hand, the
operations and permissions themselves sonstiltute the necessary activity of the
AS, if our cosmos is to be what it is.
The prohibitions include just the three kinds, operational, preceptual, and
counsel-wise, the precepts both the proper and prohibitive ones, and similarly for
the counsels. The primordially neutral comprise the operationally neutral and the
preceptually so. The primordial permissions, as already noted, then comprise all
the primordial activities not included in theoperations, i.e., the prohibitions,
the precepts, the counsels, and the primordially neutral. These comments may all
be summarized by means of three additional definitions. We may let
`PrimOp e' abbreviate `(Ea)(Ex1)...(Exk) (<AS, Manif,x1>e v<AS, Emb,x1>ev<AS,
PrimOp, a,x1>e vAS, PrimOp,a,x1,x2>e v ... v<AS, PrimOp, a,x1, ...,xke)',
`PrimPrmsn e' abbreviate `(Ea)(Eb)(Ep)(Ee')(Ex1)...(Exk) (<AS, PrimPrhbtPrcpt.
a,b>e v <AS, PrimPrhbtCnsl, p,e',a,b>e v<AS, PrimPrcpt,a,b>e v<AS PrimCnsl,
p,e',a,b>e v<AS, PrimNtrlOp,a,x1>e v ... v<AS, PrimNtrlOP, a1x1,...,xk>e v <AS,
PrunNtrlPrcpt'a,b>e)', and
`PrimPrhbtn e' abbreviate `(Ea)(Eb(Ep)(Ee')(Ex1)...(Exk) (<AS,PrimPrhbtOP, a,x1> e
v ... v<AS, PrimPrhbtOP, a,x1,...,xk>e v<AS,PrimPrhbtPrcpt, a,b>e v<AS,
PrimPrhbtCnsl, p,e', a,b>e).
These definitions introduce the notions of being a primordial operation,
permission,or prohibition, respectively.
Note the use of the variable `e' for an act or state. And recall that the
expreseeions enclosed in the half-diamonds are event-descriptive predicates. Thus
`<AS, Manif,x21>e', for example, expresses that e is an act or state of x1's being
manifest by AS. Extensive use is make of such predicates within event logic. 19
REcall also the special use of the parameter `k' for the degree of the primitive
predicateof greatest degree needed as a primitive, and where there are assumed to
be primitive predicates of each degree n where 1 <= n <= k.
The notion of the divine will may be thought to be jully analyzed in terms of the
disjunction of thise three. Thus
`DW" may be short for `{e (PrimOP e v PrinPrmsn e v PrimPrhbtn e)}'.
The DW is thus merely the virtual class of all primordial operations, permissions,
and prohibitions.
A few principles over and above Pr l-Pr 12 above that should presumably obtain are
as follows.
Pr 13. |_(a)(x1)...(xn)(AS PrimOp a,x1,...,xn (PredConn a . ~x1 = AS. ... .~xn =
AS)),
Pr 14. |_~(Ea)(Ex1)...(Exn)(AS PrimOp a,x1,...,xn . AS PrimPrhbtOp a.x1,...,xn),
Pr 15. |_~(Ea)(Eb)(AS PrimPrcpt a,b . AS PrimPrhbtPrcpt a,b),
Pr 16. |_(a)(b)(x1)...(xn)(AS PrimOp (a b) ,x1,...,xn = (AS PrimOp a,x1,...,xn .
AS PrimOp b,x1,...,xn)),
Pr 17. |_(a)(b)(x1)...(xn)((AS PrimOp a,x1,...,xn v AS PrimOp b,x1,...,xn) AS
PrimOp (a b) , x1,...,xn),20
Pr 18. |_(a)(b)(x1)...(xn)((AS PrimOp a,x1,...,xn . AS PrimOp (-a b) ,x1,...,xn)
AS PrimOp b,x1,...,xn).21
Some of the various principles given may need some modification in the light ofa
more thorough presentation. The whole theory of primordiality in fact cries out
for further elaboration and development, being still in its infancy.
XIII
The analysis of the primordial valuations and hence of the divine will, given
above, agrees with that of St. Thomas to some extent. A few additional points of
parallel are as follows. Thomas notes that "there is no reason why the same thing
should not be the subject of precept, operation, counsel, prohibition, or
permission." Clearly one and the same human act can be the result of a
prohibitional operation as well as a prohibitional counsel, and hence of a
prohibitional permission. St. Thomas contends also tht "God ordains rational
creatures to act voluntarily and of themselves. Other creatures act only as moved
by the divine operation; therefore only operation and permission are concerned
with these." This contention agrees with the foregoing, permission here being
taken in the sense of the primordially neutral.
"All evil of sin," St. Thomas notes also, "though happening in many ways, agrees
in being out of harmony with the divine will. Hence, with regard to evil, only one
sign of will is proposed, that of prohibition." The evil of sin is precisely what
is primordially prohibited by precept. (There is no sin as the result of a
primordial operation, all such constituting the primordially good). "On the other
hand," St. Thomas goes on, "good the humanly good stands in various relations to
the divine goodness, since there are good deeds without which we cannot attain to
the fruition of that goodness, and these are the subject of precept" italics
added. The primordially good is the subject of precept, and counsel above was
taken as instantial of precept. But St. Thomas construes counsel here rather
differently, "for there are other goods," he says, "by which we attain to it the
fruition more perfectly, and these are the subject of counsel." Here counsel seems
to be concerned rather with supererogation. But even some precepts might be
stipulative of the supererogatorily good, so that even this last remark could be
seen to accord with the foregoing.
Any philosophical discussion of God's will must perforce be speculative, as indeed
is the foregoing. There would not seem to be much point in discussing it at all,
however, without some analysis of what the phrase is supposed to designate. At
best we can merely hypothesize what this might be, and thus we never could be said
to know it in any more direct sense. Even so, hypothetical constructs are useful
in theology just as they are in theoretical science.22
Note that the foregoing hypothetical reconstruction of some features of
metaphysical idealism has been given is a semantical metalanguage incorporating a
theory of acts. It would seem very doubtful that a more restricted kind of logical
framework would suffice for this purpose. Note also that the primordial notions
have been handled intensionally. These are given by reference to a predicate
rather than to a (virtual) class or relation the predicate might designate. The
reason for this is the familiar one concerning the intentionality of obligation,
to which the primordial notions are akin. It would not do to say, in a deontic
logic, for example, that one is obliged to be an F, for F might be equivalent with
some G, with respect to which one is not obliged. Reference to the predicate `F'
here instead of to the virtual class F prevents any such unwanted consequence.
Hence the intentional treatment, within a semantical meta-language, of the
primordial notions throughout, in terms essentially of Frege's Art des
Gegebenseins.
XIV
An alternative, more sophisticated way of handling manifestation and embodiment,
and even some of the promordial relations, suggests itself if a numerical measure
is introduced. We may think of the AS as manifesting itself in x to just such and
such a degree. All entities manifested to the same degree would then be of
essentially some same kind. The very difference between manifestation and
embodiment could then be handled in terms of difference of degree. Embodiment
would be low degree of manifestation. Let
`AS Manifi x'
express that x is a manifestation of AS to just degree i. If i = O, we could let x
be the null entity, and if i = 1, we could let x be AS itself. AS then manifests
itself to maximal degree. Physical objects have low degrees attached to them, and
highly mental ones have high degrees. And similarly for the primordial precepts,
some of which are more binding than others. Here too it might be of interest to
introduce a numerical degree. Whitehead speaks of the degree of a primordial
valuation, as noted above. No one, it would seem, has ever developed such a theory
in any detail, however, for natural theology and the use of numerical measures are
not ordinarily thought to go hand in hand. A quite sophisticated view would result
if a suitable numerical measure were introduced, and no doubt some interesting
notions would be forthcoming in terms of it.
Nothing has been said thus far concerning physical time, space, casuality, and the
like. Any attempt to locate the AS with respect to any of these is quite foreign
to the foregoing. It is rather the other way around, all objects of the physical
world themselves being embodiments of the AS. Hence the foregoing theory is all
couched in the Fregean tense of timelessness, so to speak, as in that of
spacelessness, causalitylessness, and so on.
Of course, only the barest logical maquette of the full theory concerning AS has
been given here. Indeed, to flesh out the foregoing in adequate detail would be a
formidable task indeed. Nonetheless, certain general features of what the fuller
development would be like should be evident. In particular it would comprise
foundations for a theory of objective value as contained in the primordial
precepts. Thus, as far as this scheme goes, there is no essential dichotomy
between fact and value, but each is handled in its separate way. Nor is there any
easy reduction of one to the other. Each is given its proper dignity and the way
is left open for discriminating all manner of interconnections between the two.
Note also that there is here no illicit dichotomy between reason and faith. Again,
it is rather that a rational scheme is available in which a theory of faith may be
incorporated. Indeed, it may be that faith, in a suitable sense, is our highest
rational activity, for it is always reasonable to let one's mind wander to an O
altitude! The task of natural theology in fact may be thought to be just this.
But faith is nothing if it does not issue in action, as many writers in the
tradition of philosophia perennis have eloquently affirmed. And indeed the notion
of the AS is of such staggering grandeur and magnitude, that it seems eminently
rational that we should "shape the whole conduct of our life . . . into
conformity" with it. To do this, in fact, should be our whole aim, everywhere and
always, as the great writers of that tradition have been continually affirming
across the centuries. "To interpret the absolute we must give all our time to it."
The pursuit of science, of beauty, and of goodness are alike here given their
proper role in this endeavor.
There is something compelling about human feeling at what we take to be its
highest, in the full experience, say, of a great work of art. It is doubtful that
such feeling can be suitably and fully explicated on any other basis than one such
as the foregoing. We can go a long way in analytic aesthetics without it, but
always with a most essential human ingredient left out--the depth and quality of
authentic aesthetic feeling at its best.
The positive contribution of the present paper is merely to have made seem
tentative suggestions towards giving the philosophia perennis the logical backbone
it is often thought to lack. Usually in discussions of the AS there is too much
logically irresponsible misstatement. But so lofty a topic would seem best served
by using such clean-cut logical notions and techniques as are now available.
Surely we should let idealism, along with other metaphysical views, grow with the
advance of knowledge.
Milton, Mass.
NOTES
1. Cf. Zellig Harris, "The Two Systems of Grammar: Report and Paraphrase," in
Papers in Structural and Transformational Linguistics (D. Reidel, Dordrecht:
1972).
2. Cf. the author's Belief, Existence, and Meaning (New York University Press, New
York: 1969), Chapter VI.
3. See the author's Events, Reference, and Logical Form (The Catholic University
of America Press, Washington, D.C.: to appear) and Semiotics and Linguistic
Structure (The State University of New York Press, Albany: to appear).
4. For further details, see the author's "On the Logic of the All-Soul in
Plotinus," to appear in a volume edited by P. Morewedge (The State University of
New York Press, Albany).
5. See the author's "On the Logical Structure of the Ontological Argument," in
Whitehead's Categoreal Scheme and Other Papers (Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague:
1974).
6. J. Salamucha, "The Proof `Ex Motu' for the Existence of God: Logical Analysis
of St. Thomas' Arguments," New Scholasticism XXXII (1958), 334-372 (first
published in Polish in 1934). Cf. also J. Bediek, "Zur Logischen Struktur der
Gottesbeweise," Franziskanischen Studien, XXXVIII (1956), 1-25; and L. Larouche,
"Examination of the Axiomatic Foundations of a Theory of Change," Notre Dame
Journal of Formal Logic, IX (1968), 371-384 and X (1969), 277-284 and 385-409.
7. See the author's "Some Thomistic Properties of Primordiality," The Notre Dame
Journal of Formal Logic, to appear.
8. Process and Reality (The Macmillan Co., New York: 1936), p. 46. Cf. also
Whitehead's Categoreal Scheme and Other Papers, Ch. III, "On the Whiteheadian
God."
9. C.S. Peirce, Collected Papers (Harvard University Press, Cambridge: 1931-1958),
Vol. VI, par. 467.
10. Richard Taylor, With Heart and Mind (St. Martin's Press, New York: 1973),
Proem.
11. On the null individual, see especially the author's "Of Time and the Null
Individual," The Journal of Philosophy LXII (1965), 723-736. To characterize the
null entity we need of course the calculus of individuals.
12. Pars. 385 and 386.
13. For useful expository remarks, see especially H. Wang, From Mathematics to
Philosophy (Humanities Press, New York: 1974).
14. See the author's "On Common Natures and Mathematical Scotism," to appear in
Ratio and also in Peirce's Logic of Relations and Other Studies, Studies in
Semantics, Vol. 12, ed. by Thomas Sebeok (Peter de Ridder Press, Nisse, The
Netherlands: 1977).
15. Cf. the author's "Of `Of'" to be presented at the VIIth International Congress
at Dusseldorf, 1978.
16. Summa Theologica, I, q. 19, a. 12.
17. PR8 is of course oversimplified, but a more general formulation and discussion
is not needed for the present.
18. Cf. the author's Truth and Denotation (University of Chicago Press, Chicago:
1958), p. 106.
19. See again Events, Reference, and Logical Form and Semiotics and Linguistic
Structure.
20. The ` ' and ` ' are the signs for the union and intersection respectively of
virtual classes.
21. Cf. an alternative treatment of the primordial relations in the author's "On
God and Primordiality," The Review of Metaphysics 29 (1976), 497-522. See also
"Some Thomistic Properties of Primordiality," and "On the Logic of Idealism and
Peirce's Neglected Argument," to appear in Idealistic Studies and also in Peirce's
Logic of Relations and Other Studies.
22. Cf. J. Bochen+ ski, The Logic of Religion (New York University Press, New
York, 1965). See also the discussion in Whitehead's Categoreal Scheme and Other
Papers, Chapter IX.
COMMENT
On Richard Martin,
"On Some Theological Languages"
JAN Van der VEKEN
The value of Professor Martin's contribution lies especially in his serious and
thorough application of current logico-linguistic theory to the study of religious
language. What he intends to show is how logico-linguistic theory can help shed
more light on the principles and structures of the main philosophical systems. For
this purpose, and by way of central paradigm, he attempts a hypothetical
reconstruction of at least some characteristics of metaphysical idealism in a
semantic metalanguage. An essential feature of metaphysical idealism is that God
is identified with being and that being is conceived as absolute Spirit. One can
therefore speak of a monism of the Spirit. The wider purpose, however, is to offer
a meta-system that can serve to formalize various philosophical and theological
systems such as those of Plotinus, Anselm, Aquinas, Hegel and Whitehead. A few
critical remarks are in order here.
1. From a theological point of view there arises the question of identifying the
metaphysical absolute (Absolute Spirit, hereinafter referred to as AS) with the
religious absolute (called God). AS has at least several characteristics of the
Thomistic God and Whitehead's "primordial nature." Nevertheless, Thomas employs a
different category as the ultimate and all-encompassive notion, namely, being,
whereas Whitehead speaks of "creativity." This would appear to be a point worth
noting in formalizing metaphysical idealism. What is to be said about God cannot
be deduced from the basic category AS.
2. A second question that can be raised concerning the project itself of
formalizing religious language is that before any logical analysis one must first
decide which type of philosophy is to be developed. This applies also to the
project of formalizing religious language. Which language shall be formalized?
Clearly, a prior decision has to be taken here.
Popper's distinction between "context of discovery" and "context of justification"
can be insightful here. The expression "justification" can be substituted in this
case by "articulation." A logico-linguistic method can therefore only be of
service on the level of articulation, not that of justification and not from a
heuristic viewpoint. But whence come the fundamental insights of the great
philosophical systems such as absolute idealism?
First, there are important themes which continually arise in the history of
philosophy and which have brought some people to speak of "philosophia perennis."
Thus Martin says: "that being is one and identical with God the creator . . . is
rediscovered in every age and in every corner of the world." It is in this
context, however, that caution should be observed before identifying the problem
of God with the problem of being.
Secondly, in a certain sense the religious notion of God serves as a touchstone
for the great philosophical systems. Even Hegel has said that religion can do
without philosophy but philosophy cannot do without religion. Philosophy as the
reflective critical moment presupposes man's pre-reflective understanding of being
as totality (Heidegger speaks of vorontologisches Seinsversta¦ ndnis). There is
likewise a precritical notion of God that is present in religion before it is
taken up again and thought in philosophy.
A third element of the "context of discovery" in connection with religious
language is our actual experience of the universe. "If our cosmos is to be what it
is . . . ." The relation between facts in the world and a view on the totality is
one of implication or incompatibility.
3. With regard to formalizing religious language, it must be said that a so-called
scientific theology has to comply with the same rules as those which hold good in
the formation of scientific theories in other fields.
First, theoretical constructions are useful in theology just as in other
disciplines. It should be noted however: theology looks for relations of the type
p--> q and not for the less complex p-->q (in other words theology looks for
necessary conditions of possibility and not for conditions of the type p-->q). In
the latter case reasoning from the consequence to the cause is not justified (the
problem of verification and the reasons why falsification is to be preferred to
verification in the formation of theories). In the case of a necessary condition
it is permissible to deduce from the givenness of q the givenness of p.
Secondly, a theology which intends to speak scientifically must insist on being as
systematic as possible, that is, it must systematize as many statements as
possible with the aid of as few fundamental principles as possible. Martin indeed
succeeds in formalizing the principles of absolute idealism with the aid of a few
basic concepts (AS, Manif., Emb., Prim. Prcpt.). All the other primordial
predicates are defined within the linguistic framework with the aid of the theory
of quantification, identity, the calculus of individuals, and ultimately with the
aid of some semantic rules and principles of the "event theory." The question that
now arises is whether this formalizing contributes anything from a strictly
heuristic standpoint. It would seem that such a method, while able to shed more
light on the coherence of certain theological principles, nonetheless actually
fails to provide any new insights.
Thirdly, not only logico-linguistic systems but the insights of current theories
of science can teach us rather a lot concerning the relation between the data of
experience and the paradigms we employ to grasp the data of experience in a
coherent and systematic conceptual framework. Paradigms are employed in theology
as well as in natural science. Kuhn especially has pointed out that science
usually develops with the aid of paradigms. In other sciences, too, Kuhn accepts
the presence of irrational, dogmatic components. Lakatos wanted to mitigate Kuhn's
"irrationalism," while Feyerabend stands more on Kuhn's side. For Kuhn "normal"
science is the cumulative process in which transmitted principles of a scientific
community are schematized, articulated and generalized. Martin's project fits into
the context of this theory of science. The extensive awareness that there is, in
any case, something which transcends man is rooted in experience as interpreted by
religious language. The systems of Platinus, Anselm, Aquinas, and Whitehead, as
well as that of so-called absolute idealism (Parmenides, Spinoza, and Hegel) can
then be seen as so many paradigms to clarify in a conceptual manner what is given
in metaphysical and religious experience, taking into account the demands of
logical coherence and adequacy to experience. Though we do not consider the
strength of the logico-linguistic method to be found on the level of content, it
is nevertheless a useful instrument whereby the current achievements of the so-
called formal sciences can be integrated into the study of religious language.
CHAPTER V
THE HINDU METAPHYSICAL TRADITION ON
THE MEANING OF THE ABSOLUTE
JEHANGIR N. CHUBB
In order to give an adequate exposition of the Hindu metaphysical tradition it is
necessary to clarify some important preliminary issues. Of Hinduism, more than of
any other religion, it may be said that it is not a monolithic creed. Within
Hinduism one has come to expect some variety in ways of thinking and speaking of
the Supreme Being and an even greater diversity of theories concerning man's
relation to the Supreme Being. Added to the difficulty of this bewildering
diversity of creeds is the reminder of one important trend in Hinduism which
points beyond all creeds and concepts to that "from which speech falls back and
the mind retires baffled, unable to reach it." Hinduism is both credal and non-
credal. This itself would present some difficulty in talking about the Hindu
religious tradition. The difficulty is aggravated owing to the fact that its many
creeds do not, at least at first sight, cohere to form a single, unified body of
teachings concerning the ultimate Reality.
This situation naturally raises the problem of identification. How shall we define
Hinduism? Is Hinduism in any sense one or is it merely the name of a
conglomeration of doctrines, aproaches, spiritual practices, and forms of worship
exhibiting a rich diversity or, as some would say, a chaotic multiplicity? Is
Hinduism one religion or a miscellaneous group of religions with nothing more than
a geographical unity to bring them under a common label?
One of the purposes of this paper is to show that Hinduism is the name of a
unified whole, but that in traditional Hinduism this unity is only a potentiality
and a promise that has been realized only partially and imperfectly, leaving a
number of tensions and conflicts unresolved. The question, what constitutes the
unity of Hinduism has come to the fore in recent times and it is my belief that in
the massive and luminous writings of Sri Aurobindo the final unity of Hinduism has
not merely been indicated but actually accomplished. As I have said in my article:
"Sri Aurobindo as the Fulfillment of Hinduism,"1 "Sri Aurobindo has added a new
dimension to Indian philosophy. He has brought to fruition its penetrating but
imperfect search for unity and has raised the spirit of Hinduism to a full and
liberated consciousness of itself."
I am aware that this view would be contested by many who could claim to speak with
authority on Hinduism and whose views deserve respect. I shall presently consider
alternative answers to the question, what constitutes the unity of Hinduism,
assuming that it is possible to interpret Hinduism as a system that can comprehend
in a coherent unity all its diverse manifestations. But it should be noted that
the controversy here is not over the question, what do the different schools of
Hinduism teach, but how are these diverse teachings to be correlated and what
principle of interpretation or synthesis should we employ to bring order out of
apparent chaos? We may say that the question, what is the Hindu metaphysical
tradition on the Absolute is at the first order level of reflection.
The difficulties of exposition which I have raised above will carry us to a second
order level. This should make it clear that the method to be used for giving an
exposition of the Hindu conception of the Ultimate is not purely a historical one,
not a matter of correct exegesis alone. I do not mean merely that presentation
must include interpretation and critical evaluation. This would still keep the
inquiry at the first order level. What is further needed is an explanatory
hypothesis, a vision of an emerging unity, in the light of which the materials
provided by historical study are to be interpreted and unified. It is similar to
the difference between recording facts of history and interpreting them in the
light of a philosophy of history. The facts could be correctly presented and yet
seen in a new light. Thus in giving an exposition of the Hindu concept of the
Ultimate one has to answer not only the question, what is Hinduism but, more
importantly, what is Hinduism trying to become?
It is obvious that the answer to this question cannot be found by merely examining
"the Hindu metaphysical tradition" understood as an already developed set of
doctrines which are accepted by all enlightened Hindus as forming the core of
Hinduism. We may, however, understand "Hindu tradition" not only in terms of a
tangible body of doctrines but also, more etherially, in terms of a spirit seeking
embodiment. The latter refers to the characteristic form which the spiritual quest
has taken in India and which may be described as a search for Truth in its
fullness, a search that intends to leave no possibility unexplored and is
undeterred by the apparent conflicts and contradictions in its many findings.
Undoubtedly, Truth in its fullness must also be a self-consistent whole, but there
is always the danger that by adopting a rigid and narrow idea of self-consistency,
as most religious philosophies have done, including many schools of Hinduism, one
may rest satisfied with a vision of Truth that is partial and truncated. The Hindu
tradition is nebulous and elusive with respect to its content but more fully
articulate with respect to its spirit and inspiring impulse. Its spirit dwells not
in one body but in innumerable bodies, but also breaks out of them. It transcends
its manifold expressions and remains doctrinally indefinable.
It is with reference to its spirit that we must indicate how the unity of Hinduism
is to be understood and how it is to be achieved, for in traditional Hinduism the
unity is still submerged in a mass of conflicting claims and counter-claims. The
religious mind of Hinduism aspires after a vision of wholeness in which, to use
Meister Eckhart's words, "there is no denial except the denial of all denials."
But in the history of Hinduism, particularly in the scholastic period, denial,
partisan thinking, and the refutation of `rival' theories was the accepted
procedure. It would, however, be a mistake to regard the strongly polemical
writings of the great Acaryas and their followers as entirely out of line with the
spirit of Hinduism. The ideal of unity is that of a richly diversified oneness.
The diversity is no less important than the unity. To achieve this richness of
content each element of the diversity must first be allowed to develop along its
own lines in isolation from the other elements, and even in opposition to them, in
order that it may discover its own potentialities and articulate itself fully. The
achievement of unity and harmony is a dialectical process in which tensions and
oppositions must be allowed to develop almost to the breaking point before they
can be resolved and embraced in a healing oneness.
This perhaps explains why, though in the Gita we are presented with an admirable
structured, comprehensive synthesis of all the major strands of Hindu spiritual
experience, the unity was not preserved but was broken up in the succeeding
centuries into several contending schools of thought. The unity of Hinduism in the
Gita was in a way too premature, since the nisus within each of its elements to
develop along its own lines and find its own specific mode of self-fulfillment,
had not yet been appeased.
It is in recent times that the problem of discovering the underlying unity of
Hinduism has come to the fore. In conformity with the spirit of Hinduism one
should adopt a non-partisan approach to this problem. There are broadly two
conceptions of unity or universality, the missionary and the non-missionary. The
former, paradoxically, sustains itself through exclusion and offers at best a
procrustean type of universality, universal by the very force of its narrowness.
Truth is here walled in and cast into a more or less rigid mold and what lies
outside it is dismissed as error and darkness or the dim twilight of half-truths.
Or, taking a more liberal attitude, what is outside it is regarded as below it,
representing a partial or lower truth whose sole value is that it is a preliminary
stage to something beyond it, helpful, at best to the individual to rise at last
to the highest stage--one's own--where Truth abides in fullness.
Precisely such a move was made by Vivekananda and is, I believe, largely accepted
by the monks of the Sri Ramakrishan Order. Hindu theories concerning the Supreme
Being are broadly divided into three groups: dvaita (dualism), vis+i.stadvaita
(qualified non-dualism) and advaita (non-dualism). These include in-between
theories like those propounded by the Gaitanya school and the S+aiva and S+-akta
philosophies. For Vivekananda, dvaita and visistadvaita represent the Truth
stepped down to meet the requirements of less developed souls and are to be
regarded as stages through which the seeker passes on his way to the highest Truth
which is taught in S+amkara's Advaita. A Christian writer, assuming (mistakenly,
according to me) that the Vivek-anandian approach represents the generally
accepted standpoint of the modern Hindu, remarks discerningly, "The Hindu view is
not as tolerant and comprehensive as at first sight appears. It represents a
particular understanding of the nature of religious truth and this understanding
is dogmatically asserted against any other view." Besides, such a paternalistic
and patronizing resolution of conflicting truth-claims would be totally
unacceptable to the non-Samkarites who are regarded as the "lesser breeds" within
Hinduism.
In an approach that is free of any suggestion of partisanship and condescension
the ultimate reconciliation of the seemingly opposed viewpoints must be sought in
an integral and all-embracing Whole in which all the positive contents in the
diverse competing elements are held together and harmonized, not by being arranged
hierarchically as representing ascending steps to the highest truth contained in
one of them, but as concurrent and complementary poises of an indivisible Reality
that dwells indivisibly in each and all of them while at the same time remaining
transcendent and indeterminable. Hinduism, according to me, is the Spirit of Truth
revealing itself through a slow, evolutionary and dialectical process and finally
bursting forth fully in the integral vision and experience of Sri Aurobindo.
Before considering the question of how we are to justify the ascriptions of what
would seem to be incompatible predicates to the same Reality it will be worthwhile
to look into the Hindu metaphysical tradition concerning the Ultimate insofar as
this represents concepts and theories shared by all orthodox Hindus. There is
first the acceptance of scripture (s+ruti) as infallible. This, however, will help
us only to a limited extent in discovering what the Hindu doctrine is. The
scriptures are not systematic treatises, but rather the outpourings in the
language of poetry of diverse spiritual experiences of the Rsis who were not
unduly concerned about their mutual consistency. Therefore, what the scriptures
teach is largely a matter of interpretations, as indeed has been the case, leaving
us, at least in Hinduism, without any court of appeal which can decide which
interpretation is the right one. All we can do, therefore, is to inquire whether
there are any doctrines which are, as a matter of fact, shared by all orthodox
schools of Indian thought. I think we may safely say that it would be generally
agreed that the Supreme Reality, Brahman or Purushottama, is eternal in the sense
of being timeless (ku.tastha nitya), self-existent and the source of all that
exists. Brahman is the All and inclusive of everything. "All this is verily
Brahman." Further, it is agreed that Brahman is Sat, Cit, Ananda (or Being,
Consciousness, Bliss).2 There is also general agreement that Brahman is partless
or indivisible so that it would not be correct to say that the being of Brahman is
partly cit and partly -ananda. Sat, cit, -ananda are so related that each includes
and is included in the other two. I shall show later how this important notion of
the indivisibility of Brahman helps us to answer the objection that in attempting
to integrate on an equal footing, as it were, divergent views about the nature of
Brahman we are guilty of predicating contradictory attributes to the same Reality.
The Indian view of Brahman and of the universe may be called pantheism. Pantheism
is an ambiguous term and one must hasten to add that Indian pantheism is a view
which is compatible with panentheism which, while recognizing the immanence of
Brahman in the universe (which is Brahman itself in self-manifestation), also
insists on affirming the transcendence of Brahman. Pantheism as presented in the
G-it-a, for instance, is the view that there is nothing outside the being of
Brahman. The Upanisads declare "All this is verily Brahman" and "As from a blazing
fire sparks fly forth by the thousands, so also do various beings come forth from
the imperishable Brahman and unto Him again return."
It should be pointed out here that Indian dualistic philosophies occupy a position
half way between the G-it-a pantheism and Christian dualism according to which the
universe and human souls are not only outside the being of God but are created ex
nihilo, i.e., individual souls are not eternal since in some sense they have an
origin. All schools of Indian philosophy, however, regard individual souls, j-
ivas, as eternal. But in my opinion such a view can be held consistently only
within a pantheistic framework, since it is unthinkable that there could be
anything outside the being of Brahman which is coeternal with it. Brahman is and
must be "One without a second."3
In the Upani.sads, what may be called the essential as distinct from the integral
nature of Brahman is indicated in the question, "As from the knowledge of one lump
of clay all that is made of clay is known, so what is that knowing by which all
things become known?" This is consistent with pantheism according to which the
Supreme is not only the efficient cause but also the material cause of the
universe. But there is no single picture of Brahman that emerges unambiguously
from the Upanisadic texts. Brahman is referred to as personal, saguna, as the Lord
of the universe. "Him one must know, the supreme Lord of all lords, the supreme
Godhead above all godheads." "From fear of Him both Indra and Wind and Death as
fifth do speed along."
Brahman is also spoken of as impersonal, differenceless and relationless, nirguna.
"There is here no diversity. Death after death is the lot of one who sees in this
what seems to be diverse." Activity and dynamism are attributed to the saguna
Brahman. "Supreme too is his Sa+kti and manifold the natural working of her
knowledge and her force." The nirguma Brahman is naturally spoken of as beyond all
action. But there are passages in the Upani.sads which describe Brahman as
simultaneously static and dynamic. "Though sitting still It travels far; though
lying down It goes everywhere." "One, unmoving, that is swifter than Mind. . . ."
"That moves and That moves not." Again Brahman is described as both immanent and
transcendent. "He who is dwelling in all things is yet other than all things. . .
." "That is far and the same is near; That is within all this and That is also
outside all this."
The concept of Brahman in the Upanisads and in Indian philosophy generally is
basically non-anthropomorphic. By this I mean that Brahman is regarded as the
Transcendent Being which differs both in existence and nature from the purely
phenomenal or finite being, not merely in degree but essentially in kind. There is
a qualitative distance between the purely finite and the Infinite. But here it is
important not to overlook a radical difference between Christian dualism and Hindu
pantheism. According to the latter the human individual in his true nature belongs
to the Transcendent and not to the phenomenal order or the order of created
beings. There dwells within "the cave of his heart," to use an Upani.s-adic
simile, a hidden divinity or a hidden Self which has connaturality, not with the
mundane and the perishable, but with the Divine and the Everlasting. This hidden
reality is not something that we have to become or grow into; we are that
eternally.
Brahman, however, is transcendent to the finite intellect and its concepts. It is
in an important sense incomprehensible. This raises the difficult problem: how is
it possible to think of Brahman at all, as we undoubtedly do in philosophy, and
how can we speak intelligibly of that which is beyond speech? Does the recognition
of the ineffability of Brahman launch us on a via negativa culminating in the
position of the Advaitin and the Buddhist for whom That (Tat) transcends and
ultimately negates all concepts and categories, including the category of
personality and the qualities of Creativity and Love and is Empty (S+unya), not in
itself but of all that we positively ascribe to it?
Such a view would clearly be one-sided and not compatible with an integral outlook
whose maxim is: a place for everything and everything in its place. And yet this
very demand for integrality will compel us to find a place for Advaita and
S+unyav-ada, not as the whole Truth or even the highest Truth, but as an important
and inalienable aspect of the integral Truth. But how is this to be reconciled
with the statement that Brahman is ineffable?
The notion of ineffability has not been properly understood and has led to much
confusion in rational theology. The ineffable is usually identified with the
unconceptualizable. That is only one aspect of the ineffable and it is this aspect
which lends support to the (partial) truth of Sa+.mkara's non-dualism and of the
Buddhist s+unyav-ada. The ineffability of Brahman is a consequence of the infinite
qualitative distance between Brahman and the phenomenal world. This means that the
existence and nature of Brahman are in a mode incomprehensible to the intellect,
and hence to know Brahman directly (aparok.sa jn+ -ana), as it is in itself, one
must go beyond the level of concepts. But to transcend a concept is not
necessarily to negate it. Our concepts of Brahman need be neither false nor
inadequate. It is misleading to say that the intellect can know God only
inadequately. The real distinction is not between inadequate and adequate
knowledge but between conceptual knowledge (apar-a vidy-a) and direct knowledge
(par-a vidy-a). At their own level our concepts are both true and adequate, but
direct knowledge of Brahman belongs to a different dimension altogether. It does
not lie in the direction of greater and greater adequacy of conceptual thinking.
Each advance in conceptual penetration merely "shuts us off from Heaven with a
dome more vast." In the direct knowledge of Brahman the truth of our concepts is
simultaneously confirmed and transfigured. Since the mode of transfiguration is
beyond the comprehension of the intellect one would be justified in venturing the
paradox that Brahman simultaneously confirms and cancels the predicates that we
ascribe to it. There is, however, an aspect of Brahman from which all thought-
determinations are totally and uncompromisingly rejected. "There sight travels
not, nor speech, nor the mind. . . . It is other than the known." It is "neti,
neti," "not this, not this."
We may say, therefore, that at the core of the ineffable Brahman there is a point
which is sheerly ineffable. It may be represented as the center of a circle turned
in on itself and totally absorbed within itself; or as the Face of the Supreme
that is turned away from the whole sphere of manifestation. It is into this zero
of the sheer ineffable that the S+a.mkarite and the Buddhist enter and mistakenly
declare to be the whole truth. But the circle does not collapse and vanish into
its own center, though the individual may choose to merge in it without a
remainder. We have here, in the words of Sri Aurobindo, a choice:
Either to fade into the Unknowable
Or thrill with the luminous seas of the Infinite.
There are insuperable objections to the claim that Advaita represents the sole
truth or even the highest truth. If Brahman is multi-faceted there can be no
hierarchy of aspects within it, for that would mean that Brahman can be greater or
lesser than itself. We must therefore examine the claim made by the S+a.mkarites
that advaita is the whole truth. According to S+a.mkara Brahman is differenceless
and relationless, and the world, including individual souls, is non-different from
the non-dual Brahman. This identity, however, is not identity in difference; it
totally negates all differences. Plurality as such, therefore, can only be an
illusion, m-ay-a. As K.C. Bhattacharyya puts it, "S+am-kara's doctrine of M-ay-a
is the logical pendant to his doctrine of Brahman as the undifferenced, self-
shining truth." This is true provided Brahman is equated with "the undifferenced
Brahman"; but if the latter is held to be just one aspect or poise of Brahmam then
it would be possible to separate advaitav-ada from m-a-y-av-ada and accept the
former as true or partial truth and reject the latter as false. Not only Sri
Aurobindo, but some other schools of Indian philosophy as well, affirm advaita to
be true but deny that the truth of advaita entails the view that the world of
manifestation is an illusion.
The first objection to S+amkara's view is that not only is the fact of illusion
not explained but, consistently with the doctrine of adviata-cum-m-ay-a, it can
have no logical explanation. R-am-anuja pointed out that it is logically
impossible for a S+amkarite for whom the undifferenced Brahman is the only reality
to determine the locus of Ignorance (Avidya) on which the illusion of plurality is
said to depend. The advaita view that m-ay-a is anirvacan-iya (inexplicable) must
be taken not as an answer to this objection but as a confession that the objection
is unanswerable. "The theory of Illusion," says Sri Aurobindo, "cuts the knot of
the world problem, it does not disentangle it; it is an escape, not a solution. .
. . This eventual outcome satisfied only one element, sublimates only one impulse
of our being; it leaves the rest out in the cold to perish in the twilight of the
unreal reality of M-ay-a."
The second objection to S+a.mkara's doctrine arise from the fact that according to
him the function of language is not to describe Brahman--for Brahman, being devoid
of all qualities, is indescribable--but merely to indicate it. Talking about
Brahman is comparable to a finger pointing to the moon. The finger does not
describe that to which it points. But how shall we interpret the metaphor of the
pointing finger? What corresponds to it in philosophy is a proposition or a set of
propositions with Brahman as the subject term. But if Brahman is totally
indescribable how is it possible to indicate what we are talking about? What does
the term `Brahman' mean? It is no answer to this difficulty to suggest that
`Brahman' is like a proper name which denotes without connoting anything. A proper
name is bestowed on an individual whom we perceive or, at least, whom we can think
of through a description. Besides, in the absence of the individual, the use of
the proper name does call up some quality or characteristic that belongs to that
individual, and it is only through such a descriptive content that the individual
can be identified.
In integral Hinduism Brahman must be regarded as both saguna, personal, and
nirguna, impersonal and relationless. For S+amkara Brahman is only the latter, and
yet he speaks of two Brahmans, the higher, nirguna Parabrahman and the lower,
saguna Brahman (or Is+vara, the Lord of the universe). Taken in conjunction with
S+a.mkara's doctrine of the three satt-as (orders of being), pr-atibhasika
(illusory), vyavah-arika (practical), and the p-aram-arthika (transcendent) one
may get the impression that S+a.m kara does not after all totally deny the world
of plurality and change or its omniscient and omnipotent Ruler (Is+vara), but
accords them a temporary reality or a reality of a lesser and relative kind. Such
an impression would, however, be totally false. The criterion of reality according
to S+amkara is "that which cannot be sublated." As the illusory snake is sublated
on the perception of the rope so the vyavah-arika satt-a, the world of plurality,
is also sublated on the perception of Brahman. As regards -Is+vara, the so-called
"lower Brahman," this is what S+a.mkara has to say in his commentary on Brahma
Sutras ii.i.14. "Belonging to the Self, as it were, of the omniscient Lord, there
are name and form, the figments of ignorance. . . . Hence the Lord's being a Lord,
his omniscience, his omnipotence, etc., all depend on the limitations due to the
adjuncts whose self is ignorance; while in reality none of these qualities belong
to the Self whose true nature is cleared, by right knowledge, from all adjuncts
whatever."
Should we then say that the metaphysical statement "Brahman is the Ruler of the
universe" is outright false? This would not be an accurate representation of
S+amkara's view. It would not explain why he uses the expression "the lower
Brahman" or why he thinks that certain descriptive statements about Brahman are
(provisionally) permissible and valid. The clue to Samkara's interpretation of
metaphysical statements that ascribe personality or qualities to Brahman is in his
view that all such statements are up-asan-artha, for purpose of worship and
meditation. These statements are not to be taken literally as true. They are not
true, but they are not false either. They have no truth-value. In fact they are
not statements in the straightforward sense. They are intended to be "as if"
statements. For example, the "statement" "Brahman is the Ruler of the universe"
must be interpreted to mean, "Meditate on Brahman as if Brahman were the Ruler of
the universe." These statements have pragmatic value. Contemplation of Brahman as
the Ruler of the universe is a kind of heuristic device. Mok.sa or liberation is
realized through knowledge of the Parabrahman. But the birth of knowledge requires
a period of preparation or spiritual practice (s-adhana) which consists partly in
the purification of one's nature. In view of the devotional hymns that S+amkara
himself composed it is likely that he regarded the practice of love and adoration
(bhakti) of the Supreme Being as the most efficacious way of purifying one's
nature and destroying ignorance and the illusion of duality. This may well be the
case, but it leaves unexplained how an untrue or not-true supposition concerning
Brahman on which the practice of bhakti is based can be efficacious in acquiring
knowledge of Brahman. Another way of stating this objection is to point out that
it is totally unintelligible how a descriptive predicate can point to or indicate
the parabrahman if the predicate is pure fiction and has no ontological correlate
whatever. Further, and this is what the theistic schools of Hinduism emphasize,
love of God is its own justification and leads to its own characteristic mode of
self-fulfillment, which is in no way inferior to a liberation in which
individuality is sponged out and the sweetness of relationship is cast aside and
one chooses to "fade into the Unknowable." Sri Caitanya, while not denying the
possibility of thus merging into the undifferenced Brahman, regards it as a low
form of salvation. The j-iva (individual soul) according to him is "the eternal
slave of K.r.s.na."
What I have called integral Hinduism finds full expression in the Bhagavad Gita as
far as the nature of the Transcendent Being is concerned. It does not, however,
succeed in bringing out the full significance of the immanence of the Divine in
the universe and his providence or reveal the secret of his evolutionary self-
manifestation. That final dichotomy between the here and the now in the world of
time and the Transcendent beyond time is resolved only in the philosophy of Sri
Aurobindo. But in the G-it-a one does find a reconciliation of the meditative
Atman-Nirv-ana non-dualistic experience, on the one hand, and the devotional
experience of the Lord of infinite auspicious qualities, on the other. These two
experiences influence and complement each other. A combination of bhakti and jn+
-ana unveils the Antary-amin, the immanent Divine seated in the hearts of all
beings. When the Lord of the universe is seen through the eyes of an inner self-
enlightenment He appears, or rather discloses Himself, as the Absolute, the
Purushottama within, above and beyond all manifestation.
This double spirituality, personal-impersonal, devotional-contemplative, is the
essential original Indian experience, which throughout the long history of
Hinduism, one or another side of it was emphasized. At certain times the fullness
reached its conceptual and expressive form in the very foreground. For instance,
the -Is+a Upanisad and the G-it-a in ancient times and those later schools,
particularly Kashmir S+aivism, which emphasize the reality of S+akti, the creative
energy of the Supreme, combine in a single but complex experience the sense of
essential identity with the Purushottama and the relationship, presupposing
distinction, between the human lover and the Supreme Beloved.
I have so far given an exposition of the supreme and timeless ineffable Being,
Brahman, in its transcendent poises of personality, impersonality and sheer
ineffability, according to the spirit and underlying intent of the unwritten Hindu
metaphysical tradition. I shall now consider the relation of Brahman to the
cosmos, the world of changing, developing and perishable things.
On the pantheistic view there can be nothing outside of the being of Brahman. But
if the being of Brahman is eternal in the sense of being timeless, how can change,
coming into being and passing away, which are characteristics of the phenomenal
order, be ascribed to Brahman? In Indian philosophy two different and contrary
views have been presented to account for the phenomenon of change. They are
vivartav-ada and parin-ama-v-ada. The former is the doctrine of the S+amkarites
who cut the gordian knot by saying that change is an illusory appearance and hence
can in no way be predicated of Brahman. This, as we saw earlier, leaves unanswered
the question, to whom or what is the phenomenon of an illusory appearance of
change to be ascribed? The alternative view, parin-amav-ada, also runs into
insuperable difficulties. The timeless and perfect Brahman cannot change. Hence it
is said that change (parinama) occurs in Nature (Prak.rti) or in the body of God,
but not in God himself. This, of course, is no way out of the difficulty because
if there is nothing outside the being of Brahman then a change in Nature or the
body of Brahman is also a change in the being of Brahman.
Parin-amav-ada runs into difficulties because of a mistaken assumption which it
does not question that there must be a temporal link between the timeless Brahman
and the temporal phenomenal order. Sri Aurobindo does not commit this mistake. For
him timelessness is only one of the multiple poises of the Infinite. In this
connection he mentions two poises of the Transcendent or Eternity, Timeless-
Eternity and Time-Eternity. To these we may add the poise of Eternal Duration.
Timeless-Eternity is, in the words of Sri Aurobindo, "the non-manifest timeless,
utterly eternal and an irreducible absolute self-existence." Timeless-Eternity
articulates itself, as it were, as Time-Eternity in preparation for projecting out
of itself the field of manifestation and for bringing into being the phenomenal
order. The language of time and succession which is used to state the relation
between these two poises is only a convenient way of speaking and not to be taken
literally. Time-Eternity, says Sri Aurobindo, is "the Infinite deploying itself
and organizing all things in time." It is a simultaneous Eternity of time in which
past, present and future are forever together.
The Infinite then moves to still another poise of its being --Eternal Duration.
The Divine here is fully personal and knows things not in an all-at-once vision,
as in his poise of Time-Eternity, but successively, as they unroll themselves in
time. He can thus respond with love and compassionate wisdom to man caught on the
wheel of birth and death and suffering. The supreme Divine Will, however, is not
part of the temporal order. The Will of God, the S+akti of S+iva, is to be
understood as the dynamic aspect of God's being which is the same as Eternal-
Duration which includes the order of creation. Creation, therefore, is not
something brought about by the antecedent will of God, but is itself the unfolding
of the dynamic aspect of God in manifestation. God's creative will is not at the
origin of the created order but expresses itself through it. God wills all in the
sense that what manifests or is manifesting and will manifest is included in the
Time-Eternity of God's being.
On the pantheistic view we do not have a relation between the world and God
considered as two different things. The world is God; it is God in the process of
self-manifestation. But it should not be forgotten that there is no temporal
relation between the three poses of the Transcendent. Timeless-Eternity, Time-
Eternity and Eternal Duration cannot be brought together into a common temporal
framework.
It is time to consider a rather obvious objection which the concept of integral
Hinduism I have tried to present has to face. Such a view apparently ascribes
irreconcilable predicates to the same Reality, such as `personal', `impersonal',
`static', `dynamic', `ineffable but conceptualizable', `sheerly ineffable'. It may
be said that one in each of these pairs of predicates may be true but not both,
for they cancel each other out and their simultaneous affirmation would be in
flagrant violation of the law of contradiction.
It would be pertinent to ask what precisely the law of contradiction forbids us to
say. I suggest that what it forbids is not a statement of any particular kind but
a mode of utterance which uses two sentences both of which are intelligible, but
in such a way that in the result nothing whatever has been said. The statements of
transcendent metaphysics that ascribe apparently incompatible predicates to the
Infinite are not such empty utterances in which something is asserted and denied
simultaneously in such a way that in the end result nothing at all is either
asserted or denied. They are genuine statements and the problem arises only when
we ask how the two predicates in each pair are to be accommodated in the same
subject.
As a first step towards answering this question it will be necessary to show that
the Infinite does, as a matter of fact, accommodate within its being all the
apparently incompatible predicates mentioned above. This raises the question, on
what principle shall we select predicates which can truly be ascribed to God? The
answer is: only those predicates can be considered which are compatible with
divine perfection. Thus it would seem plausible to say that God is good but not
that God is evil, that he loves us but not that he hates us, that he is self-
existent but not that he is dependent for his being on another.
The next question is, how do we make a selection among predicates which are
compatible with the divine perfection so as to decide which of these are to be
ascribed to God and which are not? The answer to this question is crucial to our
understanding the simple or indivisible and yet multi-faceted nature of the
Supreme Being. The answer simply is that no selection need or indeed can be made
among the possible predicates that can be ascribed to God. This is because in God
there are no `accidental' qualities, nothing that is but may not have been. We can
give no meaning to the statement that a predicate is compatible with God's being
except that it represents a mode of divine perfection. In the case of a finite
subject what is compatible with its nature may or may not be actualized. This is
because the actualization of possibilities in the case of finite beings depends
partly on conditions and circumstances outside their being and essence. The
Infinite in contrast to the finite does not depend on anything outside itself for
any quality of its being. Hence whatever is compatible with God is in God and is
God.
It will not be difficult to discern in this statement echoes of the ontological
argument. But there is an important difference in my argument which enables it to
preserve its validity even when the ontological argument is shown to be invalid.
My argument does not claim to prove the existence of God but merely to prove that
God does possess all those attributes which our intellect sees to be compatible
with the divine essence. The passage is not from concept to existence, but from
concept to the nature of that whose existence is not being called in question. The
argument may be stated in the maxim: in the case of God's nature or being the
possible is the actual.
It remains to show that all the predicates in the three pairs mentioned above are
compatible with God's being, that each represents a possible mode of divine
perfection and that therefore all of them can truly be ascribed to God. Consider
first personality and power. There is nothing in the concept of personality or in
the concept of dynamism or power which would lead us to say that they are
incompatible with divine perfection. More positively, love and omnipotence which
are attributes of personality are perfections in which the divine essence (partly)
realizes itself. Hence we may say that God is the supreme Person and his being is
active and dynamic (S+iva-S+akti). Similarly in the notions of immutability and a
mode of being in and for oneself, a universal impersonality (kaivalya of the S-
amkhya-Yoga and the Ak.sara purusha of the G-it-a) one cannot detect anything that
is incompatible with divine perfection. In fact immutability is something that
must belong to a being which is eternal and self-existent. The impersonal poise of
the Infinite is, I think, a consequence of its total freedom. The Infinite can
freely relate itself to individual souls, and indeed it does, but it is not bound
by this particular exercise of its freedom; it is also free to remain unrelated to
individual souls in an impersonal universality, like an ocean of consciousness
without ripples or waves. The Infinite therefore is also impersonal and immutable.
Let us now consider the third pair of predicates or the distinction between the
ineffable which is conceptualizable and the sheer ineffable. The truth of the
former has already been established in showing that the different poises of the
Infinite, static-dynamic, personal-impersonal, are modes of divine perfection. But
how shall we show that a poise of the Supreme which is totally inexpressible in
concepts, words and images, the Void of the Buddhists, is also a possibility
compatible with divine perfection and therefore necessary to the total divine
perfection: Such a poise of the Infinite would not be coordinate with its other
poises since it is not another determination of the Infinite, but points to the
Infinite as the Indeterminable. It would, therefore, be better to call it, as I
have done above, the core of the Ineffable; or we may call it the super-essential
being of God. Like impersonality, indeterminability may also be explained with
reference to the freedom of the Infinite. If the Infinite freely determines itself
in a number of ways it is not tied to its own self-determinations. As Sri
Aurobindo puts it, "It is perfectly understandable that the Absolute is and must
be indeterminable in the sense that it cannot be limited by any determination or
any sum of possible determinations, but not in the sense that it is incapable of
self-determination."
It would be in conformity with the spirit of Hinduism to point out that the above
deliberation on the nature of Brahman does not reply solely on a conceptual
analysis or on a theoretical consideration of abstract possibilities. In Hinduism,
if logic does not actually follow spiritual experience, its pronouncements are
nevertheless not regarded as authoritative or well-established unless they are
confirmed by spiritual experience. The conceptual analysis which I have given
above gains strength and support from the fact that all the self-determinations
which I have ascribed to Brahman, as also the reference to Brahman as the
indeterminable, have been directly verified over and over again throughout the
history of Hinduism, from the Vedic times to the present.
One last and perhaps the most important step has to be taken for the solution of
the problem of the so-called conflicting truth-claim. We have still to show how
the diverse and seemingly incompatible affirmations we have made concerning
Brahman are to be reconciled. Or, to put it differently, we must indicate how the
seemingly incompatible predicates or poises are held together in the being of
Brahman. Can the intellect indicate or make intelligible how things are held
together in the Supreme or throw any light on the intrinsic possibility of the
union of modes of perfection in God?
Here we come to the boundary of reason beyond which it cannot penetrate. We saw
that because of the qualitative distance between the Infinite and the purely
finite we have to acknowledge that the modes of divine existence and nature must
remain incomprehensible to the intellect. This is true equally of the mode of
union of attributes in the divine Substance. At this stage Logic, without
abdicating, opens the door to Mystery, not the Christian-type sheer Mystery which
has to be accepted on faith alone, but a Mystery continuous with logic though
transcending it, and erected on the pedestal of reason. It is a Mystery not thrust
upon the intellect but one that is affirmed by the intellect itself, reflecting
autonomously on the nature of the Supreme Being. In short we have here Mystery
within the heart of logic.
Let me make this point in a more analytic and less mysterious way. The different
poises of the Infinite are unified in its being in a way that is utterly unique
and therefore totally incomprehensible to the intellect. But this is something
that the intellect itself can understand and endorse. The Mystery is a consequence
of a unique characteristic of the Infinite, so unique that it defines its very
status and which it, therefore, does not share with any finite existence. This
characteristic is postulated by reason and is not received by us through a take-
it-or-leave-it supernatural revelation. I am referring here to the fact--and this
is recognized by Christian thinkers as well--that God's being is simple and
indivisible. `Simplicity' is itself a rather complex notion, but I shall try to
simplify it insofar as it affects the question under discussion.
The Infinite is simple or indivisible in the sense that its being is totally
integrated such that it could never be true to say of the Infinite that it is
partly something and partly something else. If such a move were possible there
would be no `mystery' and no serious problem of reconciling incompatible
predicates. This can always be done by making a distinction within the being of
the subject to which the predicates are applied. One could then say that in one
aspect the Infinite is personal and, in another aspect, impersonal; dynamic in one
aspect and static in another, and so on. Such a differentiation of aspects within
a common subject is possible only in the case of a finite, temporal being, since,
being finite, he can shift the center or stress of his consciousness from one part
of his being to another, while the rest of his being remains subconscient and
unattended to.
The Infinite is eternal and hence not concentrated sometimes in one part of itself
and sometimes in another, but is always and simultaneously `all-there'. It is
fullness of being and fullness of consciousness and therefore whatever it is it is
indivisibly. No distinctions need or can be made in the Infinite subject to
accommodate predicates like personal and impersonal. We may here reverse the
Berkeleyian maxim, to be is to be perceived, and say that in the case of the
Infinite, to perceive is to be. What is eternally in the consciousness of the
Infinite, that the Infinite is. The contrast of subject and object disappears and
since knowledge here is what Sri Aurobindo calls "knowledge by identity" the
knower (jn+ -ata) and the known (jn+ eya) become indistinguishably one. The
Supreme does not know; it is Knowledge (Jn+ -ana). In all this we are speaking on
the authority of reason and not faithfully echoing the voice of revelation.
Logic and Mystery divide between themselves the `that' and the `how' of the divine
perfection. Though we must remain con-tent to recognize that the `how' or the
actual mode of union of the diverse elements in the divine being is
incomprehensible to the intellect, we may perhaps get a distinct and oblique hint
of it when we reflect on an analogous situation that obtains in the sphere of the
purely finite. Such a situation arises when we make assertions about the world
which are not empirical but categorical. Thus we may have two views concerning the
way in which the world of our experience is to be described or interpreted. On one
view the world consists of a series of events and there are no permanent or even
semi-permanent substances (the Process view). The second view holds that the world
consists of things undergoing changes and that events are precisely these changes
that take place in substances (the Substance view).
The next question would be, which of these two incompatible views is true? My
answer is that both these views are true and that they do not contradict each
other. This is because the two views, though distinct, are not mutually related
with reference to the question of determining their truth-values. They cannot be
brought into a common logical framework in which they can be compared with respect
of truth or falsity. The reason for this is that each view contains and absorbs
the other. In terms of what is empirically verifiable neither view denies anything
that the other asserts; or to state this more positively, each accommodates in its
perspective all the claims made by the other that can be empirically tested. Hence
the two views cannot be coordinated or placed side by side. It would, therefore,
not be correct to say that one is true and the other false. They are both true,
alternatively, depending on which view we start with. But whichever view we start
with the other view is al-ready taken up in it and therefore cannot present itself
as a separate and rival view. Each contains and is contained in the other.
Similarly we may say that there is no real distinction between the many poises of
the Infinite and they cannot be coordinated or brought together within a common
logical framework where they confront each other in mutual and irreconcilable
opposition. We may bring this discussion to a close with a quotation from F.H.
Bradley who holds that his Absolute is `somehow' a non-relational unity. We have
shown that reason itself points to Mystery and have given an example of an
analogous mystery within finite experience. Hence we may conclude in the words of
Bradley, "What must be and what in a particular case is shown to be, that
certainly is."
Finally, we must raise the question, what, according to Hinduism, is the purpose
or explanation of the self-manifestation of Brahman as the seemingly imperfect
order of evolutionary Nature? In traditional Hinduism only two answers are given.
They are m-ay-av-ada--the whole phenomenal order is a vast illusion--and lil-
avada, the view that the Lord creates the universe without any purpose, as pure
sport (lila). I have already shown the logical incoherence of m-ay-av-ada. Lil-av-
ada is true in the limited sense that the Lord, being perfect, can have no
unfulfilled purpose which he needs to accomplish through the process of creation.
This in itself does not lead to a denial of teleology within the universe. Just as
time is not at the origin of creation and yet the created order is temporally
structured, so also, though an unfulfilled purpose cannot initiate the self-
manifestation of the Divine, a purposive, evolutionary movement towards a divine
fulfillment in time may well be the secret and final aim of the Divine's self-
manifestation. Lila does not contradict telos and may well contain it within
itself. Indeed, without an immanent purpose the Divine `sport' would, in view of
the intense and universal suffering which is so strikingly a feature of it,
become, in the words of Sri Aurobindo, "a cruel and revolting paradox."
It is in the integral vision of Sri Aurobindo that one finds the full significance
of the immanence of the Divine in, and the secret of, cosmic existence. We can
here give only a very brief glimpse into his solution of the riddle of human
existence. Sri Aurobindo sees the divine manifestation in an evolutionary
perspective whose goal is, in part, the transformation of human nature as such,
for which mok.sa or union with the Divine is only a first decisive step, leading
eventually to the perfection of human society on earth. Man is not the last term
of the evolutionary series. The mental being (manomayapuru.sa) will be replaced or
himself evolve into the gnostic being (vijn+ -anamayapuru.sa), thus opening the
way for a divine life here on earth in a divine body. Sri Aurobindo calls this the
"supramental transformation" which will "carry with it a lifting of mind, life and
body out of themselves into a greater way of being in which yet their own ways and
powers would not be suppressed or abolished, but perfected and fulfilled by the
self-exceeding." "The Supramental," says Sri Aurobindo, "is a truth and its advent
is in the very nature of things inevitable. . . . I believe the descent of this
Truth opening the way to a development of divine consciousness here (on earth) to
be the final sense of the earth evolution."
NOTES
1. International Philosophical Quarterly, June 1972.
2. Although it is true that S+amkara does characterize Brahman as saccid-ananda,
it is doubtful if, logically, he is entitled to do so since for him Brahman is
featureless, nirguna, and beyond all descriptions. See below.
3. St. Thomas holds the curious view that one can assert without any conceptual
incoherence that God created a world that is eternal. But in what sense could God
have created it? Clearly the being of an eternal world would not be dependent on
God. At best one could say that the continued existence of the world depends on
God but not its original existence. Even this partial dependence would not be
intelligible unless God is thought of as a temporal agent, which he is not
according to St. Thomas.
COMMENT
On J.N. Chubb,
"The Hindu Metaphysical Tradition on
The Meaning of the Absolute"
MARGARET CHATTERJEE
It might be both disconcerting and necessary to begin by saying that the concept
of the Absolute is absent in the majority of the schools of Indian philosophy. The
thought of the sub-continent does, however, include three forms of absolutism-
spiritualistic or that which derives from the Upanishads, theistic, and
nihilistic. Hindu thought shows an interesting pendulum, from an elaborate
cosmogony in Vedic times to Upanishadic absolutism, then to various forms of
theism, on to reformist types of monotheism in the nineteenth century. All these
diversities show that Indian thinkers were always interested in the destiny of
man, the metaphysical foundation of human freedom, detachment rather than
attachment. Three other things must also be stressed: (1) that it was believed
that liberation could be attained by a diversity of paths; (2) that the special
experiences of special people were as relevant as logical arguments to the
discovery of the supreme Being; and (3) that intellectual exercises must be backed
up by yogic practices. The types of locutions used in elucidatory discourse about
the Supreme being in the Hindu tradition are threefold: (1) the neti neti path or
via negativa (2) metaphorical language (3) paradox.
Professor Chubb's paper, I suggest, unwittingly faces us with the question whether
there is a difference between the metaphysical and religious import of absolutism.
Hindu thought sees no difficulty in conflating the two. In the thinking which
stems from Greek cum Judeo-Christian origins it has been stressed time and time
again that the philosopher's concept of the absolute can by no means provide a
focus for religious consciousness. The Advaitin, however, adheres not merely to a
particular form of philosophic absolutism, but this constitutes for him a form of
"religious belief". However, Professor Chubb regards Advaita as being wanting in
some way, otherwise he would not project Sri Aurobindo's philosophy as going
beyond Advaita in a desirable manner. He claims both that Aurobindo belongs to the
Hindu tradition and that in his philosophy he raises "the spirit of Hinduism to
full and liberated consciousness of itself". He thus sees Aurobindo as a kind of
apex or terminal point.
This is also referred to by him as a spiritual quest described as a quest for
unity. But there seem to be two quests for unity mentioned by him. There is the
"problem of discovering the underlying unity of Hinduism"--he significantly speaks
of `unity' and 'universality' interchangeably. There is also--again according to
Chubb--the unity which the Hindu is alleged to be seeking: his search for the
Truth, for wholeness. The truth is said to burst forth, be it noted, not in a
system, but in an "integral vision and experience" of a particular person.
Regarding these two senses of unity, Chubb's language at times resembles that of
thinkers like Bhagwan Das and Radhakrishnan who maintained a universalistic thesis
about san-atan dharma-- the inspiration of which was a pre-independence
nationalist impulse. One of India's most original theologians, P. D. Devanandam,
on the other hand, has spoken of Hinduism as a `family of religions'. If we take
this line we are under no obligation to produce an essence, a reified something as
the alleged unity underlying the members of the family. We need not even invoke
family resemblance in the style of one of the twentieth century prophets. I would
myself hold the view that the unity of Hinduism (including under this the specific
cultural factor of religion) is found at the level of practice--rituals,
pilgrimages, institutions etc.--and not in philosophical content.
As to the second sense of unity to which Chubb refers, the alleged quest of unity,
we need not adhere to this stereotype any more than we need adhere to the
stereotype of `otherness' which it is customary to associate with the so-called
religions of transcendence but which has been criticized so ably especially by
Rabbi Abram Heschl, among scholars in recent times.
Chubb is sympathetic to the Advaita form of Vedanta and speaks of this as
pantheistic. Although the point is somewhat a verbal one, and a matter of
definition, it seems difficult to maintain the pantheistic thesis if we say, as he
does, that according to Advaita there is (I quote) "qualitative distance between
the purely finite and the Infinite". More tenable is his point about ineffability.
It is notoriously paradoxical to speak of the ineffability of Brahman and yet
maintain the possibility of aparoksa jnana, to speak of what is anirbacaniya or
unspeakable as Sat-cit-ananda. Now what Chubb suggests is this. Here we find not a
collision of logic with experience or that experience takes us beyond logic (and
these are two of the possible answers offered by others) but we have he says, and
I quote, "a Mystery continuous with logic though transcending it, and erected on
the pedestal of reason". No doubt here we are certainly aware of the inadequacy of
concepts. But how can mystery be continuous with logic? What Chubb has in mind, I
think, is the notion of a transformed sort of consciousness as advocated by
Aurobindo, which would be able to do precisely that - take one, so to say, where
reason left off.
We need to know now why Chubb should regard Aurobindo as in some way or other
'fulfilling' the Hindu tradition. His main merit, in Chubb's view, is in accepting
Advaita minus the theory of mayavada. The Gita, he says, brings out the nature of
divine transcendence, a kind of transcendence, I would be inclined to say, not too
different from the early conception of Yahweh in Judaic thought. But the full
significance of divine immanence in his view is brought out in the divine
descending movement - a redemptive process - proclaimed by Aurobindo. Chubb raises
the question of God's attributes, saying that these are such as are "compatible
with divine perfection". This way of putting it is more in line with Leibniz's
phrase "the compossibility of positive predicates" than with anything in the Hindu
tradition. Aurobindo's absolutism is open-ended, the openness stemming from human
possibilities (something quite compatible with a loose form of karma theory) and
the possibilities of divine initiative. It is also clearly a form of absolutism,
which looks upon the destiny of man with hope, which thinks in terms of an
evolutionary perspective which would transform human nature and therefore human
society. Aurobindo's goal was no less than the divinization of man upon earth - a
plurality of individual ascents with the pilgrims all returning to illumine the
cave - that is to say a model with many levels and movement both upwards and
downwards.
Let me fasten on six points.
(1) The first is a warning about regarding Advaita Vedanta as the crown and summit
of the Hindu tradition. The way in which Aurobindo himself draws on many diverse
strands of religious thought in the sub-continent is good evidence of the
diversity within Hinduism. From Tantra he derives the concept of shakti which he
puts in place of cit. The idea of centres of consciousness is also a Tantric idea.
From the Mahayana Buddhist concept of Bodhissatvahood he derives the motion of
redeeming humanity. From Sankhya he adopts the idea of an evolutionary process
directed towards the liberation of man. From popular religion in Bengal he takes
the idea of the Divine Mother. The Hindu tradition encompasses all these and more.
This encompassing is expressed by Aurobindo himself in his use of the word
`integral'. Aurobindo departs from the Advaitic tradition in more ways than he
conforms to it. There is no time to spell this out now, but one of the key points
which illustrates my contention is his treatment of the gap between sacchidananda
and the phenomenal world. He sees this not so much as a metaphysical divide but as
a challenge. The param-arthika and the vyavah-arika are to be brought closer
together by the s-adhak who, in the words of another tradition, returns to the
cave. If we are to fasten on to the most provocative contribution of Advaita to
our theme it will be no doubt the concept of nirgun Brahman, the idea that
attribute language will always be inappropriate with reference to what is
ultimate. The inexhaustibility of the divine is to be experienced and not fitted
into the straight-jacket of our human intellectual categories. But here of course
we run into the risk of pitching the experience in so high a key, to use a musical
metaphor, that not only is it beyond reach, but the very use of the word
`experience' loses its justification.
(2) The second issue concerns evolution. Aurobindo understood evolution not in
terms of becoming more and more saintly or more and more intelligent but in terms
of becoming more and more conscious. What is interesting here is that mind is not
regarded as the terminal point. Beyond mind is spirit. The cultivation of
inwardness--something which is the mark of the advance toward spirit--enables man
to act as the spearhead of the cosmic evolutionary process. Supra-mental
rationality is the top rung of a Jacob's ladder which cannot be thrown away. In
terms of the Hindu tradition we have also to note another departure on the part of
Aurobindo. The new order will arise not from the destruction of the old, from the
ashes of great conflagration, from pral-aya, but from a process of transmutation.
Upanishadic tradition had spoken in terms of realizing what one is. Aurobindo
states emphatically in Life Divine, "It is in his human nature, in all human
nature to exceed itself by conscious evolution, to climb beyond what he is."
(3) The third issue concerns transcendence/immanence. To my mind what Aurobindo
brings into the Hindu tradition is a conception of man as a self-transcending
being. Built into the very fabric of things are possibilities between which men
can choose, as if there were a divine conspiracy involving man, so that the world
could be made nearer to the heart's desire. Man himself is understood as a tool of
the immanent power at work in the universe - a power risen to self-conscious
awareness. This highlights a new dimension of the transcendence/immanence issue--
the dimension that concerns, not the question of cosmic origin and dependence, but
the role and destiny of man.
(4) The fourth issue concerns lila as a principle apparently vastly different from
that of telos. Both lila and telos are anthropomorphic ideas. Each, however, has
different resonances. In Aurobindo's thinking, as in the thinking of the shakta,
divine creativity is understood not in terms of antecedent will but as an
outpouring of dynamism. Even the word `emanation' does not put us on the right
track. The divine cosmic dance of Shiva is the most potent symbol of this energy
in Indian art. The image symbolizes both energy and delight. While Aurobindo had
hailed in Heraclitus a fellow-devotee of divine energy he had found the element of
ananda, of joy, lacking in Heraclitus. Lila then should be understood as an
outpouring of creativity, not as an arbitrary activity which is antithetical to
eschatology. It is significant that Aurobindo abandoned the cyclical analysis of
change given by the ancient Hindus, making room not for a linear view of change so
much as a spiral where joy and sorrow each have their place. The cross-
fertilization between Heraclitus and the Hindu tradition in Aurobindo produces
strange results. For example, Aurobindo speaks of the soul as a spark which is not
merged in the fire. His conception of the destiny of man is certainly not one of
`merging', but of an order of consciousness where individuality is retained,
something consonant with the splendid image used by Professor Findlay at the close
of his paper.
(5) A fifth and tough metaphysical problem centres on the place of contradictions.
Shankara deals with this by resorting to level language with movement in one
direction so to say, the higher cancelling out the lower. It must be stressed
that, in facing the problem of contradiction, Hindu thought resorts neither to
sublation nor to antinomies of choice. Aurobindo seems to resort to two ways: in
terms of philosophical discourse he resorts to poetic language and in terms of
religious experience to the inner realization of the s-adhak. The Hindu religious
tradition accommodates surd elements into a view of life conceived of as made up
of various states. Tantric thought encourages a deliberate espousal of the
grotesque, the unclean, etc. All this of course is not to come to terms with
logical contradiction. Hindu religious thought tends less to analogical reasoning
than to parable and poetry. The fragmentary view of truth provides sanction for
saying not only that each man is partly wrong but that each is partly right. This
is the metaphysical basis of nonviolence and perhaps prevents whatever absolutist
elements there may be in the Hindu tradition from being tied up with statism. If
the verdict of logic and the s-adhak's experience diverge from each other, the
Hindu religious tradition favours the latter rather than the former. It would be
generally expected that intellectual exercises cannot take one far once human
ignorance, the Hindu counterpart of finitude, is admitted.
(6) Sixth, and finally, I would like to mention some of my own reservations about
the concept of `realization' which provides perhaps the biggest stumbling-block in
Hindu religious thought--a stumbling-block especially if one is used to thinking
of the Supreme being in terms of "sum qui sum": the mah-av-akya of the book of
Exodus. There must always be a major divide between those who speak in terms of
the quest of a supreme religious experience and those who speak in terms of the
quest of a supreme Being. One might wonder if there is such a thing as a paradox
of realization pertaining to the former. Have not yogic practices perhaps been
aimed at providing some sort of safeguard against this? My other reservation is
whether the concept of realization can admit of progress in spiritual life. Can
there be a further growth in identity? Aurobindo is able to think in terms of
spiritual growth precisely because he avoids the language of merging and draws on
the Vaishnava tradition in no small measure. These considerations take us beyond
metaphysics. But we have already seen that there is no hard and fast line between
metaphysics and religion in some of the thought- systems of Indian origin and in
such systems one is adrift in a flooded monsoon territory where it may not be easy
to find our bearings.
Delhi University
Delhi, India
CHAPTER VI
METAPHYSICAL TRADITIONS
AND THE MEANING OF THE ABSOLUTE:
THE LOCUS OF THE DIVINE IN CHINESE THOUGHT
ELLEN M. CHEN
INTRODUCTION:
What, according to the Chinese, is the divine, where is it located, and how does
man partake of it? In Western philosophy such questions are treated in
metaphysics. But the term metaphysics1 presents itself as a problem when we apply
it to the Chinese terrain. For the Western man knowledge and consciousness are
identified with the divine. Plato's divided line (Republic, 509-511) shows that
the realm of science, taking mathematics as the paradigmatic science, is already
removed from the physical realm, being intermediary between the natural world of
change and the divine world of changeless forms.2 In the Western tradition down to
the seventeenth century, metaphysics or natural theology meant the study of
subject matter beyond and transcending the physical realm.3
But the Chinese had a very different notion of what was divine and where the
divine was located. In Chinese metaphysics, there was no negation or transcendence
of the physical realm as such; the divine was always conceived as in nature or
nature itself. In the Western tradition influenced by the Greeks the divine was
beyond nature, to be identified with thought or intellect. The Chinese had always
identified the divine with life or creativity; it was no other than tzu-jan, the
self-creative power of nature itself.4
This difference in the understanding of the divine is crucial in grasping the
cultural and spiritual dimensions of the Chinese. Metaphysics, as the science of
the divine, is man's search for the highest values and his effort to embody these
in his person and activities. Hence, a different understanding of what constitutes
the divine and where it is located results in very different manifestations of
realizing the divine in human life. The main purpose of this paper is to show that
major religious philosophies in the Chinese tradition--philosophical Taoism,
Confucianism, religious Taoism, and sinicized Buddhism--all share in this
affirmation and devotion to the physical realm as divine.5
PHILOSOPHICAL TAOISM: The Divine as Cosmic Creativity, Immortality Through
Universal Change
In the allegory of the cave (Republic, 514-520) Plato portrays man as pitifully
oblivious of his existential plight. Only through an arduous process of ascent
could he manage to leave the dark imprisoning cave, emerge into the light of the
day, become acquainted with clear and distinct objects in the real realm, and
finally recognize the sun as the Father, generator of life and intelligence of all
beings.
Whether Plato propounded a two-world theory is a matter of debate.6 At least most
scholars agree that ontologically, the divine is not to be identified with the
physical realm of our sense experience. Things in this world participate in the
separate divine exemplars which are never fully embodied in this world of
generation and corruption. The physical world into which mortals are born and in
which they conduct their lives is not the locus of the divine. To rise up to the
divine we must ready our mind's eye for a greater influx of light and vision.
In contrast, for the Chinese, the union with Tao is through a process of descent.
The Chuang Tzu (6:14) speaks of dropping one's body and limbs, repudiating
intelligence, departing from one's physical form and getting rid of consciousness.
The divine is Hun-tun, the faceless one; and Hun-tun dies when it is opened to
consciousness (7:7); Complete Works, p. 97.
The myth of four stages of consciousness in the Chuang Tzu (2:15); Complete Works,
p. 41, serves best to illustrate the Taoist approach to the divine. The best and
most blessed state is when consciousness is yet unconscious of itself; this is the
undifferentiated continuum, a unity-without-multiplicity. The second is when
things come to be, yet interpenetrate; there is consciousness of the existence of
things, yet there is no consciousness of the lines of demarcation among them--this
is the state of multiplicity-in-unity. The third is when consciousness of the
boundaries of things appears. Thus names7 standing for different entities come to
be. However, because there is yet no consciousness of the distinction between good
and evil, the world is still without internal strife--this is the state of
multiplicity-and-unity. The last state arrives with the awareness of the
distinction between good and evil. At this point strife enters the world, thus the
unity of the world is irretrievably lost--this is the state of multiplicity-
without-unity.
From this myth it is clear that in Taoism consciousness is not the pathway to the
divine. Hun-tun,8 the unconscious state, is the divine state, while consciousness
as a movement away from the divine is the cause of alienation, strife, and death.
Thus Taoism also presents a two-world theory: the divine world of original nature
and the superstructure created by human intelligence. Man's return from the
conscious human realm to the sacred natural realm is through a relaxing of
consciousness, it is a return from the dazzling light of the sun to the soothing
dimness of the moon.
In Plato, forms are bits of immutable and immortal beings by virtue of their
perfection and self-identity. The immortality of anything consists in either being
an imperishable self-identical form or having the capacity to be assimilated to
such a form. While the body with its senses grasps only perishable objects and
thus is perishable, the intellect is capable of apprehending immutable forms.9
Man's hope for immortality, therefore, rests with his mind. This is through
identifying first man with his soul, then his soul with his mind--taking thinking
to be the most excellent activity of the soul--and finally, his mind with the
imperishable forms. The conviction is that mind, which has no nature of its own,
derives its nature from the object of its knowledge,10 for the knower becomes what
is known. Man's anchorage onto the unchanging, self-identical, immutable forms
through his mind guarantees the immortality and permanence of his soul.
In Taoist metaphysics, change alone is immortal. Change means renewal which
guarantees continued life and perpetual youth; immortality belongs to what can
change continuously without ever exhausting itself.11 Within this perspective the
individual who identifies his life with his own fixed and limited form which
circumscribes its change is destined to perish. Immortality consists in shedding
one's form, individual or specific, in repudiating the intellect and breaking the
shell of individuality which rigidly determines and separates the self from
others,12 in sinking down and expanding the self so that it eventually becomes
merged with the universal life force--this matrix which gives rise to all forms
and individuals is alone immortal.
The Taoist sage is not an independent form capable of subsisting by itself. His
umbilical cord with the All unsevered he "values drawing nourishment from the
Mother."13 The Taoist yogi situates himself at the meeting point of the conscious
and the unconscious. His dying is at the same time a resurrection; one moment he
is emerging into the being and determination of individual existence, another
moment he reverses to the non-being of universal becoming.14
In such a metaphysics, forms as specific and individual determinations are passing
expressions of the universal process of becoming. Immortality consists not in
holding on to these passing expressions, but in becoming one with the all
transforming life force itself. Death happens to him who has reached an awareness
of the self cut off from the totality.15 He who can render his life fluid, who can
be indifferent to this form or that, who can assume any form any time, passing
from one form to another with ease, is capable of long life.16 The Taoist does not
hold on to his self-identity, but rejoices in becoming the butterfly, bird, fish,
indeed all forms of life.17
The philosophical Taoist concept of immortality is clearly modeled upon the
natural world itself. The natural world, devoid of consciousness of self, assumes
endless transformations, and thus is long lasting. The Tao Te Ching says: "Heaven
and earth are long lasting. . . . Because they do not live for self, therefore
they live long." (Chap. 7) In Aristotle, divine immortal substances do not have
their seat in the sublunary realm18--which explains the lowly position assigned to
the physical realm in Aristotle's metaphysics. In Taoist metaphysics, Tao as the
principle of change underlying all is the life pulse of the physical world itself,
thus the affirmation of the physical world as divine in Taoist metaphysics.
CONFUCIANISM: The Divine as Creator of Life, Immortality Through the Species Life
In Confucianism the divine is life and what is creative of life: the I-ching
speaks of I as a power that `gives and furthers life without end.'19 The main
difference between the Taoist and the Confucian is this: the Taoist abandons
himself to the divine as cosmic life, thus he returns to and blends with the
natura naturans; the Confucian steps forward to take upon himself the burden of
caring for the world of ten thousand beings, thus he devotes himself to the well-
being of the natura naturata.
In the Teachings of Confucius and Mencius, we witness thought emerging from life,
the conscious issuing forth from the unconscious, and man stepping forward from
nature.20 But what happened in Greek philosophy--where intelligence, once emerged
from the matrix of life, claimed its independence from life--never happened in
China. Confucius did not exalt reason over life. What was aimed at was the mean in
perfection.
Confucius said: I know why the Way does not shine.21
The intelligent goes beyond it,
The stupid falls short of it.
I know why the Way does not operate.21
The capable goes beyond it,
The incompetent falls short of it.22
That the intelligent and capable can go beyond, and thus eclipse the light of the
Way and render it inoperative, shows that for Confucius the Way is still the Way
of nature. We have seen that Taoism regards intelligence as the unholy element, a
useless outgrowth of nature.23 The Taoist perfect man is in the state of Hun-tun,
transcending knowledge and virtue. In Confucianism, if nature is holy, man is also
holy--his intelligence and moral insights are genuine endowments from Heaven.24 In
their right measure human thinking and action should not break the boundary of
nature; for man to go beyond nature would be as undesirable as if he were to
remain in complete ignorance. The goal is the harmony and balance between man and
nature, between thought and life.
Thought plays its proper role in Confucianism, but it is not for its own sake; it
must always bend back to be in the service of life. In Aristotle thought as divine
is its own end: "The excellence of the reason (nous) is a thing apart."25 In the
Aristotelian system theoretical sciences take precedence over practical and
productive sciences, and contemplation is higher than action.26 The Confucian
vision of the divine, however, does not transcend the practical realm: "Tao is not
removed from man, he who in perusing Tao becomes removed from man cannot be said
to be in pursuit of Tao."27 For Confucius words are meant to produce deeds and
studies are undertaken only after one's moral duties have been discharged.
Learning (hsu¦ eh) always means learning how to be a human being, it is never pure
intellectual pursuit, but the practical wisdom of how to live a virtuous life.
In Confucianism there is a real unity and continuity between Heaven, earth and
man. To a Confucian the entire universe is one holy family, with Heaven and Earth
as the great Father and Mother generating all beings in between. Since I am given
life and provided with life's sustenance, my response to my existence is one of
gratitude to Heaven and Earth, and a deep sense of fellowship and devotion to all
beings in the world.
This means that ethics is the most holy concern in man's spiritual union with the
divine. The whole conception of Confucian ethics is built upon an affirmation of
the goodness and holiness of life, nature and natural inclinations.28 This is
opposed to Kantian and certain strains in Christian ethics according to which
virtue, as the autonomy of the moral will, is at war with the inclinations of
nature.
In Confucian ethics good and evil are understood to be what furthers or destroys
life on earth.29 A good ruler imitates heaven and earth by acting as father and
mother to his people; he has compassion for them, eases their hardships, assists
in their planting and harvesting which sustain their lives and livelihood.30 A
reckless ruler prevents growth and destroys life on earth, imposes public works or
military duties at harvest time.31 Such a ruler loses his `Mandate of Heaven' (t'
ien-ming).32
If we reflect on the meaning of ming, the mandate, we immediately see the
connection between ming meaning `command' and ming meaning `life.' The power to
command is vested in him who holds the power of life and death: the ruler commands
by holding the life and death of his subjects in his hands. But in this capacity
he is merely imitating the rule of heaven--the Li chi33 says that the ruler is
called `Son of Heaven' because he is the representative of Heaven on earth. In
Confucianism Heaven as the yang, the ultimate source of life, holds the power of
conferring or withdrawing life from any earthly ruler. Only the ruler who obeys
and carries out the commands of Heaven is blessed with continued life and power on
earth, while he who displeases Heaven shall have his physical and political life
cut short.34 The political empire is verily a divine vessel which must be borne by
the ruler with the utmost care and reverence. Only as long as the earthly ruler
submits himself to the will of Heaven does he continue to hold the Mandate of
Heaven.35
The intrinsic connection between life as divine and virtue as rooted in, and in
turn as sustaining nature, determines the Confucian understanding of what is
immortal. Since each individual owes his life to his family and society, his
immortality is premised on the furtherance of his family and societal life. There
is a way of immortality for the public person.
The best are those who have established virtue, the next best are those who have
established deeds, and still the next best are those who have established words.
When these accomplishments last through the ages, they may be called immortal.36
For the superior man (chu¦ n-tzu) as a public person, immortality consists in his
contribution to the health, expansion and continued life line of his society. One
imitates the bright virtue of Heaven if through public actions and policies one
brings about peace, harmony, prosperity and culture to his people, like in the
figures of Yao, Shun and the Duke of Chou.37 Or one may secure immortality through
deeds by making heroic personal sacrifices in overcoming tribal enemies or natural
disasters, as in the case of the Yellow Emperor's defeating Chih-yu, or the great
Yu¦ 's curbing the Flood. But if one is denied these opportunities, as in the case
of Confucius himself,38 one could still achieve immortality by committing to
writing39 those ancient teachings which shall serve as ideal inspiration for
future generations.
Immortality for the private person consists in furthering the life line of his
family. The Confucian sense of personal morality revolves around this central
obligation. One's parents, having given one life and love and thus participated in
the creative and nurturing act of Heaven and Earth, deserve one's special
reverence. In the same way one must also participate in this creative act by
giving birth to a male heir who will perform the sacrifices and carry on the
family line after one's departure. When Mencius says: "There are three unfilial
states, the greatest among them is to die without a (male) heir,"40 he meant that
the extension and continuity of the family line on earth is the most sacred duty
of a filial son. Such a statement, needless to say, had led to great injustices to
women and inflicted mortal sufferings on wives who failed to produce a son. What
it showed was the blind Confucian will to live and give life. To a Confucian life
flows from Heaven, but the concrete life activities are manifested on earth; thus
in a sense everything depends on what happens on earth where the divine drama of
life unfolds.41
RELIGIOUS TAOISM: The Pursuit of Physical Immortality
Religious Taoists range from those who merely aim at long life to those who
fervently affirm their belief in the possibility of physical immortality.42 The
fact that religious Taoism enshrines philosophical Taoist texts among its sacred
canon43 shows that at least scripture-wise there is continuity from philosophical
to religious Taoism. Of course, for those religious Taoists who believed that
man's summum bonum consisted in physical immortality, the same texts must be
interpreted to suit their religious needs.44 Here we shall not expound the
techniques involved in internal and external alchemy,45 but merely try to point
out the theoretical presuppositions of the elixir seeker and use as our main text
the Pao P'u Tzu. In its insistence on physical immortality in this very life and
body as the only acceptable mode of man's participation in the divine, religious
Taoism presents a theory unique in the history of religions.46
The desire for long life and immortality have always been the deepest desire of
the Chinese. The Tao Te Ching (chap. 59) aspires to "the way of long living and
lasting seeing." Yet because it does not see a way to physical immortality as
such,47 its ideal is to live as long a life as nature permits. The Chuang Tzu
strikes a tragic note in the face of death. Then, rising to the occasion it
affirms the marvelous transformations that all things constantly undergo.
Intoxicated with this vision of cosmic change, the tragedy of personal death is
overcome. The Chuang Tzu not only accepts life and death equally, but it
identifies them forthrightly and laughs at those who observe various regimen in
hopes of prolonging life.48 In the thoroughly relativistic universe of the Chuang
Tzu, in which one starts a journey today to arrive at one's destiny yesterday and
in which to live one second is considered equal to the life-span of Methuselah,
even the delaying tactics employed in the Tao Te Ching are abandoned.
In Confucianism the divine and creative is identified with Heaven, the yang
principle which fertilizes the earth and gives rise to all beings. Confucianism
fixes its gaze upon the living universe of ten thousand things. The individual's
duty is to further the species life of man, participation in which constitutes his
immortality. Religious Taoism also identifies the yang as the divine.49 But,
unlike the Confucian, the religious Taoist so affirms his individuality that he
wants to keep himself alive indefinitely.
In the Mencius (3A:5) we are given the origin of the burial custom as another
example that filial piety, as all other virtues, is rooted in the feeling
component of man. Because humans could not bear the sight of their parents' bodies
being devoured and mawed by foxes and wild cats, they started the custom of
interring the dead. Now this unbearable feeling is applied to himself by the
religious Taoist when he visualizes himself as dead. He simply abhors the thought
of his own death, with or without proper burial.
Now deep underneath the Nine Springs, in a long night that never ends--first
providing sustenance for ants and worms, ultimately fusing into one body with dust
and the earth--the very thought of this makes one burn with restlessness and
shiver with anxiety. One cannot help but groan and sigh!50
The religious Taoist identifies himself with the coming out process. Refusing to
be re-absorbed into the ground he must look for a way to maintain his body
permanently separate from the body of the earth. It is not that he repudiates the
physical universe, but this is the very way he affirms its goodness and divinity.
If life is good and immortality is the desire of all, then man must find a way to
attain immortality. To him the position of philosophical Taoism is inconsistent
and untenable. By accepting the inevitability of perishing it negates its own
thesis: this physical world can be recognized as good and divine only if the
subject-object, ego-world relationship is maintained. Reabsorption of the ego by
the world, which abolishes the ego, also abolishes the significance of the world
for the ego. The Pao P'u Tzu criticizes the Tao Te Ching and particularly the
Chuang Tzu for identifying life and death.51 This only shows the loss of heart on
the part of these authors. While the philosophical Taoist accepts fate passively,
his religious counterpart, James Ware remarks, "was Confucianist enough to insist
upon doing something to achieve personally a share in God's permanency."52
Thus religious Taoism comes to fulfill the desideratum of philosophical Taoism.
The true man (chen jen) is not one to accept the fate of other beings. Universal
perishing, which swallows up all others, need not apply to him. Although most
things in nature are doomed to perish, man can do ordinary nature one better by
finding a way to be exempted from the fate awaiting all others.53 Indeed, nature
is full of exceptions and man, endowed with intelligence by heaven, is already an
exception to other beings. Perhaps taking a hint from the Lieh-Tzu54 which says
that to enrich oneself by stealing from nature one can get away with impunity, the
religious Taoist sets out to steal the secret of immortality from heaven and
earth. For those courageous, persevering, rich and fortunate few who are willing
to follow through the regimen, immortality or at least extremely long life can be
attained. The religious Taoist's priority is shifted to discovering and
appropriating the secrets of the universal creative power for the purpose of
nurturing and making immortal his own body.
This consists in recognizing that the immortality of the physical universe and the
immortality of the physical individual are premised on two different principles.
The universe is immortal by virtue of its cyclical movement by which yin, yang and
all opposites generate each other, thus life leads to death which in turn leads to
new life. In contrast, individual life is associated with yang alone, yin being
exactly what leads to death and perishing. Thus in order to maintain himself in
existence, the individual must not hold on to the universal Tao which exacts his
death, but to the yang principle within him which alone guarantees his continued
life.
Already, the Pao P'u Tzu believes, there are in nature substances such as gold and
other precious elements which, due to their predominance of yang, can last as long
as heaven and earth. Such substances, once extracted from the womb of the earth,
are not reabsorbed into the earth. If man can find a way to ingest such substances
and make them reconstitute his blood, sinews and organs, he shall so strengthen
the yang in him that he will be immune from the encroachment of yin,55
There is no room to explore the interesting question of body-soul relationship in
Chinese Taoism and contrast it with Western and Christian views,56 or to discuss
the role of moral and spiritual perfection in the make-up of the Taoist
immortal.57 We do wish to point out that in his search for freedom and immortality
the religious Taoist seeks to transcend the limitations of a corruptible body. Yet
it is still an immortality not away from, but within the physical universe. There
is transcendence of the social order, with its interminable relationships which
weigh down the free spirit. But the immortal who can rise above the earth to roam
in any part of the vast universe has no inherent objection to making his abode on
earth. In the Orphic-Pythagorean tradition immortality was conceived through
identifying man with his soul and then through liberating his soul from
entanglements with the body and the physical world. Immortality was based on the
soul's renunciation of, and liberation from, the body.58 The religious Taoist,
however, identified the seat of his life with his body and believed that only when
his body was made strong enough would the spirit it housed not be dispersed and
perish for lack of proper dwelling.59
SINITIC BUDDHISM: Immortal Land with All Her Creatures
The religious Taoist wants to keep the candle of his life burning without end,60
the Buddhist nirvana is exactly the blowing out of this candle. There is no
greater antagonism to the Chinese love for life than Buddhism in its original
teaching. Buddhism's overall influence on China has been to produce a negative
attitude toward life and the world.61 It also introduced into the Chinese psyche a
note of rebellion against the sufferings and evils in life. Though these were
experienced by the Chinese, they were neither clearly articulated nor fully
confronted within Taoism or Confucianism.62
Yet the Chinese over long years had adopted Buddhism and made it a part of their
spiritual heritage. We shall ignore the doctrinal differences of various schools
of Buddhism that arose and disappeared in China. Instead, we shall mention those
elements in Chinese Buddhism which demonstrate the continuity of our theme. In our
view the metaphysics of T'sen-t'ai, Hua-yen and especially Ch'an, carrying on the
Chinese vision in the unity and harmony of man and nature, were the result of the
intellectual assimilation of Buddhism by the Chinese. Pure land, stressing
sincerity, filial piety, love, and salvation for all, may be considered the
Confucian branch of Chinese Buddhism; it was the result of the emotional
assimilation of Buddhism by the Chinese.
The language of Chinese Buddhism remains negative. Yet through a strange kind of
logic it turns negation in the service of affirmation. Thus, through a negative
language a most positive doctrine emerges.63 Two points can be mentioned.
In Christianity man's union with God is understood to be a vertical ascent, moving
away from creatures and things to rise up to God.64 In Chinese Buddhism, salvation
involves a process of going back to the non-differentiation of man from other
beings in nature. If transiency, the root of sorrow and suffering, is the
character of all existing beings, living or non-living, sentient, or insentient,
rational or irrational--this is the doctrine of dependent origination
(pratityasamutpada)--man is in the same situation as all other beings. Thus, if
man finds salvation, it is not his salvation away from the rest of nature, but
together with all nature. The Mahayana Buddhist discovers Buddhahood in himself
through discovering Buddhahood in all things. Instead of lifting himself above
nature, love for all is premised on the individual's identity with all in the
Tathagata-garbha.65
The important question for the Mahayana Buddhist is not so much his own salvation
as the need to transcend his deluded consciousness.66 Through the doctrine of no-
ego Buddhism enables the believer once for all to comprehend the message of the
Buddha, namely, that salvation does not aim at the fulfillment of the self
distinct and apart from others--as with the doctrine of substance in Western
philosophy--but is mainly an integrative process. There is no such thing as the
salvation of the `I' alone, there is only the salvation of the `I' in solidarity
with the `all' in the Tathagata-garbha. The buddhisattva must refuse salvation
until all is saved, because there can be no entrance of Nirvana for him without
the `all,' this `all' which includes all sentient and even all non-sentient
beings. But if all must enter and none is to be forsaken, then samsara is nirvana
and nirvana is samsara.67 The doctrine of no-ego in Mahayana teaching is the
complete antithesis of the doctrine of substance as self-sufficiency and self-
identity in Hinayana and Western philosophy.68 Even the Absolute of the Tathagata
is not a substance.69
The Chinese Buddhist does not merely sink down and identify himself with all
beings which are marked by transitoriness, he sinks down and identifies himself
with this very transitoriness which constitutes Buddhism's definition of evil and
suffering. True to the Taoist insight,70 for the Chinese Buddhist the truth and
reality of all things is exactly this birth-death, generation-extinction,
appearance-disappearance, being-non-being that we find in the world. Salvation
does not consist in the separation of one of these correlatives regarded as value
from its disvalue, as in Western metaphysics in which the divine is conceived
through the severance of form from matter, act from potency, life from death,
being from non-being . . . etc. Rather, transcendence is attained by identifying
and yielding oneself unconditionally to this dynamic naturalness (tzu-jan)71 which
accepts and embraces all opposites, because this dynamic naturalness is no other
than the Absolute itself.72
Mahayana, by positing a pantheon of Buddhas and Buddhisattvas and by affirming the
efficacy of grace in salvation, is the negation of Hinayana as a doctrine of self-
help. Ch'an is the negation of Mahayana to the extent that it so affirms the
samsaric order and everything in it that the need for salvation is completely
overcome. Sooner or later one must realize that there can be no true liberation by
running away from anything. Wu (satori) is this very awakening that Buddahood is
not anywhere else, but immediately within oneself; thus there is no need to search
for anything. Further, if Buddhahood is in everything, everything is as holy and
dignified as Buddha himself. This entails that any subordination of one being to
another or one value to another is a needless bondage. The Ch'an Buddhist bows to
neither the Buddha nor the Patriarch.73 "Kill the Buddha if you happen to meet
him."74
On the devotional side, the identity with and compassion for all beings means that
the Mahayana Buddhist aims not at transcending physical life as such, but man
together with all beings must transcend evil, suffering, and alienation. Thus a
new orientation begins. The devotee prays not for the end of rebirth. Instead, he
prays that he be reborn in the Pure Land where life without suffering is
interminable.75
That Nirvana in Pure Land is conceived as entrance to a special land shows the
deep-seated Chinese attachment to the land. That the Pure Land is understood to be
situated in the west is even a clearer indication of what the Chinese conceive to
be divine and immortal. If the sun represents consciousness, value and
distinction, the Western Land as the land of sunset belongs to the unconscious.
Salvation in Pure Land means reentrance into the primordial womb wherein all
things are yet pure and undefiled.76 In Christianity nature as physical world is
always what is yet to be redeemed.77 For the Chinese, nature, land, and sleep78
redeem man from sufferings and evils.
The Pure Land of Limitless Life is the answer to the deepest desires of every
Chinese. While the Indian is obsessed with ways which will liberate him from
rebirth, while the Western man aspires to immortality in a transcendent realm
which is the total opposite of this physical order,79 the Chinese aspires to
immortality in a land in which all forms of being, men, animals, even inanimate
things, are preserved.80
In retrospect Buddhism through its mahakaruna teaching81 supplied a much needed
salvation doctrine to the Chinese mass. Both Confuciansim and Taoism are elitist
in character. The insight that Buddha nature is in all things has its precedence
in the Confucian notion of jen as the heaven endowed seed of virtue and sagehood
in all men which should never go untended for a single moment.82 But in practice
Confucius' doctrine of rites and rules of propriety did not extend down to the
common people.83 The vision of universal salvation is certainly closer to
philosophical Taoism which repudiates the Confucian one-ordered hierarchical
universe: we read in the Chuang Tzu that Tao is in all those things that humans
consider lowly and valueless.84 Yet the Chuang Tzu repudiates love. Since fishes
swimming in the ocean forget themselves as well as all other things, love or
compassion is quite unnecessary.85 The religious Taoist is not only an elitist, he
is an egotist. Such salvation as he conceives it precludes universal
applicability.86 Indeed, while consigning the vast majority of mankind to
perishing, his appeal is to exceptions in nature, even exceptions among men.
Pure Land is more true to the Chinese aspiration because it is a pure faith.
Philosophical and religious Taoisms and Confucianism are strictly speaking faiths
seeking understanding which had to look for evidence in the face of lived
experiences. But faith, unhampered by such considerations, simply declares the
heart's desire. The Pure Land vision is the consummation of the Chinese vision of
the divine, which, as it was in the earliest consciousness, reaffirms itself
throughout successive stages of religious evolutions in China. Today the Chinese
are still inspired by this faith in the goodness of land and life, though under a
very different ideology and thus through very different expressions.
CONCLUSION:
In this paper we have tried to show that for the Chinese the physical universe is
the locus of the divine. In China the opposition between the spirit and the flesh
is not couched in the imagery of the opposition between man and nature. Rather,
because for the Chinese the natural world is the locus of the divine, all major
forms of Chinese thought have taken nature to be the ultimate standard. In that
regard we may say that Taoism has served to articulate the Chinese aesthetic
ideal, art is man's transcendence of self toward the creativity in nature.
Confucianism, as the ethical ideal of the Chinese, takes virtue to be rooted in
nature, and the highest ethical ideal being the harmony among humans and nature.
Buddhism in China transformed itself into a world-affirming religion and, instead
of renunciation of life, the Chinese Buddhist prays for unending life. Even the
Chinese notion of science in religious Taoism did not go beyond imitating nature
by capturing nature's secrets to immortality, and the Chinese theory of law and
government is flatly an effort to imitate the effectiveness of nature which
governs by non-action. Unlike the Greek mind, the Chinese mind never declares its
independence from nature, but bending back it models itself upon nature, always
holding nature up as its norm.
St. John's University
Jamaica, New York
NOTES
1. The term `metaphysics' was coined by Andronicus of Rhodes (60 B.C.) who in
arranging Aristotle's corpus found a body of treatises without a title. After
reading the contents he decided that these treatises pedagogically had to be
studied after the study of Aristotle's physical treatises. Thus he called this
body of work Ta meta ta physica, hence metaphysics.
2. In Pythagoreanism and Plato, the power for abstract thinking as exemplified in
mathematics is a requisite in man's ascent to the divine. This is the origin of
the division of sciences into physics, mathematics and metaphysics in Aristotle
(Meta. 1026a16-20), although unlike Plato, Aristotle was not keen on mathematics.
This emphasis on the power of abstraction as a liberation from matter colored
classical theory of knowledge. The same classification of the hierarchy of the
sciences, with obviously less justification, continued into the Middle Ages. See
St. Thomas Aquinas, The Division and Methods of the Sciences, trans. A. Maurer
(Toronto: The Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1958).
3. Christian Wolff (1679-1754) in his Philosophia sive Ontologia (Frankfurt-
Leipzig, 1729) divided metaphysics into three special branches: ontology or
natural theology, cosmology, and psychology, each with its distinct subject
matter.
4. The Tao Te Ching, chap. 25: `Tao fa tzu-jan.'
5. Neo-Confucianism as both an affirmation and negation of the basic Chinese
reverence for the physical order occupies a unique place in the development of the
Chinese psyche. It deserves a full treatment at a separate time.
6. John N. Findley, Plato: The Written and Unwritten Doctrines, (New York:
Humanities Press, 1974); Charles P. Bigger Participation: A Platonic Inquiry,
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968); Eduard Zeller, Outlines of
the History of Greek Philosophy, (New York: The Humanities Press, 1931); and
Werner Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers (Oxford, at the
Clarendon Press, 1947). The first two affirm while the last two deny the existence
of a two-world theory in Plato.
7. In later developments, with the formal arrival of consciousness, naming was no
longer regarded, as in Taoism, the last stage of safety. Instead it was considered
the first requisite for the peaceful and orderly organization of the world. In the
philosophies of Shen Pu-hai, Confucius, Hsu¦ n tzu and Han Fei, the conviction was
that if only names were properly designated and applied, everything would have its
rightful place, thus we may be spared the conflicts and strifes of a chaotic
world.
8. I have avoided translating Hun-Tun as Chaos. Chaos in Western philosophy
understood as the `unordered given,' `an antecedent irrational surd' has a
negative content entirely alien to the Taoist term. However, since the publication
of two pioneering volumes, David L. Hall's The Uncertain Phoenix: Adventures
Toward a Post-Cultural Sensibility (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982) and
N.J. Girardot's Myth and Meaning in Early Taoism: The Theme of Chaos (hun-tun)
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), I am ready to drop my
reservations.
9. Phaedo, 78-80.
10. Aristotle, De Anima 429a20-28.
11. The I-ching, The Great Appendix, II, chap. 8. See James Legge, trans. The I
Ching (New York: Dover Publications, 1963), p. 399.
12. In the Chuang Tzu, these are called `sitting forgetfulness' (6:14), `fasting
the mind' (4:2), and `today I have lost myself' (2:1); Watson's translation, pp.
90-91, 57-58, and 36 respectively.
13. The Tao Te Ching, chap. 20.
14. The Chuang Tzu, 2:3; Watson's translation, p. 39-40.
15. According to the Chuang Tzu (1:3), `The ultimate man has no self, the spirit
man has no accomplishment and the sage has no name;' Watson's translation, p. 32.
16. The Lieh Tzu, chap. 1. A.C. Graham's translation, The Book of Lieh-tzu,
(London: John Murray, 1960), p. 20.
17. The Chuang Tzu 1:1, 2:11; Watson's translation, pp. 29, 49.
18. Aristotle discovers three kinds of non-sensible immortal substances: God, the
Unmoved Mover (Meta. XII, 7), the intelligences which move the planetary spheres
(Meta. XII, 8) and the human reason which upon death exists apart from the body
(Meta. XII, 1070a24-26; De Anima III, 5).
19. The I-ching, The Great Appendix I, chap. 5. Legge's translation, p. 356.
20. Mencius, IIIA:4.
21. See Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1963), p. 99, note 14 regarding interchanging this line with the
fourth line. 22. The Doctrine of the Mean, chap. 4.
23. The Chuang Tzu, 8:1; Watson's translation, p. 98.
24. Mencius, VI.A:15 & 16.
25. Nicomachean Ethics, 1178a22-23.
26. In every subject matter of study, whether physics, metaphysics, ethics or
politics, solitude or self-sufficiency is finally the highest value for Aristotle.
See Whitney J. Oates, Aristotle and the Problem of Value (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1963), p. 316.
27. The Doctrine of the Mean, chap. 13. Max Weber's statement in The Religion of
China (New York: The Free Press, 1951), p. 155, that Confucianism had no
metaphysical foundation is misleading. Such a statement is based on the biased
view that metaphysics, which is man's search for the divine, must be equated with
other-worldliness.
28. Mencius, IV.B.12 & 26, VI.A.7.
29. See Mencius, VI.A.8.
30. Analects, I:5.
31. See the Book of Documents, trans. Bernhard Karlgren (Stockholm: Reprinted from
the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Bulletin 22, 1950), p. 59.
32. See Analects 2:4; Book of Odes, Ode number 267,
33. See Li Chi, trans. James Legge (New York: University Books, 1967), Vol. 1, p.
107.
34. See Karlgren, p. 26.
35. C.K. Yang remarks that "the Confucians fully endorsed the divine character of
political power by supporting the concept of the Mandate of Heaven. Mencius' (ca.
372-288 B.C.) reinterpretation of the concept of Heaven's will in terms of the
people's interest and public opinion resulted in a redefinition of the duties of
the ruler, but did not offer a secular theory on the origin of power." Religion in
Chinese Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), p. 108. See also
Herrlee G. Creel, The Origins of Statecraft in China, (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1970), vol. 1, pp. 44-45.
36. The Tso Chuan (Tso's Commentary on Spring and Autumn Annals), Duke Hsiang,
24th year.
37. See The Book of Documents, 1:1 `The Canon of Yao'; V:6 `The Metal-Bound
Coffer'. See Karlgren, p. 1 ff, 35ff.
38. Unlike the Taoist, the Confucian individual desires name and fame that accrue
to the self. See Analects 1:1; The Doctrine of the Mean, chap. 11.
39. For the Chinese, writings and words possess the numinous quality of the holy
and the spiritual. Mencius treats speech and spiritual power as belonging to the
same category (The Mencius 2A:2). Confucius regards the words of sages to be as
awe-inspiring as the Mandate of Heaven (Analects 16:8).
40. Mencius 4A:26.
41. In Confucianism, the honor of the ancestors comes from their living
descendants; the dead is promoted or demoted according to how his posterity is
doing on earth. Thus rank or achievement in this world is a deadly serious matter.
Filial piety prescribes not only paying respects and procuring comforts for
parents while they are alive and observing the proper rites when they have
departed, it requires that one be an achiever, inasmuch as a man who is a failure
is by definition an unfilial son. See The Doctrine of the Mean, chaps. 16, 17, 18.
42. Nathan Sivin in "Chinese Alchemy and the Manipulation of Time" delivered at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, January 25, 1976. (This is a summary of
Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China [Cambridge, England: At the
University Press, 1954-1974], V, Part 4). "The dominant goal of Chinese alchemy
was contemplative, and even ecstatic. . . . The alchemists constructed their
intricate art, made the cycles of cosmic process accessible, and undertook to
contemplate them because they believed that to encompass the Tao with their
minds--or, as they put it, with their hearts and minds (comprised in one word,
`hsin')--would make them one with it."
43. See Ch'en Kuo-fu, Tao-tsang yua¦ n-liu k'ao (Peking, 1915, 1963).
44. Ho-shang-kung's commentary on the Tao Te Ching is full of these examples. See
Ho-shang-kung's Commentary on Lao-Tse, trans. Eduard Erkes (Ascona, Switzerland:
Artibus Asiae Publishers, 1950), especially chaps. 5 and 6.
45. See Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China (Cambridge, England: At
the University Press), Vol. II, pp. 139-164; Vol. V, Part 2; Nathan Sivin, Chinese
Alchemy: Preliminary Studies (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968).
46. The origins of philosophical and religious Taoisms will be dealt with
elsewhere. From a study of the thought sequence it is clear that historically
philosophical Taoism as a distinct school of thought arose as a rebellion against
the emergent rationalism in Confucianism. Thus it harked back to a mythical past
prior to the emergence of consciousness, reason and morals, when man and nature
were not yet separate. Religious Taoism, on the other hand, originated from
ancient shamanism. Their vision and some of their practices could have been from
time immemorial. But shamanism, as Professor Mircea Eliade pointed out in
Shamanism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), p. 449, already marked
man's emergence from, and his effort to control, nature. Thus to the extent that
philosophical Taoism's central insight is the seamless unity of man and nature,
whereas both Confucianism and religious Taoism entered the stage when man became
conscious of his distinct existence in nature, religious Taoism is on the same
side as Confucianism.
47. See my paper `Is There A Doctrine of Physical Immortality in the Tao Te
Ching?', History of Religions, Vol. 12, No. 3 (February, 1973), 231-249.
48. The Chuang Tzu, 15:1. Watson's translation, pp. 167-68.
49. See Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, trans. Derk Bodde
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), Vol. II, p. 431.
50. The Pao P'u Tzu, 14:3a by James R. Ware, trans. Alchemy, Medicine, and
Religion in the China of A.D. 320, (Cambridge, Mass.: The M.I.T. Press, 1966), p.
229.
51. The Pao P'u Tzu, 8:5a; 14:9b.
52. Ware, p. 2.
53. The Pao P'u Tzu, chap. 2.
54. The Lieh-Tzu, chap. 1. Graham's translation, pp. 30-31.
55. Fung Yu-lan, p. 431.
56. Cf. Needham's Science and Civilization in China, Vol. V, Part 2, pp. 71-126,
"The drug of deathlessness; macrobiotics and immortality-theory in East and West."
57. In the outer chapters, the Pao P'u Tzu addresses itself to these issues. See
also Mircea Eliade, Immortality and Freedom (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1958), pp. 284-292.
58. Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), p. 287ff.
59. The Pao P'u Tzu, 5:1b. Cf. Needham, Science and Civilization in China, Vol. V,
Part 2, p. 85ff.
60. `That-which-is' is the palace of `that-which-is-not.' The body, being the
abode of the inner spirits, is like a dike. When the dike crumbles, water is no
longer retained. It is also like a candle. When the candle is at its end, fire no
longer dwells there." The Pao P'u Tzu, 5:1b.
61. See Hu Shih "The Indianization of China" in Independence, Convergence and
Borrowing (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1937). To counter Hu Shih's
position, Kenneth Ch'en in The Chinese Transformation of Buddhism (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1973) points out those aspects of Chinese culture that
have influenced Buddhism in China.
62. Perhaps due to this very affirmation of nature as good, and human nature as
but an extension of physical nature, in China there was never a real head-on
confrontation with the problem of evil. In this it differed from classical Western
philosophy, which by locating the divine beyond the physical realm, readily
identified evil with matter, and Christianity, which by taking the soul as ordered
to God and the body as ordered to the soul, distinguished between physical and
moral evil, the seat of which was in the soul. In the Neo-Confucianism of Chu Hsi,
ch'i, translated by Wing-tsit Chan as `material force', was taken to be the
principle of evil. But this position was never consistently worked out.
63. See the Heart Sutra (Prajna-Paramita-Hrdaya), the Diamond Sutra (Diamond
Prajna-paramita), and The Awakening of Faith (Mahayana sraddhotpada-sastra).
64. That the Christian mystical universe is a hierarchical one is evident from the
titles of treatises by the mystics. Dionysius the Areopagite, who wrote the very
influential "On the Celestial Hierarchy" and "On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy,"
was probably the first one to coin the word hierarchy in Christian theology.
Walter Hilton, a fourteenth century English mystic, wrote "The Ladder of
Perfection" which reaches from earth to heaven. From St. John of the Cross, the
mystic's mystic, we have "The Ascent of Mount Carmel." See William Ralph Inge,
Christian Mysticism (New York: Meridian Books, 1948).
65. See The Lion's Roar of Queen Srimala, a Buddhist Scripture on the
Tathagatagarbha Theory, trans. Alex & Hideko Wayman (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1974).
66. The Awakening of Faith, trans. Yoshito S. Hakeda (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1967), pp. 32-33.
67. Nagarjuna (2nd Century A.D.) was the first one to enunciate this doctrine in
the Madhyamika-karika, XXV, 19.
68. Cf. Aristotle's description of God in Metaphysics, XII, 7.
69. See D.T. Suzuki, Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul Ltd., 1930, 1957), p. 136.
70. Walter Liebenthal says: "The Chinese Buddhist were all Taoists whenever they
wrote philosophy." Chao Lun, trans. Walter Liebenthal (Hong Kong: Hong Kong
University Press, 2nd edition, 1968), Preface, p. xii.
71. See `The Recorded Conversations of Shen-hui' in Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book
in Chinese Philosophy, pp. 443-444.
72. Hui-ssu (514-577) of the Tien-t'ai school says: "Owing to the accomplishment
of concentration, one knows that the cycle of life and death is the same as
Nirvana, and owing to the attainment of insight, one knows that Nirvana is the
same as the cycle of life and death" (Ibid., p. 405). This paved the way for Shen-
hui (670-761) of southern Ch'an to declare that enlightenment "means entering
Nirvana without renouncing life and death." (Ibid., p. 441).
73. Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism, trans. Chang Chung-yuan (New York:
Vintage Books, 1971), p. 120.
74. Chan, p. 447.
75. The three sutras of the Pure Land sect in China and Japan are the Larger
Sukhavati (vyuha), the Smaller Sukhavati, and Kuan-Fo-ching.
76. We suggest that the Tathagatagabha performs the same function as Hun-tun in
Taoism.
77. In Christianity physical nature as the given has to be purified and exalted to
enter the realm of spirit. See a miniature from the 15th-century French Book of
Hours, showing Mary with the Holy Trinity, in C.G. Jung, Man and His Symbols (New
York: Dell, 1964), p. 226. This picture shows that even when Mary, as nature and
body purified, is elevated to Heaven, she still sits demurely alone in a corner,
subordinated to the Trinity which occupies the center of the painting.
78. Mencius, 6A:8.
79. Traditional arguments for the immortality of the soul is premised on its
rationality. Thus irrational beings are inadmissible to the divine realm. Even the
Christian world with its celestial and terrestrial hierarchies, with saints and
angels singing praises to God, pales before the richness of the Pure-Land terrain
wherein animals and even stones attain immortality, not as means of enjoyment for
gods or men, but on their own account.
80. See P'eng Chi-ch'ing, Ching-tu sheng-hsien lu (Records of Saints in Pure Land)
(Taipei, 1974).
81. Buddhism teaches that the divine, whether as Buddha, Amitabha or Kuan-yin, is
mahakaruna, unbounded love which crushes all barriers. See D.T. Suzuki, The
Essentials of Zen Buddhism (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1962), p. 345.
82. Mencius, 6A:8, 11.
83. See Kuan Feng and Lin Yu-shih, "Third Discussion on Confucius," in Chinese
Studies in Philosophy, 2 (1971), 246-263.
84. The Chuang Tzu, 22:6.
85. Ibid., 5:5, 6:3 & 5.
86. Hsiao, T'ien-shih, Ju shih ho ts'an, Tao-chia yang- sheng-hsueh kai-yao
(Essentials of the Taoist Way of Nurturing Life, Integrated with Confucian and
Buddhist Teachings) (Taipei, 1962), argues that the perfection of an immortal
requires intellectual, moral and spiritual perfection. Otherwise what is the value
of immortality or in what way is an immortal man better than an immortal ass?
Well, in the Pure Land, there are immortal asses.
CHINESE GLOSSARY
Chen-jen
Ch'en Kuo-fu
Ch'i
Ch'ih-yu
Chun-tzu
Han Fei
Ho-shang-kung
Hsin
Hsun Tzu
Hua-yem
Hui-ssu
Hun-tun
Kuan-fo-ching
Hsiao T'ien-shih
Pao P'u Tzu
P'en Chi-ch'ing
Shen-hui
Shen Pu-hui
Tao fa tzu-jan
T'ien-ming
T'ien-t'ai
Tso-chuan
Tzu-jan
Wu
Yu
CHAPTER VII
GOD - TO WHAT, IF ANYTHING,
DOES THE TERM REFER?
AN EASTERN CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE
METROPOLITAN PAULOS GREGORIOS
If I were to treat simply "The Christian View of God," I would have more or less
to read out the title, go into a fairly large period of silence, and then conclude
with "thank you, friends, for sharing with me the Christian view of God." For in
your silence, you would also have expressed the Christian view of God. Please do
not imagine that the length of the silent period would have been due to my going
into a trance or something of that sort. It simply happens to be the case that
silence would be the best way to speak about our ignorance of God, and it takes
time to give adequate expression to that ignorance.
The ignorance can, however, be of two kinds, one natural, and the other taught.
The natural ignorance is not to be regarded as somehow superior to the taught or
acquired one. In this particular case, the movement from natural ignorance to
taught ignorance (docta ignorantia) is itself a process of growth and self-
realization which makes the acquisition of the knowledge of the unknowability of
God itself a creative process of considerable value.
But religious leaders do a lot of talking about God, not always knowing what is
being talked about. In this paper, I shall treat three questions, mainly:
(a) Is God a comprehensible reality? what of God is a legitimate subject for
discourse?
(b) To what does the Christian doctrine of the Triune God refer?
(c) What is really meant by speaking about God's transcendence and immanence?
The perspective from which I write is that of an eastern Christian trained in the
west. That may in itself lead to contradictions, which my friends may be able to
detect and point out to me. But the basic ideas are from a tradition which Eastern
Christians regard as the authentic Christian Tradition. This tradition does not
follow the thought of an Augustine, of a Thomas Aquinas, or of a Karl Barth. It
was shaped through the centuries, and formulated to a fair extent by the three
Cappadocian Fathers--St. Basil of Caesarea, (died ca. 379 A.D.), his younger
brother St. Gregory of Nyssa, (died ca. 395 A.D.), and their friend and colleague
St. Gregory Nazianzen, (died ca. 390 A.D.). They were Asians from what is today
the north-eastern part of Turkey. On the foundation which they formulated
subsequent eastern Christian thinkers have built-- among the Byzantines Maximus
the Confessor and Gregory Palamas, among the Slavs Khomiakov and Soloviev. The
foundation still remains adequate to the needs of this modern age, and what I say
here owes much to this eastern heritage.
THE COMPREHENSIBILITY OF GOD
St. Gregory Nazianzen, in his second Theological Oration, quotes Plato who had
said that it is difficult to conceive God, but that to define him in words is an
impossibility.1 The Christian Father then goes on playfully to say that this is
clever of the philosopher in that he gives you the impression that while Plato
himself has been able with difficulty to conceive God, he has no responsibility to
tell us what he has conceived since in his view it is impossible to define God in
words. The Nazianzen then goes on to say: "But in my opinion it is impossible to
express Him, but yet more impossible to conceive Him."2 He continues in the next
paragraph: "It is one thing to be persuaded of the existence of a thing, and quite
another to know what it is."3
It was Gregory of Nyssa who made this point philosophically clear. The Nazianzen
was of the view that it was the feebleness of our equipment, the limited nature of
our mind, that causes the incapacity to comprehend. He even hoped that some day we
will overcome this incapacity and know God, so that we would know him as we are
known.4 His colleague Nyssa went further, and made certain basic clarifications:
a) that God is of a different order of being than anything else, and that his
incomprehensibility is related, not so much to the limits of our mind, as to God's
nature itself;
b) that there is a difference between God's ousia or his is-ness, and his energeia
or operations in the creation; and
c) that the knowledge of God, when it comes, is never strictly intellectual nor
simply mystical, but a form of self-knowledge when that self has become more truly
the image or created finite manifestation of God.
Nyssa agrees that we can have faint and scant apprehension of the nature of God
through our reasonings about what God has revealed of Himself, but that this does
not amount to any comprehension.5 However, this unknowability is not a unique
characteristic of God alone. The creation itself shares this unknowability. For
example, can we claim to know, exhaustively, notions like space or time or even
the human mind, Gregory asks. We can have notions about them, but we also know
that these notions have to keep changing again and again in the light of
experience.
Nyssa insists on the basic distinction and difference between the Self-existent
and the Contingent, or the Uncreated and the Created. The Platonic assumption of
the co-eternity of Creator and Creation is explicitly rejected by Nyssa as well as
by the other Cappadocians. Basil stated that the universe had a beginning, that
this beginning is also the beginning of time, and that time and the world as we
now know it will also come to an end.6 Even heaven is not co-existent with God,
but was created and therefore has a beginning.
Nyssa made the same distinction between "He who is" and "the things that are" (ho
ontos on and ta onta). The "one whose being is" is not in the same class with
"those that merely exist." In fact Gregory has three classes:
1. the Being who has being by His own nature,7
2. non-being, which has existence only in appearing to be,8
(and in between these two),
3. those things which are capable of moving towards being or non-being.9
The latter two are dependent on the negation of, or derived from, the first, i.e.,
He who is.
The distinction between the Uncreated and the Creation, in Gregory of Nyssa, may
be summarized as follows:
Uncreated Being
1. Self-derived
2. Self-generating
3. Self-subsistent
4. Not subject to non-being
5. Perfectly good
6. Is what it wills and wills
what it is, hence does not
move from arche to telos, nor is in process of becom- ing
7. Simple
Created Existence
Other-derived
Other-generated
Contingent upon the will of the Creator
Capable of moving into being or non-being
Capable of good and evil
Always has to become what it is, or move into non-being, hence always becoming or
perishing.
Compound
The simplicity of God does not, however, preclude either conceptual distinctions
or distinction of persons. One of the conceptual distinctions made classical for
Eastern thought by Gregory of Nyssa is the distinction between ousia and energeia.
It was not a distinction created by him. Most likely it was created by his
adversary, Eunomius of Cyzicus. He used the distinction as a major tool in
vanquishing his adversary, the Arian heretic. Eunomius had developed the
distinctions among being, operative power, and operated effect, i.e., ousia,
energeia, and erga. The distinction had an epistemological function, namely that
human reason could deduce the nature of the operative power from an understanding
of the operated effect, and from the understanding of the operative power move to
the nature of its being. The erga or operated effect can be an object of our
understanding, which then becomes the first step to ascend to the second step of
understanding of the energeia and then ascend to the third step of understanding
the ousia.
This is what Gregory refuted. He held that there was no clear road from erga to
energeia or from energeia to ousia. The wind is the energeia which creates the
ergon of a sand-dune. But if you did not know what the wind was, how can you move
from the knowledge of a sand-dune to the knowledge of the wind? Or in today's
terms would a photograph and a green leaf constitute sufficient ground to
understand the nature of light? Can you understand a human being from his
excretions and from a ship which are both his erga?
Gregory thus denies the assumption that we can move from the knowledge of Creation
to the knowledge of the Creator.
He rejects also the principle of analogia entis or analogia fidei. The only
analogy he concedes is the analogia metousias, but this does not lead to a
knowledge of the ousia of God. The analogia metousias helps only to compare the
degree of participation in the energeia of God. The degree of participation is
measured by the degree of conformity to the good by the impulsion of the will of
each towards the good. The energeia thus does not lead to knowledge of God's
being. It is only God's energeia which we can know or apprehend.
Words about God can serve a useful purpose in so far as they lead to the worship
of God, or to greater participation in the good.11 But they cannot capture or
conceive God nor can they adequately express His being. As Gregory of Nyssa says:
After all, God is not words, neither has He his being in sound and speech. God is
in Himself as He is ever believed to be, but he is named by those who invoke Him,
the name not being the same as what He is (for the nature is ineffable); but He
has names given to Him in accordance with what is believed to be His operations in
relation to our life.12
To sum up then, words about God are certainly not descriptive but evocative. Their
main purpose is not to provide knowledge, but to lead to worship. His names as
well as any descriptions we make about Him are our creations, related to our
experience of His operations. His ousia or being remains beyond all grasp. For He
is not like the things that make up the created order. His being is sui generis
and no analogy or reasoning can comprehend it. There is no concept adequate for
apprehending the Truth of God.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
All doctrines are verbal. This applies also to the Doctrine of the Trinity, a
doctrine composed, after all, of words. It is a human creation, developed out of
the understanding of the energeia of God that reaches out to us.
The central energeia that has reached out to us is the person of Christ,
Christians believe. The central form in which God's ousia impinges upon us through
His energeia is the form of a man who was born in Palestine 2000 years ago. This
is the heart of the Christian faith and experience; it is from this that the
doctrine of the Trinity takes shape.
But this doctrine is much misunderstood, not merely by Muslims and Jews with their
more strict monotheism, but also by very many Christians. St. Basil makes it clear
that one cannot attribute any kind of number to the Godhead, because Divinity is
without quantity and number relates to quantity.
In reply to those who slander us as being Tritheists, let it be said that we
confess one God, not in number but in nature (ou toi arithmoi, alla tei phusei).
For not everything that is called one in number is one in reality nor simple in
its nature, but God is universally admitted to be simple and uncompounded. Yet God
is therefore not one in number. . . . Number pertains to quantity; now quantity is
joined as an attribute to corporeal nature; therefore number is an attribute of
corporeal nature.13
Here our logic comes to a standstill. The Cappadocians insist that they are not
Tritheists, and yet they do not want to ascribe the number One to God without
qualification. A heroic effort is made to explain this problem in the famous
Epistle 38 attributed to St. Basil, but which was probably from the pen of his
brother, St. Gregory of Nyssa. Yet another vigorous effort is made by St. Gregory
in his oration, "On Not Three Gods," to defend himself against the charge of
Tritheism. But the result seems to me unsatisfactory. If the Unity of God is in
the same genre as the unity of the gold in three gold coins, then we are
justified, by the ordinary use of language, to speak of three Gods, as we speak of
three coins.
But this certainly is not the intention of the Cappadocians. A more mature point
of view is expressed by Nyssa in his first book against Eunomius. He had already
made a distinction between the operation of God ad extra14 and the mutual immanent
relations within the Godhead. There he also makes clear that enumeration is
possible only for circumscribed finite realities. The Divine life has no parts or
boundary. The names which we give God, including those of Father, Son and Holy
Spirit, have "a human sound, but not a human meaning."15
There is nothing by which we can measure the divine and blessed life. It is not in
time, but time flows from it. . . . The Supreme and Blessed Life has no time
extension accompanying its course, and therefore no span or measure.16
Or again,
In whom there is neither form (eidos) nor place, no size, no measure of time, nor
anything else of those things which can be comprehended.7
No number, no measure, no duality or non-duality, no monism or non-monism--all our
usual categories have to be folded up and laid away. You must forgive me therefore
if I fail to give you a satisfactory metaphysical account of the Three-in-One. I
do not have any understanding of the mystery, of that mystery I am sure because of
my faith. But I have no concepts, analogies or illustrations by which to explain
the Holy Trinity. Three things I derive from that doctrine:
that God is love, and that in the divine being there are three persons or centers
which respond to each other in freedom and love; that God is a community of
freedom and love; that in this freedom and love is also the good, the true being
of all that exists.18
The patristic tradition has examined all efforts to explain the Trinity in terms
of analogies in creation, and have rejected them as inadequate. Even the Nazianzen
who sometimes used the analogy of the human mind and human word to denote the
relation between the Father and the Son, had to say:
I have very carefully considered this matter in my own mind, and have looked at it
from every point of view, in order to find some illustration of this most
important subject (the Holy Trinity), but I have been unable to discover anything
on earth with which to compare the nature of the Godhead.19
He mentions expressly the course, the fountain and the river, the sun, the ray and
the light, and then concludes:
Finally then, it seems best to me to let the images and the shadows go, as being
deceitful and very far short of the truth.
Gregory Nazianzen, as well as Gregory of Nyssa, who had both a fairly high view of
the use of philosophy, would both admit that philosophical language is not at all
suited for the discourse about God. It is better to be silent, or if you must give
utterance, to use the hymns of praise. And the Nazianzen himself has given us many
such hymns, for example, this translation by Bossuet:
Tout demeure en vous, tout court apres vous;
Vous e-tes la fin de toutes choses;
Vous e- tes un, vous et- es tout;
Vous n'e- tes rien; vous n'e- tes ni un ni tout;
Comment vous appellerai-je, O Vous,
A qui tout nom peut convenir et le seul qu'on ne peut nommer.20
GOD'S TRANSCENDENCE AND IMMANENCE
If God is not a body, then there is already something awkward about speaking about
God's transcendence and immanence because these have to do with location, and
location for non-spatial entities is inconceivable for us.
Whitehead's effort to find a non-spatial or temporal transcendence has not quite
yet succeeded. The kingdom that is always in the future denotes only the
transcendence of history itself. Those who speak about the future of God as the
future of history commit the double iniquity of identifying God with human history
in a manner that is not legitimate and of taking human history to be the whole of
the universe.
On the other hand, those who claim that God's being is independent of the being of
the universe, shoulder the heavy burden of explaining the state of that
independent being in relation to the universe. The difficulty for me is to
understand words like `independent' or `self-sufficient' in relation to God.
Sufficiency and dependence are terms that belong to quantity and relation in a
created world; to apply these, even in a negative sense, to the Uncreated Being
seems difficult.
In the first place, as Gregory of Nyssa says, to be infinite is to transcend all
boundaries, whether of conception or of time and space. The infinite cannot stop
at any boundary and must by necessity transcend all--whether the boundaries be
intellectual, quantitative or qualitative. Gregory insists that every finite being
must of necessity come to the boundaries of its finitude, whether in concept or
being, and the infinite always extends beyond. The definition of the infinite
being is not that beyond its boundaries there is nothing, but that beyond every
boundary, being is.
The transcendence of God is thus not merely conceptual or qualitative or temporal
or spatial. It is in transcending every boundary that the infinity of God is
manifested.
But let us beware about the false statements: a) that God is beyond the creation,
as if God was nonexistent this side of the boundary of creation; or b) that God is
"wholly other," so that the creation can exist along-side of God as His "other."
Both ideas, to which Professor Boyce Gibson refers in the slender volume of essays
edited by Professor John Smith, i.e., the idea of God's self-sufficiency and non-
dependence, on the one hand, and his "wholly otherness" with occasional sorties
into the universe, on the other hand, are in that form unacceptable to the Eastern
tradition. Neither an "immobilist" view nor an "interventionist" view of God is
acceptable.21 Boyce Gibson completely misunderstands the authentic Christian
tradition of creation when he asserts:
It is just not possible to say that creating makes no difference to the creator
for the something which is there, and formerly was not there, is in relation to
Him; He is related where formerly He was unrelated.22
Gibson's mistake is in using the adverb "formerly," for the authentic tradition
holds that time has its beginning only from creation, and that there was not, to
parody the Arian formula, a "then when the Creation was not," though it has come
from non-being into being. Perhaps his bigger mistake is his direct insistence
that theology "is committed to getting the analysis straight."23 What presumption!
The analysis of God's transcendence and immanence cannot be straightened out in
such categories as apply to relations within the creation.
Gregory of Nyssa does the trick more dialectically than most modern philosophers.
The principles of logic applying to the spatio-temporal creation cannot be applied
to the Godhead. There we can only say that from the side of the Universe, we
experience both discontinuity with and participation in God. What it would be like
from God's side we cannot conceive.
God's immanence also is understood by Gregory in a fairly sophisticated way. We
can only indicate that understanding in fairly quick short-hand. God's operative
energy is the ground of the creation. It begins, it moves, and it reaches its
appointed destiny, only by virtue of God's will and word. The creation is God's
will and word, and that is the principle of immanence. Existence is always by
God's will and word, and when the will-and-word is withdrawn, there is only non-
existence. Thus the authentic Christian tradition does not regard the cosmos as
the body of God, or as something outside of God, for outside God there is only
non-being. It is in God's will-and-word that the universe has its existence, and
it is by will-and-word that God is immanent in Creation.
THE CONCEPT AND THE REALITY
Reason or ratio is always a proportionality between reality and knowledge. The
dualism between reality and knowledge is itself grounded in the other dualism of
subject and object, which in turn generates the concepts of the pour-soi and the
en-soi, the object-in-consciousness and the object-in-itself.
All these dualisms cry out to be overcome. But they will not be overcome by reason
or ratio, which is what generates the dualities. The irrationality of reason,
exemplified by the classical antinomies of Kant, cannot be overcome by reason.
The concept as such belongs to the realm of reason and stands in need of
overcoming. It is a kind of puerile naivete that drives logicians and philosophers
to capture reality in a net of concepts. We are part of that reality, and no
equipment we have is capable of subducting reality from our minds. Let us give up
that wild-goose chase.
For a thinking person, the word God should not stand for a concept. It is a symbol
pointing to many things:
a) an affirmation of the contingent, therefore,
un-selfsufficient and dependent character of our
own existence as well as of the reality in which we
participate--the reality we call the universe;
b) an affirmation that the cause of all causes is of a
different genre than the links in the causal chain;
c) an affirmation that all created things have to move
towards a goal which is ultimately good.
This is also what the Cappadocian Fathers meant by the term Creator. The Creator,
who does not owe his being to someone else, has caused this universe to begin,
keeps it going and will lead it to its destined end. The one who does that is
personal, i.e., capable of responding in freedom to others. He/ she is also love
and wisdom. He/she cannot be captured in concepts. But he/she can be loved and
united with. There all duality gives place to the union of love.
In fact it is God's freedom which makes him/her beyond the reach of our finite
grasp. The human person with a great capacity to understand, has also the great
capacity to bring that which he/she understands under his/her control. Every
science generates its own technology. If we could comprehend God, we would also
devise the technology to control Him and use Him, i.e., to enslave Him. The
freedom of practically everything else is such that despite its freedom, it can be
subdued by our analytic reason, at least to a certain extent. Even humanity, the
highest and most evolved element in creation, we so seek to understand, control
and manipulate. Do philosophers expect that God would place him/herself as an
object of our comprehension, so that he/she too can be enslaved by us? Ask love
for the answer.
Dr. Paulos Mar Gregorios
Metropolitan of Delhi and the North
President, World Council of Churches
NOTES
1. The English Translation of Timaeus 28 E, by John Harrington reads: "To discover
the maker and father of this universe is indeed a hard task, and having found him
it would be impossible to tell every one about him." Timaeus, Everyman's Library,
493 (London, New York, 1965), p. 14. See the Greek text which is itself somewhat
different.
2. Second Theological Oration: IV.
3. Idem: V.
4. Idem: XVII.
5. Contra Eunomium II: 130, PG 45:953.B.
6. Hexaemeron I:3.
7. To on, ho tei heautou phusei to einai echei.
8. To me on, ho en toi dokein einai monon estin.
9. See De Vita Moysis, P.G. 44:333, Gregori Nysseni Opera vol. VII:I:40.
10. Contra Eunomium I: 274-275. PG 45:333D, GNO I:106-107.
11. Contra Eunomium II:136. PG 45:956.
12. Ibid. II:149. PG 45:956.
13. Epist VIII: Tr. Roy J. Deferrari, St. Basil, The Letters, Loeb. Classical
Library, (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1926), vol. I. p. 52.
14. On Not Three Gods NPNF. Vol. V, p. 334.
15. Contra Eunomium BK I:39 NPNF, p. 93.
16. Contra Eunomium I:26 NPNF, p. 69.
17. C.E. I:26 NPNF, p. 69.
18. My own formulation.
19. Oratio Theologica V: XXXI NPNF. Vol. VII p. 328 A.
20. Cited by J. Plagnieu, S. Gregoire de Nazianze, Theologian, p. 333 note.
(Paris: Editions Franciscaines, 1951).
21. A Boyce Gibson, "The Two Ideas of God," in John E. Smith (ed.) Philosophy of
Religion (New York: London, 1965), p. 61 ft.
22. Ibid., p. 65.
23. Ibid., p. 67.
CHAPTER VIII
GOD, PHILOSOPHY AND HALAKHAH IN
MAIMONIDES' APPROACH TO JUDAISM
DAVID HARTMAN and ELLIOTT YAGOD
INTRODUCTION
This paper on the absolute in the Jewish metaphysical tradition does not pretend
to do justice to the variety of approaches, both mystic and rationalistic, found
in the Jewish tradition. Although Judaism has generally revolved around a common
normative tradition, there has never been an officially recognized Jewish
theological or philosophical approach to God. One finds, then, parallel movements
of diversity of views on theological issues, on the one hand, and attempts at
gaining consensus of behaviour regarding the legal patterns of Jewish
spirituality, on the other. Leibovitch appeals to this important historical fact
in order to deny that theology has significance in Judaism and to argue that law
alone constitutes the essence of Judaism.1 While sharing his concern with
neutralizing the importance of factual judgments in Judaism, we nevertheless
believe that the relationship between empirical and metaphysical assertions, on
the one hand, and the Halakhah (Jewish law), on the other, is considerably more
complex than the position he expounds. In this paper, we shall attempt to focus on
a strand within the Jewish metaphysical tradition, namely that which emerges out
of the Maimonidian tradition.
To understand why we chose Maimonides, it must be noted that striving for
consensus of practice regarding the law was a vital feature of the Jewish
tradition. One may even claim that theology entered the Jewish tradition via its
influence on practice. Scholem has argued that the esoterric teachings of the
mystics were able to capture the minds of the broad community because this
theology offered one a symbolic approach to practice. Mystic theology transmuted
the meaning of practice and turned halakhic practice into symbolic mystical
experience.2 In other words, theology entered into Jewish spirituality only if it
could transform, in some way, the nature of practice. It is the law which mediates
the theological in the Jewish tradition.
Maimonides was a rare figure who was a recognized master in both Halakhah (Jewish
law) and philosophy. Maimonides is the great codifier of Jewish law. While his
influence on the development of Halakhah was unique and outstanding, he was, also,
one of the great teachers of philosophy and metaphysics in the Jewish tradition.
His work, The Guide of the Perplexed, influenced the development of Jewish
philosophy. There were other serious Jewish philosophers who did not threaten the
anti-philosophic strand in the Jewish tradition because they did not command the
enormous respect, halakhically speaking, which Maimonides had in the community.
Maimonides' great talmudic erudition made him a threat in philosophy. You had to
confront Maimonides' philosophic views because you could not ignore his halakhic
views.
Secondly, what makes Maimonides important in our study is that as an individual he
was an archetype of the halakhic mind who embodied the entire scope of the
halakhic discipline. No facet of the law was unknown to him. One can not claim
that he was not a legalist; yet, on the other hand, he was seriously engaged in
philosophy. Pines claims that, in contrast to many other Jewish philosophers,
Maimonides' approach to philosophy was not apologetic. There was a genuine
openness and commitment to the philosophic tradition. His concern with philosophy
was a concern with truth and not simply with demonstrating the merits of the
Jewish tradition.3
Professor Efraim Urback in his recent work on rabbinic thought repeatedly
emphasizes that in the rabbinic tradition the primary concern was practice.4 In
attempting to formulate theological notions or a metaphysics of history, the
rabbinic mind always asks the important question, "How does this theory relate to
practice, how does it affect practice?' Urbach states that the rabbis were not
interested in a coherent metaphysical tradition per se. Their major question was
with what view of the universe and God would inspire one to observe the
commandments with greater devotion. The emphasis was upon love and fear of God;
theoretical speculation was introduced as a way to motivate practice. This view is
shared by many rabbinic scholars as well as by students of the biblical tradition.
The Jews are anchored to practice. Both the biblical and rabbinic traditions
relate man to God, not via a metaphysical philosophic system, but through forms of
practice embodied in the life of the committed person: not the mind, but the will;
not thought, but action.
This practical tendency in the biblical and the rabbinic traditions led Spinoza to
criticize Maimonides' placing philosophy within the biblical tradition.5 Spinoza
was critical of Maimonides' claim that the prophet must necessarily be a
philosopher. For Spinoza, Moses had a gifted imagination but did not ground his
teachings on universally valid principles. The Bible is a book of laws and Spinoza
goes so far as to claim that universal morality is beyond the scope of the Bible.
The Bible is shot through with legal particularism so that to maintain that one
finds in the Bible a philosophic conception of God is to distort both the spirit
and the content of the Bible. The major figure of whom Spinoza was most critical
was Maimonides, because if Maimonides were right then philosophy and revealed law
could merge. If Spinoza were right then the primacy of law in the Jewish tradition
would displace any tendency towards metaphysical speculation.
The Spinozistic criticism of Maimonides was continued by the contemporary
historian of philosophy, Isaac Husik, who claimed that Maimonides was unaware of
the enormous gap separating the tradition that emerged from Athens and the
tradition that emerged from Jerusalem. The Bible was concerned with morality, the
Greeks were concerned with theoretical truth. This polarity between theoretical
and practical perfections also influenced Leo Strauss' approach to Maimonides.6
The major critique of Maimonides, then, focuses on his being a master halakhic
legalist who maintained that the metaphysical tradition was intrinsically rooted
in the Jewish tradition. The task of this paper is to show how Maimonides was able
to integrate what appeared to Spinoza, Husik and others to be two incompatible
traditions.
Let us now examine some of Maimonides' statements which characterize his approach
to the relationship of practice and theory in the Jewish tradition. Maimonides, in
the Guide, III, 27, states:
The law as a whole, aims at two things: the welfare of the soul and the welfare of
the body. As for the welfare of the soul, it consists in the multitude's acquiring
correct opinions corresponding to their respective capacity. . . . The second
thing consists in the acquisition by every human individual of moral qualities
that are useful for life in society so that the affairs of the city may be
ordered. . . . Know that as between these two aims, one is indubitably greater in
nobility, namely, the welfare of the soul--I mean the procuring of correct
opinions--while the second aim--I mean the welfare of the body--is prior in nature
and time.
To Maimonides, the uniqueness of Torah as distinct from other legal systems is
that whereas nomos is concerned solely with social well being, Torah is also
concerned with knowledge of God, i.e., with imparting correct beliefs.7 The
primacy of metaphysics is mentioned not only in The Guide of the Perplexed, but
also in his codification of Jewish law, the Mishneh Torah. In "The Laws of the
Foundations of the Torah" IV, 13, Maimonides states that the study of the law is
"a small thing" and the study of physics and metaphysics is "a great thing":
Although these last subjects were called by the sages "a small thing" (when they
say "A great thing, Maaseh Mercabah; a small thing, the discussion of Abaye and
Rava"), still they should have the precedence. For the knowledge of these things
gives primarily composure to the mind. They are the precious boon bestowed by God,
to promote social well-being on earth, and enable men to obtain bliss in the life
hereafter. Moreover, the knowledge of them is within the reach of all, young and
old, men and women; those gifted with great intellectual capacity as well as those
whose intelligence is limited.
Although the study of metaphysics is primary and of greater value (we shall soon
indicate in what sense), nevertheless the study of the law is prior in time
because practice of the law leads to social well-being and thus creates the social
and political conditions necessary for enabling many people to engage in the study
of metaphysics.8 Placing study of metaphysics above study of the law upset the
religious sensibilities of many halakhists.9 They were far more perturbed by this
statement in the Mishneh Torah than by The Guide of the Perplexed. Placing the
study of philosophy above the study of talmud was perceived as undermining the
very primacy of the legal tradition. Yet, this statement was made by the great
master of the legal tradition. The primacy of philosophy is mentioned again in the
Mishneh Torah at the end of "The Laws of Repentance" as well as in Chapter 2 of
"The Laws of the Foundations of the Torah." There the claim is made that only
through metaphysical knowledge of God can one arrive at the goal of love of God.
Worshipping God out of love is made possible only by philosophy. The law does not
create love, it creates social well-being. Metaphysical knowledge of God, i.e.,
following the path of the study of physics and metaphysics, creates in man the
capacity to love God.
In the Guide, III, 52, Maimonides repeats the claim which pervades his total
philosophic world view: practice creates reverence for God whereas knowledge
creates love:
For these two ends, namely love and fear, are achieved through two things: love
through the opinions taught by the Law, which include the apprehension of His
being as He, may He be exalted, is in truth; while fear is achieved by means of
all actions prescribed by the Law, as we have explained.
The critique of Maimonides for having elevated philosophy to so high a level had
two features. First, it appeared to be a distortion of the tradition since the
tradition emphasized practice. The tradition's concern with study always had as
its goal the study of law. Guttman and Scholem, who relate the contemplative
tradition in Maimonides to the talmudic emphasis upon study, are only partially
correct since when the talmudic tradition spoke of the importance of study it
always had in mind the study of the law.10 It did not refer to metaphysical
contemplation of God. Therefore, Maimonides appears to undermine the basic Jewish
emphasis on the primacy of practice and on the primacy of the study of the legal
tradition. This was typical of medieval critiques of Maimonides.
Secondly, Maimonides seems to be indifferent to the centrality of history.
Maimonides' attempt at understanding God in ontological terms, as the perfect
necessary being and not as the God who freely reveals Himself in events in
history, appears to negate the God of the Jewish tradition. The primacy of an-
event-based theology, of open-textured events, and of the spontaneity and the
radical freedom of God to reveal Himself in events stand in utter contrast to a
theology of the God of metaphysics, the absolute, self-sufficient God who draws
man to worship Him in virtue of His perfection. It is in great historical events
that one finds the living God of the Bible. In Maimonides' thought, history
appears to play a very limited role in mediating the religious passion for God.
Maimonides, therefore, is alien to the Jewish tradition because his approach a)
undercuts the centrality of legal study and b) neutralizes the centrality of
events and of history in one's relationship to the absolute.11 We shall cite
examples of how Maimonides completely turns around certain obvious currents within
the Jewish tradition.
1) In the creation story in Genesis the obvious direction of the story is that of
days leading up to the creation of man and of the Sabbath. Man's being created
last points to an anthropocentric creation. God's creation of nature is meant to
serve His unique creation, i.e., man. In fact, one of the most popular classical
commentaries on the Bible quotes a midrash which asks why the Bible began with the
account of creation since the Bible is essentially a book of law. The answer given
is that the creation story has a didactic point, namely, to teach that since God
is the creator of the world, He has the right to give the land to whomever He
pleases. Therefore, Israel's justification for the land of Canaan comes from the
story of the creation of the world. According to the spirit of this midrash, were
it not for a moral-practical justification, the account of creation would appear
pointless. Maimonides, however, does not see in the account of the creation of
nature (and in reflecting on the God of nature) the centrality of man. He sees
rather a theocentric universe in which man is insignificant in comparison with the
intelligences and with the richness of the infinite Being, who creates a universe
as a consequence of the overflow of His infinite power and perfection.12
2) The story of the encounter between Moses and God, where Moses asks for the
divine name, also reveals Maimonides metaphysical perspective. The midrashic
approach to `Ehyeh-Asher Ehyeh' (I will be who I will be) [Exodus III, 14]
reflects a God who announces to Moses and to the people that He will be present in
their struggle. He is a God who can be relied upon to be responsive in history.15
Buber remarks in his essay, `The Faith of Judaism':
Not "I am that I am" as alleged by the metaphysicians --God does not make
theological statements--but the answer which his creatures need, and which
benefits them: "I shall be there as I there shall be" [Exod. 3:14]. That is: you
need not conjure me, for I am here, I am with you; but you cannot conjure me, for
I am with you time and again in the form in which I choose to be with you time and
again; I myself do not anticipate any of my manifestations; you cannot learn to
meet me; you meet me, when you meet me: . . . 14
Buber's approach is similar in spirit to that of the midrash. Maimonides, however,
in the Guide, I, 63, writes:
Accordingly when God, may He be held sublime and magnified, revealed himself to
Moses our Master and ordered him to address a call to people and to convey to them
his prophetic mission, [Moses] said: the first thing that they will ask of me is
that I should make them acquire true knowledge that there exists a god with
reference to the world; after that I shall make the claim that He has sent me. For
at that time all the people except a few were not aware of the existence of the
deity, and the utmost limits of their speculation did not transcend the sphere,
its faculties, and its actions, for they did not separate themselves from things
perceived by the senses and had not obtained intellectual perfection. Accordingly
God made known to [Moses] the knowledge that he was to convey to them and through
which they would acquire a true notion of the existence of God, this knowledge
being: I am that I am. This is a name deriving from the verb to be [hayah], which
signifies existence, for hayah, indicates the notion: he was. And in Hebrew, there
is no difference between your saying: he was, and he existed. The whole secret
consists in the repetition in a predicative position of the very word indicative
of existence. For the word that [in the phrase "I am that I am"] requires the
mention of an attribute immediately connected with it. For it is a deficient word
requiring a connection with something else. . . . Accordingly Scripture makes, as
it were, a clear statement that the subject is identical with the predicate. This
makes it clear that He is existent not through existence. This notion may be
summarized and interpreted in the following way: the existent that is the
existent, or the necessarily existent. This is what demonstration necessarily
leads to: namely, to the view that there is a necessarily existent thing that has
never been, or ever will be, non-existent.
To the midrash and to Buber, Israel requires the knowledge that God will be
present with them in their suffering. To Maimonides the slave people, who are
beginning their pilgrimage to become a holy covenant people, must know that the
God of being is a necessary existent and that the predicate, I am, is identical
with the subject, I am. What a change in spiritual climate! How could Maimonides
take a dramatic statement rooted in history, a promise to be ever present--"I
shall be there"--to be a statement of the proposition that God is the necessary
existent?15
3) In the first commandment, `I am the Lord thy God who brought Thee out of the
land of Egypt', where the central focus is the liberating power of God in history,
Maimonides' interpretation is that God is a necessary being not dependent on
anything other than Himself. Divine self-sufficiency, perfection, and autonomy,
are the content of the first commandment. To Maimonides, the first half of the
sentence is intelligible without the second half. One can understand the meaning
of `I am the Lord they God' independent of the description `who brought thee out
of the land of Egypt.' For Yehuda Halevi, as for the Mekhiltah, the liberating
experience of the exodus from Egypt and reflection on God's power in history
confirm the reality of God for Israel.16
4) What characterizes Jewish prayer is the feeling of divine presence and
responsiveness to man's suffering condition. The Halakhah gives expression to this
vital element in the structures of the amidah prayer: three blessings of
adoration, followed by thirteen petitional requests, concluded by three blessings
of thanksgiving. Fundamental to this experience is the feeling that man can pour
out his needs to God, that man can bring his needs to a God who is called Our
Father, Our King. The God to whom one prays is the God who is with me in my
suffering, the God whose shekhinah (indwelling) suffers with Israel during their
entire galut (exile). In contrast to the profound intimacy and expressiveness felt
by the praying Jew before God, one ought to consider the religious atmosphere and
the tone of Maimonides' treatment of negative theology (Guide I, 50-60), where the
fundamental point is that there is no comparison between God and man. In these
chapters of the Guide one discovers that language is necessarily deficient
regarding God. One can never talk about God's essence, one can only talk about
God's action. Any statement which aims at asserting anything about God must be
transformed into a negative statement. God is existent becomes He is not non-
existent. God is alive becomes God is not dead. God knows becomes God is not
ignorant. Statements describing God's compassion, feeling, and mercy are but human
projections in no way attributing affect to God:
God, may He be exalted, is said to be merciful, just as it is said, "Like as a
father is merciful to his children," and it says, "And I will pity them, as a man
pitieth his own son." It is not that He, may He be exalted, is affected and has
compassion. But an action similar to that which proceeds from a father in respect
to his child and that is attached to compassion, pity, and an absolute passion,
proceeds from Him, may He be exalted, in reference to His holy ones, not because
of a passion or a change. [Guide, I, 54].
The gap between a religious world view coming out of the Bible and the midrash,
and Maimonides' world view is obvious in Maimonides' treatment of negative
theology, and, above all, in his statement that true prayer consists in silent
reflection. Language is a compromise and the ultimate religious ideal is to
express adoration not through poetic description of God but through contemplative
silence:
The most apt phrase concerning this subject is the dictum occurring in the Psalms,
"Silence is praise to Thee" [Ps. 65:2], which interpreted signifies: Silence with
regard to You is praise. This is a most perfectly put phrase regarding the matter.
For of whatever we say intending to magnify and exalt, on the one hand we find
that it can have some application to Him, may He be exalted, and on the other we
perceive in it some deficiency. Accordingly, silence and limiting oneself to the
apprehensions of the intellect are more appropriate--just as the perfect ones have
enjoined when they said: "Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still.
Selah" (Ps. 4:5). [Guide, I, 59].17
Maimonides, the great master of the Jewish halakhic tradition, was an honest and
coherent thinker. How could he have missed so obvious a difference in emphasis and
in outlook between the religious experience of the absolute which comes through in
his legal and his philosophic writings and that of the Jewish tradition? Our
concern is not to discover the historical philosophic influences on Maimonides'
world view. This has been done by Professor Pines in his introduction to The Guide
of the Perplexed. Our concern will be to indicate internal religious concepts
emanating from the Jewish tradition which may have influenced Maimonides'
philosophic religious outlook.
THE METAPHYSICAL AND THE JEWISH TRADITIONS
The two internal principles which may have led Maimonides to his profound embrace
of the metaphysical tradition were a) the principle of idolatry and b) the notion
of love of God. These two central categories of the Jewish legal tradition may
account for Maimonides' metaphysically oriented descriptions of God, the
insistence on negative theology, and his statement that Moses taught the notion of
God as necessary existent to the Jewish community immediately after their
departure from Egypt.
Maimonides, both in the Mishneh Torah and in the Guide, claims that "the
foundation of the whole of our Law and the pivot around which it turns, consists
in the effacement of these opinions from the minds and of these monuments from
existence" (Guide III, 29). Maimonides has in mind the idolatrous opinions of the
Sabians. Likewise, in the Mishneh Torah, "Laws of Idolatry," II, 4, Maimonides
writes:
The precept relating to idolatry is equal in importance to all the other precepts
put together, as it is said, "And when ye shall err and not observe all these
commandments" (Num. 15:22). This text has traditionally been interpreted as
alluding to idolatry; hence the inference that acceptance of idolatry is
tantamount to repudiating the whole Torah, the prophets and everything that they
were commanded, from Adam to the end of time. . . . And whoever denies idolatry
confesses his faith in the whole Torah, in all the prophets and all that the
prophets were commanded, from Adam till the end of time. And this is the
fundamental principle of all of the commandments.
Maimonides codifies the halakhah that the prophet has the right to temporarily
suspend any norms of Jewish law. There is only one case where suspension, even
temporarily, is not permitted and that is with regard to the laws of idolatry.18
The uncompromising demand to reject idolatry is the central concern of the law.
Toleration of anything that may lead, in any way whatsoever, to one's embracing
idolatry undermines the essential purpose of the law. Maimonides, therefore,
codifies the laws of idolatry in the first book of the Mishneh Torah, the Book of
Knowledge. In his introduction to the Mishneh Torah Maimonides explains the
purpose of the first book:
I include in it all the precepts which constitute the very essence and principle
of the faith taught by Moses, our teacher and which it is necessary for one to
know at the outset; as for example, acceptance of the unity of God and the
prohibition of idolatry.
In "The laws of Repentance," III, 15, Maimonides wrote regarding the definition of
the heretic:
Five classes are termed Heretics; he who says that there is no God and the world
has no ruler; he who says that there is a ruling power but that it is vested in
two or more persons; he who says that there is one ruler, but that He is a body
and has form; he who denies that He alone is the First Cause and Rock of the
Universe; likewise, he who renders worship to anyone beside Him, to serve as a
mediator between the human being and the Lord of the Universe. Whoever belongs to
any of these five classes is termed a heretic.
Maimonides classifies together in the same law one who claims that there is no
God, one who believes in polytheism, and one who believes that God has a body and
a form. This decision evoked the rage of the Rabad:
Why has he called such a person an heretic? There are many people greater than and
superior to him who adhere to such a belief on the basis of what they have seen in
verses of Scripture and even more the words of those aggadot which corrupt right
opinion about religious matters.19
The gist of the disagreement is that the Rabad cannot understand Maimonides'
insistence on calling an otherwise pious, halakhic person a heretic. How can one
who lives sincerely by the law, who follows all the commandments and who is
committed passionately to every detail of the discipline of Halakhah, be
classified together with one who is an idolater? How can the great enemy of Jewish
spirituality, idolatry, be found in the heart of one who is totally loyal to the
Halakhah?
Maimonides was undoubtedly aware of the likelihood of such objections, yet his
opposition to false notions of God was uncompromising. Essential to understanding
Maimonides' metaphysical treatment of God in the sections on negative theology in
the Guide, are chapters 35 and 36 in part one. Maimonides claims there that
although he realizes that the study of physics and metaphysics are esoteric
disciplines requiring great preparation and great maturity and are not disciplines
capable of being studied by the masses, nevertheless one should not withhold from
the multitude knowledge of the fact that God is incorporeal and that He is not
subject to affection. Maimonides writes:
For just as it behooves to bring up children in the belief, and to proclaim to the
multitude, that God may He be magnified and honored is one and that none but He
ought to be worshipped, so it behooves that they should be made to accept on
traditional authority the belief that God is not a body; and that there is
absolutely no likeness in any respect whatever between Him and the things created
by Him; that His existence has no likeness to theirs; nor His life to the life of
those among them who are alive; nor again His knowledge to the knowledge of those
among them who are endowed with knowledge. They should be made to accept the
belief that the difference between Him and them is not merely a difference of more
and less, but one concerning the species of existence. I mean to say that it
should be established in everybody's mind that our knowledge of our power does not
differ from His knowledge or His power in the later being greater and stronger,
the former less and weaker, or in other similar respects, inasmuch as the strong
and the weak are necessarily alike with respect to their species and one
definition comprehends both of them. . . . Now everything that can be ascribed to
God, may He be exalted, differs in every respect from our attributes, so that no
definition can comprehend the one thing and the other. (Guide I, 35)
A central motif in Maimonides' writings are his repeated arguments for teaching
the masses about God's incorporeality. In the same chapter, Maimonides writes:
For there is no profession of unity unless the doctrine of God's corporeality is
denied. For a body cannot be one, but is composed of matter and form which by
definition are two; it also is divisible, subject to partition.
Maimonides concludes the chapter with the same principle he used in the Mishneh
Torah to categorize the different forms of heresy:
But it is not meet that belief in the corporeality of God or in His being provided
with any concomitant of the bodies should be permitted to establish itself in
anyone's mind any more than it is meet that belief should be established in the
nonexistence of the deity, in the association of other gods with Him, or in the
worship of other than He.
Maimonides was philosophically convinced that false belief regarding the nature of
God is idolatry.20 Hence he had to face the halakhic implication of this claim.
Idolatry is not only mistaken forms of worship, but is, as well, a mistaken
conception of the object of worship. Idolatry is constituted not only by how I
worship but, more importantly, by whom I worship. False belief, e.g., belief in
divine corporeality, entails idolatry in that instead of worshipping God, one is
worshipping a figment of human imagination. Hence, correct belief (philosophy) is
crucial in order to correctly identify and describe God and thus avoid worshipping
false gods.21
The purpose of the law, however, is to correct mistaken forms of worship:
The essential principle in the precepts concerning idolatry is that we are not to
worship any thing created--neither angel, sphere, star, none of the four elements,
nor whatever has been formed from them. Even if the worshipper is aware that the
Eternal is God, and worships the created thing in the sense in which Enoch and his
contemporaries did, he is an idolater. ("Laws of Idolatry," II, 1)
The law protects Israel from the mistake idol worshippers made in developing
intermediary worship. The Halakhah provides a correct way of worship which will
not lead to removing God from the consciousness of man through mistaken forms.
Essential idolatry, however, involves not only mistaken forms of worship but
mistaken conceptions of God. This is only corrected by understanding how unity and
corporeality are contradictory. Only by understanding physics, the nature of
change, the relationship between potentiality and actuality, the structure of
nature, etc., can one root out an idolatry based, not upon wrong practice, but
upon mistaken belief.22
Maimonides considered mistaken practice to be a lesser sin than belief in
corporeality. In Guide I, 36, Maimonides writes:
Now the idolaters thought that this prerogative [being worshipped] belonged to
that which was other than God; and this led to the disappearance of the belief in
His existence. . . . For the multitude grasp only the actions of worship, not
their meanings or the true reality of the Being worshipped through them. . . .
What then should be the state of him whose infidelity bears upon His essence . . .
and consists in believing Him to be different from what He really is? . . . Know
accordingly, you who are that man, that when you believe in the doctrine of the
corporeality of God or believe that one of the states of the body belongs to Him,
you "provoke His jealousy and anger, kindle the fire of His wrath," and are "a
hater, an enemy, and an adversary," of God, much more so than "an idolater."
In other words, Maimonides says to the Jewish community, who have a defined way of
worshipping God which distinguishes them from pagans, that, if they lack a
philosophic understanding of God's otherness, idolatry will reappear in the house
of Jewish Halakhah. Paganism will grow in Jewish soil if man does not understand
how unity and incorporeality entail one another.
Maimonides then argues that, if you want to excuse Jews of this mistaken notion
because the Bible itself may be responsible for teaching men that God has a body
and that He is subject to affections, you ought to hold a similar attitude with
regard to a gentile idolater, for he worships idols only because of his ignorance
and because of his upbringing. Maimonides does not allow a double standard. He
does not allow the tradition's rage against idolatry to be turned outward and not
inward. The philosophic knowledge that Maimonides gained from the Greek
philosophic tradition was of central importance for his understanding of the
Jewish belief in the oneness and uniqueness of God. Wolfson correctly points out
that the Bible taught only that God was other than the world. The notion of divine
simplicity and the notion that corporeality is a negation of the concept of unity
are not biblical, but rather philosophic.23 Maimonides' knowledge of philosophy
gave him a new understanding of idolatry.
Maimonides, however, was not only a philosopher. As a committed halakhic Jew he
could not keep this knowledge from the community. He knew that the law did not
allow any compromise regarding idolatry. He did not follow the path of many
medieval philosophers, like Averroes and those within the Jewish tradition, in
allowing the masses to believe that God was corporeal .24 Were Maimonides only a
philosopher and not a halakhist, he would surely have refrained from evoking the
wrath of the Jewish community by claiming that pious halakhic Jews with incorrect
theological beliefs were idol worshippers. If, as Leo Strauss claims Maimonides
only sought a justification for philosophy but not an interpenetration of
philosophy and law, he should never have codified the principle that he who
believes that God has a body is an idolater and an heretic. His insistence that
the whole community accept certain basic truths of metaphysics even if only on the
basis of authority is grounded in his "halakhic" commitment to the community and
to the halakhic principle of not allowing any compromise regarding idolatry.
Metaphysics, then, for Maimonides is a complement to the law. Philosophy continues
the battle of the law to uproot the last vestiges of idolatry in the world. Moses,
therefore, had to teach the community about the nature of God in order to uproot
idolatry from within the Jewish people. It is not arid philosophical rationalism
that inspires Maimonides. The motivation is not that of the esoteric elitist
intellectual, but that of the observant Jew committed to the principle that "he
who rejects idolatry accepts the entire Torah."25
The goal of Torah which makes it unique among legal systems, is its concern with
developing love of God. Love of God, according to Maimonides, is nurtured only by
philosophical knowledge. Even though Maimonides recognized the limitations of the
intellect and restricted the scope and nature of knowledge of God, he still
believed that only knowledge, comprised of the intellectual discipline of physics
and metaphysics, would lead man to love of God.
This God, honoured and revered, it is our duty to love and fear; as it is said
"Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God" (Deut. 6:35), and it is further said "Thou
shalt fear the Lord, thy God" (Deut. 6:13).
2. And what is the way that will lead to the love of Him and the fear of Him? When
a person contemplates His great and wondrous works and creatures and from them
obtains a glimpse of His wisdom which is incomparable and infinite, he will
straightway love Him, praise Him, glorify Him, and long with an exceeding longing
to know His great Name; even as David said "My soul thirsteth for God, for the
living God" (Ps. 42:3). And when he ponders these matters, he will recoil
affrighted, and realize that he is a small creature, lowly and obscure, endowed
with slight and slender intelligence, standing in the presence of Him who is
perfect in knowledge. And so David said "When I consider Thy heavens, the work of
Thy fingers--what is man that Thou art mindful of Him?" (Ps. 8:4-5). In harmony
with these sentiments, I shall explain some large, general aspects of the Works of
the Sovereign of the Universe, that they may serve the intelligent individual as a
door to the love of God, even as our sages have remarked in connection with the
theme of the love of God, "Observe the Universe and hence, you will realize Him
who spake and the world was." (M.T., Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah, II, 1-2).
In chapter ten of "The Laws of Repentance," chapter four of Hilkhot Yesodei ha-
Torah, chapter fifty-two in The Guide of the Perplexed, part three and throughout
the Guide, Maimonides expressed his conviction that theoretical knowledge and
opinions make possible the love of God.26
Why are the disciplines of physics and metaphysics unique in enabling a person to
achieve love of God? Why are the practice and the study of the law only necessary
and not sufficient conditions for achieving love of God? In order to comprehend
philosophy's unique contribution in producing love of God, one must compare
Maimonides' understanding of creation with his approach to revelation. Creation,
to Maimonides, reflects the overflow of God's perfection. Olam hesed yebaneh, the
world is an expression of God's love and power. Central to Maimonides'
understanding of God's revelation in nature and of man's relationship to the
universe is the realization that man is not the center of God's creation. The
world does not exist for man; God's creative power and wisdom were not exclusively
focused on the creation of man. Hence, a most important function of metaphysical
reflection is to heal man from feelings of grandiosity. Man realizes, when
reflecting on the cosmos, that he is insignificant in the light of the hierarchy
of beings. Metaphysics and philosophy, then, from a religious perspective, create
humanity. Philosophy heals human egocentricity. Philosophy locates man in a
theocentric universe where he cannot but realize his modest and humbling place in
being.27
Maimonides' treatment of Job in the Guide III, 22-24, is placed after he
established clearly man's place in the hierarchy of being. One can tolerate
suffering if one gains a proper understanding of one's significance in being.
Reorienting one's place in being is Maimonides' explanation of the conclusion of
the book of Job. Job did not receive an answer to the problem of evil; he received
a different perception of being and of himself which enabled him to continue
living despite his suffering:
This is the object of the Book of Job as a whole: I refer to the establishing of
this foundation for the belief and the drawing attention to the inference to be
drawn from natural matters, so that you should not fall into error and seek to
affirm in your imagination that His knowledge is like our knowledge or that His
purpose and His providence and His governance are like our purpose and our
providence and our governance. If man knows this, every misfortune will be borne
lightly by him. (Guide III, 24)
Maimonides was not referring to theodicy, but, rather, to a way of transcending
suffering by gaining another perspective on being. Philosophy's presentation of an
objective world independent of man, where man occupies a most modest position in a
hierarchy of perfections culminating in the awesome, ineffable perfection of God,
transports man from an anthropocentric to a theocentric universe and thereby gives
man the strength to cope with human suffering.
This insight is also present in Maimonides' treatment of the akedah, the binding
of Isaac. Maimonides analyses the story of Abraham only after treating of the
human implications of the study of physics and metaphysics (Job). Abraham, the
founder of belief in the God of history is asked in the command to sacrifice his
only son Isaac (history), to express a relationship to God which, in fact, negates
the significance of history:
As for the story of Abraham at the binding, it contains two great notions that are
fundamental principles of the Law. One of these notions consists in our being
informed of the limit of love for God, may He be exalted, and fear of Him--that
is, up to what limit they must reach. For in this story he was ordered to do
something that bears no comparison either with sacrifice of property or with
sacrifice of life. In truth it is the most extraordinary thing that could happen
in the world, such a thing that one would not imagine that human nature was
capable of it. Here there is a sterile man having an exceeding desire for a son,
possessed of great property and commanding respect, and having the wish that his
progeny should become a religious community. When a son comes to him after his
having lost hope, how great will be his attachment to him and love for him!
However, because of his fear of Him, who should be exalted, and because of his
love to carry out his command, he holds this beloved son as little, gives up all
his hopes regarding him, and hastens to slaughter him after a journey of days.
(Guide III, 24, pp. 500-501)
Abraham's going through the experience of the akedah symbolically demonstrated
that the ultimate goal of Torah lies beyond history. The archetypal act of love of
God is constituted by the ability to abandon history. Maimonides' treatment of
Abraham and of Job reveal his belief in the liberating power of philosophy to
direct man to live in history, after having discovered meaning beyond history.28
In chapters eight through twenty-four of the third part of the Guide, Maimonides
elaborates the practical implications of negative theology. Job and Abraham
dramatically represent the radical implications of divine otherness which is the
central notion of the theory of negative theology.
Maimonides attributed a liberating function to philosophy. For disinterested love
to be possible, man's understanding of himself, the world and the essential
purpose and meaning of life must undergo radical transformations. So long as man
is anchored solely in history and is concerned exclusively with human needs, he
cannot recognize and therefore love a God who does not exist for the sake of man.
Philosophy creates the conditions for love because it enables man to appreciate an
objective reality independent of human needs.
As mentioned above with regard to idolatry, a central biblical motif is God's
otherness and difference from the world. Philosophy, e.g., the analysis of unity,
non-corporeality and negative attributes, offers a more exact and rigorous
understanding of God's otherness. This movement to revealing the implications of
divine otherness is the movement of the one seeking love of God. Love is expressed
in the confirmation of the independent worth of the beloved. It is only philosophy
which gives meaning to man's affirmation of God's independent existence. In
Maimonides' writings, the yearning quality of love finds expression in knowing how
the universe reveals the actions of God. Love becomes passionate when the universe
is perceived from a theocentric perspective. Knowing what God is not and how He is
radically other than and separate from the world provides man with the
intellectual tools for self-transcending relational love.29
While philosophy points to divine perfection and to divine manifestations which
are indifferent to and independent of human needs, the revelation of the law is
substantially different. In the Guide III, 32, Maimonides explains how to
interpret the meaning of many laws in the Torah. Reminiscent of Hegel's notion of
the cunning of reason, Maimonides argues that God utilizes the given conditions of
history to further His purpose. God does not ignore the given context of history.
The revealed law is not indifferent to the limited capacities of people. The law
reflects the patience of the divine teacher who works with the actual materials of
history. Although, logically speaking, God could change the nature of man to
accord with the practices of a perfect law, God, argues Maimonides, chose not to.
God chose to adopt the role of the teacher patiently seeking to overcome the
limitations and shortcomings of the people of Israel.
For example, at the time of the giving of the Torah, animal sacrifices constituted
the accepted form of worship. No one, claims Maimonides, thought it reasonable to
worship a god other than by offering animal sacrifice. God accepted this pattern
of worship, even though this pattern of worship was characteristic of paganism,
and He permitted its use in Jewish worship. Because, Maimonides argues, man cannot
be expected to change suddenly or to completely give up patterns of behaviour to
which he has become accustomed, He restricted animal sacrifices to specific places
and to be administered only by certain people, i.e., priests. Prayer, a higher
form of worship, was permitted by anyone and in all places.
In other words, there is a hierarchy of forms of worship. While legitimizing
sacrifices, the law's intention was that man will eventually transcend this form,
and will adopt a higher form of worship. Similarly verbal prayer is a stage meant
to be superceded by the highest form of worship, i.e., contemplative silence.
Silent prayer reflects man's ability to be moved by God's perfection independent
of His responding to human needs. There are, then, three stages of worship in
history: 1) the stage of eradication of idolatry by limiting animal sacrifices; 2)
worship grounded in God's responsiveness to human needs, i.e., verbal petitional
prayer; and 3) silent adoration of God because he is God.
Revelation of God's wisdom in the law, as distinct from His revelation in nature,
is a response to an imperfect human condition. Study of the law reveals God's
legislative involvement with men. The study of the law reconfirms for historical
man his central importance in the divine scheme. "The Torah spoke in the language
of man." God is perceived in the law from the perspective of human needs.
Maimonides was very comfortable claiming that there are human purposes for the
commandments. In contrast to a mystical approach, to Maimonides, commandments
reflect what is good for man.30 They have no meta-historical significance. The
cosmic significance that mystics attributed to the commandments is alien to
Maimonides' attempt to make the law totally earth bound.31
Besides focusing on divine absolute perfection, philosophy leads to love of God by
healing of the imagination. To Maimonides, imagination is the great enemy of
religious development.32 Human imagination is both the source of idolatry and of
inauthentic love. At the end of the Guide, III, 51, Maimonides proclaims that
individuals whose knowledge of God is based on imagination, and not on knowledge
of objective reality, are outside the palace of the king. Only the philosopher
enters into the palace of the king, i.e., is able to love God, because only the
philosopher has some grasp of the reality of God independent of human imagination:
As for someone who thinks and frequently mentions God, without knowledge,
following a mere imagining or following a belief adopted because of his reliance
on the authority of somebody else, he is to my mind outside the habitation and far
away from it and does not in true reality mention or think about God. For that
thing which is in his imagination and which he mentions in his speech does not
correspond to any being at all and has merely been invented by his imagination, as
we have explained in our discourse concerning the attributes. (Guide III, 51.)
For love to be real, the object of one's love must be recognized in itself.
Imagination creates a narcissistic love, a love of one's own creation and not of
an independent reality. Man is liberated to love only when the passion of love
emerges in response to an objective reality and not to a subjective projection of
what one imagines God to be. One loves another human being only if one can respond
to another as another and not as a projection of one's needs and imagination.
PHILOSOPHY, THE HALAKHAH
AND DISINTERESTED LOVE OF GOD
The central question which will be dealt with now is whether the disinterested
love of God which results from the study of philosophy can be legitimately
identified with the highest goal of the Halakhah. Martyrdom was traditionally
considered to be the purest expression of love of God.33 How can disinterested
love of the absolute become the paradigm of the most valued achievement of this
religious way of life? Is this not simply a hellenization and hence a distortion
of Judaism? In the biblical and rabbinic traditions, one confronts the primacy of
history and law. God, in the Bible, is fundamentally the lord of history. His
autonomy consists in his freedom to break into history miraculously and
spontaneously. Scholem correctly observed that Maimonides neutralized the pathos
of the messianic yearning, for, in principle, messianism is unnecessary in
Maimonides' thought.34 Contemplative love of God is possible, though rare, without
redemption in history. To Maimonides, messianism is merely a shift in political
conditions. Human nature remains the same. There is no rupture or new creation in
history.35
Guttman claims that Maimonides ignored the important difference between
contemplative communion and moral communion.36 Husik says that Maimonides was
deceived in not realizing that the Bible is fundamentally practical and not
theoretical. Were we to accept the implications of the aforementioned views, we
would be compelled to conclude that Maimonides, the great teacher of the law, was
unaware of the fact that his profound religious passion to become a lover of God
was essentially foreign to and a gross distortion of the Jewish tradition.
Scholars have argued that this is the great puzzle of Maimonides. This, however,
is not the only possible orientation to Maimonides. Maimonides' neutralization of
the religious significance of history and of divine miraculous interference in the
fixed structures of reality, and his emphasis on cultivating a passionate love for
a God who draws men in virtue of His perfection, and not in virtue of His ability
to satisfy human needs and requests, may have their roots in various features of
talmudic Judaism. While Judaism's preoccupation with abolishing idolatry justifies
and explains Maimonides' interest in philosophy, this does not imply that the
ethos and the religious orientation of philosophy ought to become dominant for the
Jew. In identifying the disinterested love of God of philosophy with love of God
of the Halakhah, Maimonides was giving expression to certain features of talmudic
Judaism which, we believe, both explain and justify his radical move.
Our use of the terms "certain features of talmudic Judaism" is due to the fact
that the aspects of talmudic thought chosen for discussion do not constitute the
dominant orientation of rabbinic Judaism. As Professor Urbach has shown, there are
many diverse schools of thought in rabbinic Judaism. In this paper, we present a
particular strand that is characteristic of an important aspect of the talmudic
tradition. This strand provides the grounds for the development of a spiritual
orientation which enables one to live with the gap between the biblical world of
divine immediacy and the post-biblical world, which is silent and unresponsive to
man's moral condition. Nature becomes neutralized and, so to speak,
demythologized, and the biblical passion is reinterpreted so that men's
relationship to God is no longer sustained by the visible and public interference
of a moral God in the processes of nature and history.
The following passages in the Talmud exemplify this spirit:
Our Rabbis taught: Philosophers asked the elders in Rome, "If your God has no
desire for idolatry, why does He not abolish it?" They replied, "If it was
something of which the world has no need that it was worshipped, He would abolish
it; but people worship the sun, moon, stars and planets; should He destroy the
Universe on account of fools! The world pursues its natural course, and as for the
fools who act wrongly, they will have to render an account. Another illustration:
Suppose a man stole a measure of wheat and went and sowed it in the ground; it is
right that it should not grow, but the world pursues its natural course and as for
the fools who act wrongly, they will have to render an account. Another
illustration: Suppose a man has intercourse with his neighbor's wife; it is right
that she should not conceive, but the world pursues its natural course and as for
the fools who act wrongly, they will have to render an account." This is similar
to what R. Simeon b. Lakish said: The Holy One, blessed be He, declared, not
enough that the wicked put My coinage to vulgar use, but they trouble Me and
compel Me to set My seal thereon! (T.B., Abodah Zarah, 54B)
To fully appreciate the radical shift in sensibility from biblical thought,
compare this with several biblical passages:
To Adam He said, "Because you did as your wife
said and ate of the tree about which I commanded
you, `You shall not eat of it,'
Cursed be the ground because of you;
By toil shall you eat of it
All the days of your life:
Thorns and thistles shall it sprout for you.
But your food shall be the grasses of the field;
By the sweat of your brow
Shall you get bread to eat,
Until you return to the ground--
For from it you were taken.
For dust you are,
And to dust you shall return."
(Genesis III, 17-19)
Do not defile yourselves in any of those ways,
for it is by such that the nations which I
am casting out before you defiled themselves.
Thus the land became defiled; and I called it
to account for its iniquity, and the land
spewed out its inhabitants. But you must keep
My laws and My rules, and you must not do
any of those abhorrent things, neither the
citizen nor the stranger who resides
among you; for all those abhorrent things
were done by the people who were in the land
before you, and the land became defiled.
So let not the land spew you out for
defiling it, as it spewed out the nation
that came before you.
(Lev. XVIII, 24-28)
If, then, you obey the commandments that
I enjoin upon you this day, loving the
Lord your God and serving Him with all
your heart and soul, I will grant the rain
for your land in season, the early rain
and the late. You shall gather in your
new grain and wine and oil--I will also
provide grass in the fields for your
cattle--and thus you shall eat your fill.
Take care not to be lured away to serve
other gods and bow to them. For the Lord's
anger will flare up against you, and He
will shut up the skies so that there will
be no rain and the ground will not yield
its products; and you will soon perish
from the good land that the Lord is
giving you.
(Deut. II, 1-17)
A key expression in the talmudic passage quoted above, is "did hu shelo titzmah"
(it is right that it should not grow). Stolen wheat or grain ought not grow; a
raped woman ought not become pregnant. Nature ought not respond and give of its
strength and bounty to the consequences of evil. In other words, the expectations
that nature and morality are organically related, and that the lord of history and
the lord of nature are one are legitimate and worthwhile expectations. Yet,
although the talmudic author legitimizes this biblical sensibility, he realizes
that it does not accord with what in fact happens. This is another form of the
generalization, "olam ke-minhago noheg" (the world maintains its natural course).
There is a natural minhag, literally a custom. (Strauss remarks that the term used
is minhag, custom, and not tevah, nature).37 One cannot live expecting nature to
reflect the moral law. One is trained to have an organic sensibility in the sense
of believing that the world should" express moral distinctions, yet, one is taught
to accept the non-realization of this organic relationship. This
demythologization, this learning to live in a universe that is strange and
unresponsive to my deepest moral yearnings is very definitely a characteristic of
talmudic Judaism.
There are other texts which also reveal this sensibility:
Raba said: This latter agrees with R. Jacob,who said: There is no reward for
precepts in this world. For it was taught: R. Jacob said: There is not a single
precept in the Torah whose reward is (stated) at its side which is not dependent
on the resurrection of the dead. (Thus:) in connection with honouring parents it
is written, that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee. In
reference to the dismissal of the nest it is written, that it may be well with
thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days. Now, if one's father said to
him,"Ascend to the loft and bring me young birds," and he ascends to the loft,
dismisses the dam and takes the young, and on his return falls and is killed--
where is this man's happiness and where is this man's prolonging of days? But "in
order that it may be well with thee", means on the day that is wholly good; and
`in order that thy days may be long', on the day that is wholly long.
Yet perhaps there was no such happening?--R. Jacob saw an actual occurrence. Then
perhaps he was meditating upon a transgression?--The Holy One, blessed be He, does
not combine an evil thought with an (evil) act. Yet perhaps he was meditating
idolatry, and it is written, that I may take the house of Israel in their own
heart?--That too was precisely his point: should you think that precepts are
rewarding in this world, why did the (fulfillment of these) precepts not shield
him from being led to (such) meditation?" T.B., Kiddushim, 39B)
The struggle with acknowledging the discrepancy between the biblical promise and
the given reality finds expression in the talmud's asking "Perhaps there was no
such happening?" How do we know that a child who listened to his father and sent
away the mother bird really died? The text then simply says: "Rabbi Jacob saw an
actual occurrence." The text, however, continues to ask, "Perhaps he sinned?"
Perhaps he sinned in his thoughts? How can one ever know if a person is truly
righteous? How can one know that the person who died really didn't deserve his
death? What we notice, then, is an attempt in the text not to give in too easily
to an empirical reality which falsifies religious expectations. Yet, in the end,
one cannot ignore the evidence Rabbi Jacob brings which negates biblically-
inspired expectations. Rabbi Jacob, however, doesn't conclude that there is no
God. Rather than claim there is no reward, he concludes, "sekhar Mitzvah behai
aimah lekah" (there is no reward for precepts in this world). While biblical
anticipation remains, it is transferred to another time. In the present reality,
one must live with the gap between what the bible promises and what one actually
experiences:
In the West (Palestine) they taught it thus: R. Giddal said: (And Ezra praised . .
. the) great (God): i.e., he magnified Him by pronouncing the Ineffable Name. R.
Mattena said: He said: The great, the mighty, and the awful God. The
interpretation of R. Mattena seems to agree with what R. Joshua b. Levi said: For
R. Joshua b. Levi said: "Why were they called men of the Great Synod? Because they
restored the crown of the divine attributes to its ancient completeness." (For)
Moses had come and said: The great God, the mighty, and the awful. Then Jeremiah
came and said: Aliens are destroying His Temple. Where are, then, His awful deeds?
Hence he omitted (the attribute) the `awful'. Daniel came and said: Aliens are
enslaving his sons. Where are His mighty deeds? Hence, he omitted the word
`mighty'. But they came and said: On the contrary! Therein lie His might deeds
that He suppresses His wrath,that He extends long-suffering to the wicked. Therein
lie His awful powers: For but for the fear of Him, how could one (single) nation
persist among the (many) nations! But how could (the earlier) Rabbis abolish
something established by Moses?--R. Eleazar said: Since they knew that the Holy
One, blessed be He, insists on truth, they would not ascribe false (things) to
Him. (T.B., Yoma 69B)
This text also reflects the difference between the historical reality of the
talmudic period, i.e., the destruction of the temple and the exile, and the
reality depicted in the Bible. In the prayer of Moses, God is great, mighty and
awful. This is accepted as a correct description of God. Moses is the highest
authority for halakhic jurisprudence. His authority embraces not only normative
behaviour but also what is to count as correct descriptions of God. The crisis of
religious language begins during the time of Daniel and of Jeremiah. Descriptions
of divine power appear at odds with a reality where the children of Israel are
enslaved by foreign nations. "God is awesome" does not accord with the Temple
being destroyed and pagans fornicating in the holy of holies.
One could have said, "I do not fully understand Moses' prayer because I'm not a
Moses. Moses' language is correct and I shall use it even though my own reality
offers disconfirming evidence. Who am I to Judge?" There were (and are) those who
continued to believe in reward in this world. Perhaps the righteous are "rewarded"
by suffering and the wicked "punished" by prosperity so that in the world to come
each one will fully receive his due, i.e., the righteous only rewards, the wicked
only punishments.38
In the above text, however, the author did not negate his own perception of
reality, but he did not claim that Moses' language was false. The biblical
description as reflected in Moses' prayer is placed in suspension. A new response
to the gap between my reality and the authoritative normative reality is adopted,
i.e., silence. You continue praying but you do not utilize that language which is
disconfirmed by reality. The men of the great assembly widen the range of the
meaning of language, by widening the range of experience relevant for confirming
this language.39 The word "mighty" in the biblical context refers to God's
victorious power in history. Prophets defeat kings, pharoahs submit to the
overwhelming might of God. The reality of the talmudic writers did not confirm a
God who was powerful and victorious and, therefore, they were compelled to
reconsider the meaning of divine power.40 The men of the great assembly interpret
power to mean the compassion and the long-suffering mercy of God. Self-control in
the face of blasphemous provocation constitutes the new meaning of power:
Vespasian sent Titus who said, Where is their God, the rock in whom they trusted?
This was the wicked Titus who blasphemed and insulted Heaven. What did he do? He
took a harlot by the hand and entered the Holy of Holies and spread out a scroll
of the Law and committed a sin on it. He then took a sword and slashed the
curtain. Miraculously blood spurted out, and he thought that he had slain himself,
as it says, Thine adversaries have roared in the midst of thine assembly, they
have set up their ensigns for signs. Abba Hanan said: Who is a mighty one like
unto thee, O Jah? Who is like thee, mighty in self-restraint, that Thou didst hear
the blaspheming and insults of that wicked man and kept silent? (T.B., Gittin,
56b)
In God's self-control, Israel, in exile, finds a way of continuing to use biblical
language. Biblical divine power continues to be present, but in a neutralized
form.
A most important statement in the text, besides the shift in meaning of biblical
language, is the question how did Daniel and Jeremiah have the right to remain
silent and not submit to Moses' authoritative and hence correct description of
God? The short and simple answer was that God loves the truth and therefore they
would not lie. Believing that God insists on truth enabled them to be honest to
their own experience, and not to allow Moses' language to define their altered
reality.
The three examples discussed above reveal the tension in talmudic thought between
the organic mythic consciousness of the Bible and the sober realism of talmudic
Judaism. In talmudic Judaism, one encounters the world of divine responsiveness
and mutuality ("If you will hearken to my command, I will . . . ") not in everyday
reality but in institutionalized memories, e.g., the biblical readings and the
ambience of the Sabbath and the festivals.41 The talmudic Jew inhabits two worlds:
one where history and nature reflect God's power and judgments and another world
where violence and corruption yield wealth and prosperity. Titus enters the holy
of holies with a prostitute and mockingly challenges God to dare strike him down.
In response to this event, the talmud points out that Titus failed to realize that
divine power often takes the form of divine silence.
The talmudic age testified to divine silence and to the tragic dimension of Jewish
approaches to history. A major concern of talmudic Judaism was how to continue as
a spiritual people in a world that does not confirm biblical expectations. The
talmudic sages never give up the biblical organic consciousness. They retained the
belief in God's power to reveal Himself openly in history, but tried to restrict
and to confine it to past memories and to eschatological hopes. The crucial
question facing any analyst of talmudic Judaism is how effective was this attempt
at restricting the biblical mythic consciousness? Was it successfully neutralized?
Did it cease being, in Jamesian terms, a live option? Or did it remain constantly
just below the surface threatening to explode in the face of rabbinic sobriety and
realism? This is a difficult but inescapable problem to resolve. One must examine
currents in Jewish mystical and philosophic thought to discover the various forms
that the interrelationship of biblical and rabbinic thought assumed in Jewish
history.42
One thing, however, is clear. One who internalizes talmudic suppression of
biblical consciousness can build a spiritual life in the absence of responsive
historical events. The everyday spiri-tual existence of the talmudic Jew is
characterized by loyalty to the law. To rabbinic man, God is present in history
because His law is present. Because the Torah and the covenant are eternally
binding, God's presence for man is confirmed. The law, and not events in history,
mediates divine concern. Instead of seeking instances of God breaking into
history, the rabbinic teachers expand and elaborate biblical law to cover
enormously wide ranges of experience. As more of reality falls under the authority
of the law, God's will and influence become more deeply felt.
The receiving of the Torah was not perceived as an event of the historical past,
but as an ever-present challenge. "When you study My words of Torah, they are not
to seem antiquated to you, but as fresh as though the Torah were given this day"
(Psikta d'Rab Kahana, piska 12, sec. 12). The written law was not perceived as a
closed system of law. Elaboration and expansion of the Torah made the revelation
at Sinai a contemporaneous event for students of Torah.43 The passion of the
encounter with the living God of the Bible is retained but is expressed in
uncovering new layers of meaning in Torah.
Though he is silent regarding the tragic dimension of history, talmudic man is
extremely articulate and confident about his ability to understand the range of
meanings contained in the revelation of the law:
Rab Judah said in the name of Rab, When Moses ascended on high he found the Holy
One, blessed be He, engaged in affixing coronets to the letters. Said Moses, "Lord
of the Universe, Who stays Thy hand?" He answered, "There will arise a man, at the
end of many generations, Akiba b. Joseph by name, who will expound upon each
Tittle heaps and heaps of laws". "Lord of the Universe," said Moses; "permit me to
see him." He replied, "Turn thee round". Moses went and sat down behind eight rows
(and listened to the dis-courses upon the law). Not being able to follow their
arguments he was ill at ease, but when they came to a certain subject and the
disciples said to the master "Whence do you know it?" and the latter replied "It
is a law given unto Moses at Sinai" he was comforted. Thereupon he returned to the
Holy One, blessed be He, and said, "Lord of the Universe, Thou hast such a man and
Thou givest the Torah by me!" He replied, "Be silent, for such is My decree."
(T.B., Menabot 29b)
The student of Moses, Akiba, uncovers dimensions in Moses' Torah which Moses
himself does not understand. Yet it is Moses' Torah that is the basis of Akiba's
legal inferences. Akiba is dignified and articulate; he has mastered the
complexities of divine speech coming out of the Torah. Nevertheless, though
articulate in the realm of the law, halakhic man lapses into utter silence when
trying to understand the Lord of history:
Then said Moses, "Lord of the Universe, Thou hast shown me his Torah, show me his
reward." "Turn thee round", said He; and Moses turned, round and saw them weighing
out his flesh at the market-stalls. "Lord of the Universe," cried Moses, "such
Torah, and such a reward!" He replied, "Be silent, for such is My decree."
To the questions, "Why choose Moses and not Akiba to stand at Sinai?" and "Why
does Akiba, the illustrious genius of Halakhah, end his life in so horrifying and
shocking a manner?" the answer given is, "Be silent, for such is My decree."
Rabbinic halakhic man, however, feels dignified and confident in the academy of
learning:
We learnt elsewhere: If he cut it into separate tiles, placing sand between each
tile: R. Elisezer declared it clean, and the Sages declared it unclean; and this
was the oven of `Aknai. Why (the oven of) `Aknai?--Said Rab Judah in Samuel's
name: (it means) that they encompass it with arguments as a snake, and proved it
unclean. It has been taught: On that day R. Eliezer brought forward every
imaginable argument, but they did not accept them. Said he to them: "If the
halachah agrees with me, let this carob-tree prove it!" Thereupon the carob-tree
was torn a hundred cubits out of its place--others affirm, four hundred cubits.
"No proof can be brought from a carob-tree," they retorted. Again he said to them:
"If the halachah agrees with me, let the stream of water prove it!" Whereupon the
stream of water flowed backwards. "No proof can be brought from a stream of
water," they rejoined. Again he urged: "If the halachah agrees with me, let the
walls of the schoolhouse prove it," whereupon the walls inclined to fall. But R.
Joshua rebuked them, saying: "When scholars are engaged in a halachic dispute,
what have ye to interfere?" Hence they did not fall, in honour of R. Eliezer; and
they are still standing thus inclined. Again he said to them: "If the halachah
agrees with me, let it be proved from Heaven!" Whereupon a Heavenly Voice cried
out: "Why do ye dispute with R. Eliezer, seeing that in all matters the halachah
agrees with him!" But R. Joshua arose and exclaimed: "It is not in heaven." What
did he mean by this?--Said R. Jeremiah: That the Torah had already been given at
Mount Sinai; we pay no attention to a Heavenly Voice, because Thou hast long since
written in the Torah at Mount Sinai, after the majority must one incline.
R. Nathan met Elijah and asked him: What did the Holy One, Blessed be He, do in
that hour?--He laughed (with joy), he replied saying, "My sons have defeated Me.
My sons have defeated Me." (T.B., Baba Mezia 59 A.B.)
Prophecy may not decide a problem of Jewish law. "Heaven" may not interfere in the
development of Torah. In order to sustain the emergence of the halakhic process
talmudic man proclaims the priority of human reason before the intrusions of
revelation in his use of the biblical phrase "(Torah) is not in heaven." (Deut.
XXX, 12) God gave the Torah to man, and man, with the use of reasoning and
argumentation, is autonomous in guiding its development.
In a text reminiscent of Spinoza's comparison of the prophet with the philosopher,
the midrash compares the scribe, i.e., the scholar of Torah, with the prophets:
They (the scribes and prophets) are like two agents whom a king sent to a
province. With regard to one he wrote: If he shows you my signature and seal,
trust him, but otherwise do not trust him. With regard to the other he wrote: Even
if he does not show you my signature and seal, trust him. So of the words of
prophecy it is written, If there arise in the midst of thee a prophet . . . and he
gives thee a sign (Deut. XIII, 2), but of the words of the Scribes it is written,
According to the law which they shall teach thee (Deut. XVII, 11). (Midrash
Rabbah, The Song of Songs, I, 2)
In the talmudic development of the law, one does not need prophecy or the
intervention of God to confirm the legitimacy of a legal argument. In supplanting
the prophet as leader of the community, the scholar presents the credentials of
intellectual competence to reason and argues persuasively about the law.44
These features of rabbinic Judaism, i.e., the preeminence of human legal reasoning
above prophecy, the neutralization of the mythic-organic passion of the Bible, and
the attempt at curbing the expectation of divine confirmation in history, create
the conditions for the emergence of a spiritual outlook in which one's
relationship to God is not spiritually nurtured by the miraculous presence of God
in History. The God of the Halakhah is similar, mutatis mutandis, to the perfect
God of Aristotle. For the Halakhah, God is perfect and his wisdom is reflected in
the structure of the law; for Aristotle God is perfect, and His wisdom is
reflected in the structures of reality. In the former case, human reason is
adequate to uncover divine wisdom in the Torah, in the latter case, human wisdom
can understand God's wisdom in nature. One is drawn to God through the development
of His Torah without the aid of revelation or other non-rational intrusions in
history. The passion of the talmid hakham (the talmudic scholar), like the passion
of the philosopher, involves a movement from man to God, i.e., the passion of
eros. Aristotle's God, who attracts man in virtue of his perfection, can be loved
by rabbinic Jews insofar as eros and the neutralization of dramatic historical
events have become part of their religious sensibilities. Yehuda Halevy clearly
understood the profound difference between a tradition grounded in revelation and
one grounded in reason.45 The battle between philosophy and revealed religion was
not only a question of competing truths; it involved, as well, questions of human
adequacy and the legitimacy of human reasoning. Eros and agape characterize the
poles of the profound conflict between a tradition grounded in revelation and one
nurtured by human initiative and creativity. The talmudic tradition that we have
isolated is a tradition which neutralized the religious need for grace, for
miracles and for the idea of a God who breaks into history. This particular
tradition may have influenced Maimonides to assimilate the Greek metaphysical
tradition into rabbinic Judaism.46
Maimonides did not regard history as being the principal location of the
relationship of man and God. As Urbach has shown, Maimonides went very far in
banishing the prophet from having any relationship to the development of the
law.47 Maimonides was personally averse to magnifying the place of miracles in the
tradition.48 He did not believe that history will ever offer a permanent solution
to the human condition.49 The law will be present and needed in (his conception
of) the messianic world. Human freedom and susceptibility to sin are unchanging
features of life. "Olam ke-minhago noheg" (the world maintains its natural course)
is the quintessence of Maimonides' theory of history. He rejects the eschatology
of a new creation and only insists on belief in creation. Eternity a parte ante is
rejected in order to introduce a theology of will, which, in turn, makes possible
the giving of the Torah.50 Maimonides did not require a theology of history where
history would end supernaturally or otherwise. He, therefore, accepted eternity a
parte post and rejected eternity a parte ante:
I have already made it clear to you that the belief in the production of the world
is necessarily the foundation of the entire law. However, the belief in its
passing-away after it has come into being and been generated is not, in our
opinion, in any respect, a foundation of the Law and none of our beliefs would be
hurt through the belief in its permanent duration. (Guide II, 27)
Maimonides' philosophical orientation did not seek to restore God's miraculous
interference in history in the messianic world. He required the notion of God's
will to justify the authority of Halakhah. Yet, after introducing a theology of
will and hence making sense of the revelation of the Torah, Maimonides undermines
the prophetic, eschatological passion by accepting eternity a parte post.
Maimonides, like his talmudic predecessors, sought to cultivate a passion for God
grounded in disinterested love of God.
No doubt the above is not the only way to make sense of the rabbinic tradition.
Many great masters of the mystic tradition were talmudic scholars. The movement
from the talmudic tradition to the Greek metaphysical tradition is certainly not a
logically inevitable one. Yet, one ought to be very cautious when analyzing the
notion of the absolute in the Jewish tradition. The problematic and interesting
nature of this theme results from the fact that the Jewish tradition considered
the biblical and the rabbinic traditions to be one tradition. The written Torah
(Bible) and the oral Torah (Mishnah, Talmud, etc.) are one. Once the Jewish spirit
united both traditions into one single revelation, it became possible and
intelligible to interpret Ehyeh asher Ehyeh as ~I am that I am"--I am the
necessary being--and not as "I will be with you in your suffering." Because
Maimonides was the great master of talmud, he was bold enough to introduce his
legal codification, the Mishneh Torah, with four chapters dealing with the primacy
of the metaphysical tradition and to claim, in Hilkhot Talmud Torah, that the
discipline of "talmud" included both the study of law and of philosophy.51
Surprising and unpredictable spiritual orientations and sensibilities emerge in a
tradition where one of its respected teachers, R. Johanan, can say:
God made a covenant with Israel only for the sake of that which was transmitted
orally, as it says, "For by the mouth of these words I have made a covenant with
thee and with Israel."52 (T.B., Gittin, 60B)
Hebrew University and
Shalom Hartman Institute
Jerusalem
NOTES
Quotations from The Guide of the Perplexed are from the Shlomo Pines translation
(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1963.
Quotations from the Mishneh Torah are from the Hyamson translation (Jerusalem,
1965).
Quotations from the Bible are from The Torah: The Five Books of Moses
(Philadelphia: J.P.S., 1962).
Quotations from the Talmud are from The Soncino Talmud.
1. See Y. Leibowitz, Yahadut Am Yehudi U'medinat Yisrael (Tel Aviv: Schocken,
1975), p. 15.
2. Gershom G. Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, trans. by R. Manheim
(New York: Schocken, 1965), pp. 94-100, 122-130.
3. Shlomo Pines, "The Philosophic Source of The Guide of the Perplexed," in The
Guide of the Perplexed (Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1963), pp.
CXXXIII-CXXXIV.
4. Emphraim E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, translated by I.
Abrahams (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1975), pp. 17, 18, 36, 65, 284-5. See
Julius Guttman, Philosophies of Judaism, trans. by David Silverman (New York:
Anchor, 1966), pp. 30-43.
5. B. Spinoza, A Theological-Political Treatise, trans. by R.H.M. Elwes (New York:
Dover, 1951), chaps. 1, 2, 7 (pp. 115-119). See S. Pines, "Spinoza's Tractatus
Theologico-Politicus, Maimonides, and KanNt," Scripta Hierosolymitana, xx (1968),
pp. 3-54; Leo StrausNs, Spinoza's Critique of Religion, trans. by Elsa M. Sinclair
(New York: Schocken, 1965), chap. 6; D. HartmaNn, Maimonides: Torah and
Philosophic Quest (Philadelphia: J.P.S., 1976), p. 237, n. 6.
6. Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free
Press, 1952), pp. 78-94; D. Hartman, Maimonides, introduction and chap. V.
7. Guide II, 40.
8. Ibid. III, 27, Mishneh Torah, "Laws of Repentance," chap. IX.
9. See comments of the Kesef Mishneh to Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah, IV, l3; Isadore
Twersky, "Some Non-Halakhic Aspects of the Mishneh Torah" in Jewish Medieval and
Renaissance Studies, ed. A. Altmann (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1967).
10. See D. Hartman, Maimonides, pp. 44-45; J. Guttman, op. cit., p. 177; G.
Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality
(New York: Schocken, 1971), p. 25; T.B., Kiddushin 40b, Baba Kama 17A.
11. See the passionate yearning for Olam Haba (an ahistorical relationship to God)
in Maimonides' introduction to Helek, M.T., "Laws of Repentance," VIII, and in
Guide III, 51.
12. See Rashi's commentary to Genesis I, 1 and Midrash Tanhuma, Berashit II. See
Guide III, 13-14; Leo Strauss, "Jerusalem and Athens," The City College Papers, VI
(New York: 1967), pp. 8-10, 20, for an analysis of the differences between the
place of man in the hierarchy of being in Greek and in Biblical thought.
13. "Ehyeh-Asher Ehyeh. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses: Go and say to
Israel: I was with you in this servitude, and I shall be with you in the servitude
of (other) kingdoms." (T.B., Berakhot 9b). See Midrash Raba, Exodus III, 6.
14. Martin Buber, Israel and the World: Essays in a Time of Crises (New York:
Schocken, 1948), p. 23; see M. Buber, Moses: The Revelation and the Convenant (New
York: Harper and Brothers, 1958), pp. 39-55; Kingship of God, trans. R. Scheimann
(New York: Harper and Row, 1967), pp. 103-106; Emil L. Fackenheim, God's Presence
in History (New York: N.Y.U., 1970), pp. 3-34, for a serious attempt at making
sense of God's presence in history in the modern world.
15. See Strauss, "Jerusalem and Athens," p. 17. For earlier interpretations of
Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh as making a metaphysical and not a historical statement, see
H.A. Wolfson, Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity
and Islam (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1929), vol. 1, pp. 19, 210: C.H.
Dodd, The Bible and the Greeks (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1964), p. 4. For
critical textural analysis, see B.S. Childs, The Book of Exodus: A Critical
Theological Commentary (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1974), pp. 60-77 and
Moshe Greenberg, Understanding Exodus (New York: Behrman House, 1969), pp. 78-84.
16. "`I am the Lord thy God': (Ex. 20:2), Why were the Ten Commandments not said
at the beginning of the Torah? They give a parable. To what may this be compared?
To the following: A king who entered a province said to the people: May I be your
king? But the people said to him: Have you done anything good for us that you
should rule over us? What did he do then? He built the city wall for them, he
brought in the water supply for them, and he fought their battles. Then when he
said to them: May I be your king? They said to Him: Yes, yes. Likewise, God. He
brought the Israelites out of Egypt, divided the sea for them, sent down the manna
for them, brought up the well for them, brought the quails for them. He fought for
them the battle with Amalek. Then He said to them: I am to be your king. And they
said to Him: Yes, yes" (Mekhilta). Trans. J.Z. Lauterbach (Philadelphia: J.P.S.,
1933), tractate Bahodesh, V). See Yehuda Halevi, Kuzari, I, 11, 25, 83-89; IV, 3.
17. Guide I, 64, p. 157; II, 5, p. 260; III, 32, p. 526, 51, p. 623. See F.
Heiler, Prayer: A Study in the History and Psychology of Religion, trans. S.
McComb (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1932), chap. IV.
18. M.T., Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah, IX, 3, 5.
19. Isodore Twersky, Rabad of Posquieres (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press,
1962), pp. 282-6.
20. See Leo Strauss, "How to Begin to Study the Guide of the Perplexed," in The
Guide of the Perplexed, op. cit., pp. 20-24. Wolfson claims that declaring openly,
as opposed to simply accepting "in one's heart," belief in divine corporeality
constitutes idolatry. See his interesting discussion in "Maimonides on the Unity
and Incorporeality of God," JQR, 56 (1965), pp. 112-36.
21. "Hilkhot Abodah Zarah" deals with practices that were prohibited in order to
protect the community from pagan and idolatrous influences. The laws of idolatry,
therefore, begin with an account of how mistaken forms of worship were responsible
for the growth of idolatry and the disappearance of monotheism. In chap. I of
"Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah," Maimonides deals with idolatry based upon a false
understanding of the notion of the unity of God.
22. Guide, I, 55.
23. H. Wolfson, "Maimonides on the Unity and Incorporeality of God," and Philo,
II, pp. 94-101.
24. See D. Hartman, Maimonides, p. 294, n. 92.
25. See Guttman, op. cit., p. 159.
26. Guide I, 39; III, 28; see D. Hartman, Maimonides, p. 265, n. 6l. See Pines'
introduction to The Guide of the Perplexed, pp. xcv-xcviii, cxi, cxv; "Spinoza's
tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Maimonides and Kant," p. 26, and his forward to D.
Hartman, Maimonides, for the changes in Pines' approach to Maimonides'
understanding of knowledge of God. Pines' present position is that Maimonides
seriously doubted the possibility of metaphysical knowledge of God.
27. See M.T., Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah, IV, 12.
28. The description of Abraham of the akedah should be balanced by other texts
describing his efforts to establish an historical community dedicated to the
belief in the unity of God: Book of the Commandments, positive commandment III:
M.T., Laws of Idolatry, I; and Guide III, 51, p. 624.
29. See Guide, III, 51, pp. 620-623; I, 59, p. 139.
30. See Guide, III, 26, 28, 31.
31. See G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1941),
pp. 25-37; On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (New York: Schocken, 1965), pp. 95,
127, 130.
32. Guide, I, 52; II, 12.
33. Mishnah Berakhot IX, 5. See Urbach, op. cit., chap. XIV, and p. 443.
34. "Toward an Understanding of the Messianic Idea" in The Messianic Idea in
Judaism, p. 30.
35. M.T., The Book of Judges, "Kings and Wars," chaps. XI, XII.
36. Guttman, op. cit., pp. 177-8. See I. Husik, A History of Medieval Jewish
Philosophy (New York: Meridian and Philadelphia: J.P.S., 1958), p. 300.
37. "Notes on Maimonides' Book of Knowledge," in Studies in Mysticism and Religion
Presented to Gershom G. Scholem (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1967), p. 273 and
Natural Right and History (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1965),
pp. 81-3. See Maimonides' Eight Chapters, VIII; Notes by Prof. Louis Ginzberg to
I. Efros, Philosophical Terms in the Moreh Nebukim (New York: Columbia Univ.
Press, 1924), pp. 134-5.
38. T.B., Kiddushin 39b. See Urback, op. cit p. 268-271; 436-444.
39. See different versions of this midrash in T.J., Megillah, III, 7. In the
Babylonian version, the prophets, Daniel and Jeremiah, initiate the problem. The
men of the great assembly offer a solution by reinterpreting the categories. In
the Jerusalem version, the prophets themselves indicate the direction of the
solution.
40. See Mekhilta VIII, for examples of the wide range of uses of notions of divine
power. Rather than offering a strict definition of divine power, the Mekhilta
collects a variety of correct uses of the concept.
41. See G. Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, pp. 95, 120-1, 132-3, 130-
135.
42. See G. Scholem, "Toward an Understanding of the Messianic Idea," especially,
pp. 17-24.
43. See Gerson D. Cohen, "The Talmudic Age," in Great Ages and Ideas of the Jewish
People, edited by Leo W. Schwarz (New York: Random House, 1956), pp. 143-212.
44. See D. Hartman, Maimonides, pp. 102-126.
45. Kuzari, I, 1-13, 98, 99.
46. See Urbach, op. cit., pp. 303-4, for a discussion of the relationship of grace
(hesed) and law. Our exposition supports Urbach's interpretation of the bold
statement in T.B., Pesahim 118a: "To what do these twenty-six (verses of) "Give
thanks" correspond? To the twenty-six generations that the Holy One, blessed be
He, created in His world, and did not give them the Torah, but sustained them by
His grace." "There was need of grace," comments Urbach, "so long as the Torah had
not been given." For a different approach which emphasizes the need for grace in
Maimonides' quest for knowledge of God, see Simon Rawidowicz, Studies in Jewish
Thought, edited by Nahum N. Glatzer, chapter 7, Philadelphia, J.P.S. 1974.
47. E. Urbach, "Halakhah u-Nevuah," Tarbiz, 18 (1946), pp. 1-27. See D. Hartman,
Maimonides, pp. 116-122. In contrast to Maimonides' approach, see Yehudah Halevi
III, 41. This difference is not unrelated to differences of their overall
philosophic world views.
48. See D. Hartman, Maimonides, IV. See Maimonides' "Treatise on Resurrection" and
"Eight Chapters," chap. VIII; D. Hartman, Maimonides, chap. IV.
49. M.T., "Laws of Repentance," IX, and "Kings and Wars," XII.
50. Guide, II, 25.
51. M.T., Hilkhot Talmud Torah, I, 11-12. See I. Twersky, "Some Non-Halaklic
Aspects of the Mishneh Torah," pp. 111-118.
52. Urbach, The Sages, chap. XII.
COMMENT
On David Hartman and Elliott Yagod,
"God, Philosophy and Halakhah
in Maimonides' Approach to Judaism"
ISAAC FRANCK
Dr. Hartman devotes a very substantial part of his paper to an exposition of the
dialectical tension in the millennial mainstream of Jewish theological and
metaphysical thought, between the two ideas of God: on the one hand the Biblical -
Halakhic - liturgical - psychosocial - anthropocentric - emotive - personal -
mitzvah oriented idea of the God of human history and of the history of Israel;
and on the other hand the contemplative - speculative - conceptual - theoretical -
analytico-logico-philosophical - abstract idea of a "wholly other," distant,
imperturbable God, Whom one loves disinterestedly, with a metaphysical and
intellectual love akin to Spinoza's amor dei intellectualis. Where I would be
inclined to question Dr. Hartman is:
First, on his philosophical claim that this dialectical tension can be resolved
and that a disjunction between these two God-ideas can be avoided.
Second, on his historical claim that a critical analysis of the post-Biblical
Rabbinic, mitzvah-oriented tradition shows this tradition to have successfully
accommodated within itself the idea of God as the "wholly other"--the purely
intellectual, non-anthropocentric idea of the God of the philosophers--and thus to
have reduced the tension and eliminated the disjunction between the two.
Third, his claim that Moses Maimonides in particular believed that he had
succeeded in his own writings, and that he had in fact succeeded in resolving that
tension completely and in having incorporated the philosophical idea of a non-
anthropocentric God into his philosophy of Judaism, for the mainstream of the
tradition.
The fact of course is that the tension between these two God-ideas has persevered
throughout the centuries, and is very much a dynamic focus in the thought and
writings of such 20th century philosophers of Judaism as Franz Rosenzweig, Martin
Buber, Abraham J. Heschel, Mordecai M. Kaplan, Emil Fackenheim, Louis Jacobs, and
in Israel, Yeshayahu Leibovitz and others. But perhaps the most cogent evidence of
the continuing tension is conspicuously discernible (l) in the spirited and ever
self-renewing controversies around the philosophical views of Maimonides that have
punctuated without abatement the history of Jewish thought from the l3th century
to our own day; and (2) in Maimonides' own assessments of his philosophical idea
of God. It was not only Isaac Husik1 and Julius Guttman,2 preeminent historians of
medieval Jewish thought, who saw the disjunction between Maimonides the
philosopher in The Guide of the Perplexed, and Maimonides the Halakhist in his
Code (the Mishneh Torah) and his other works in Halakhic Judaism. Maimonides'
contemporaries and those commentators who wrote about his work during the two
centuries immediately following him--men like Shem Tov Falaquera,3 Kaspi,4
Narboni,5 Shem Tov,6 Anatoli,7 Ephodi,8 and others--had many ambivalences and
evidenced many dialectical tensions about the Maimonidean doctrine of God. They
perceived in the idea of a remote, wholly other God--who is totally unaffected by
human feelings and conduct, who does not respond with anger or joy to human
transgression or worship, and whom the philosopher truly worships only through
detached contemplation--a threat to the received idea of the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, the Jewish people's traditional God of history, Giver of the
Commandments, and Dispenser of reward and punishment, and to civil and political
tranquility. One of these very early commentators, J. Kaspi, wrote: "If the people
were to find out about this doctrine, they would not be able to tolerate this
truth, and would grow wild and uncontrollable in their conduct."9 It is thus not
to be wondered that in some Jewish communities the study of The Guide of the
Perplexed was banned, and in many of the Yeshivot, the Talmudic Academies in
Eastern Europe, the study of The Guide was forbidden.
As for Maimonides himself, it seems clear to me--and in this I follow the
interpretation of the late very great scholar, Leo Strauss,10 and also of a short
and neglected work, in Hebrew, by an Israeli scholar, Yaacov Becker11--that
Maimonides had in mind two distinct, though over lapping, audiences for the Code
(i.e., the Mishneh Torah) and for The Guide, respectively. He wrote the Mishneh
Torah principally for the masses and teachers of the Jewish community with the
objective of strengthening, elevating, deepening, enriching their commitment to
Torah Judaism, their faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their
dedication to a life of inspired ethical rectitude and nobility, and to a society
of justice and mercy. For that audience, the fulfillment of the commandments and a
sense of reciprocal personal relationship and involvement with the God who was the
source of these commandments were the methodologies for the pursuit of these
goals.
The Guide was written for a select audience of religiously committed Jews who had
been exposed to philosophical and scientific ideas, analyses and speculations.
They were struggling with doubts and perplexities which science and philosophy
raised in their minds about aspects of their faith, and were in search of a cogent
philosophical frame of reference for their Judaism. In The Guide Maimonides hoped
to provide answers to those troubled by these doubts and perplexities, erect for
them a firm philosophical foundation for Judaism, and thus strengthen their
commitment to it. He hoped that there could be a steady and even accelerated
increase in the overlap of the two groups, facilitated in part by exposing the
small number of the philosophically-minded intellectual elite to a searching
analysis of "the reasons for the commandments" - ta'amei hamitzvet - in relation
to the Maimonidean philosophical God-idea.
Contained in The Guide, at times explicitly pointed to and at other times hinted
by indirection, was what Maimonides preferred to have remain a secret doctrine,
not to be revealed to the community, a doctrine of a distant, totally different,
imperturbable God, true worship of Whom takes the form of intellectual love and
contemplation. Maimonides distinguishes in several places in The Guide between
"true belief" and "necessary belief," "Emunah Amitit" and "Emunah Hekhrahit." True
belief is the philosopher's belief in the philosophers' God, a God Who does not
need customary worship, Who is totally unaffected by whether or not the Halakhah
or the Commandments are fulfilled, Who does not get angry and does not rejoice
(these are only anthropomorphic metaphors). On the other hand, belief in the God
of traditional Halakhah, the God of the Commandments, Maimonides calls necessary
belief, necessary for the people, for the maintenance of social tranquility, for a
civilized social order, and for humane conduct toward each other on the part of
humans. The careful reader of The Guide will note how often Maimonides refers to
the "Ormah elohit," i.e., "God's shrewdness" in having ordained the ritual laws
and observances, not because God has any need for them, but as a "ruse" (Shlomo
Pines' translation), a kind of trick in order to reduce cruelty and injustice and
achieve just and humane relationships among humans. For example, the cult of
animal sacrifices was ordained in order to wean away the people of Israel from
human sacrifices, a barbaric cult that was widespread among the pagan idol
worshippers who surrounded Israel at that time.12 Other such "Divine Ruses" are
referred to in The Guide.
The obvious question that confronts us is, why should this Maimonidean, detached,
wholly other, imperturbable God be sufficiently perturbed to have any concern for
the justice and tranquility of the social order among humans, or for the
fulfillment of Commandments generally? And why should the philosopher, who
understands the true belief and the passion for the intellectual contemplation and
love of God, be concerned with fulfilling the Commandments? In the text of The
Guide, using an example, the question takes this form: "For God, and for the
philosopher, what difference does it make whether the animal to be eaten is
slaughtered by the prescribed, ritual, humane method, or whether its meat is
simply cut from the flank of the living animal13--(again a widespread practice
among the pagans of the time)?" Permit me to defer the answer to this question
while I turn to a very brief consideration of the second theme in this commentary.
In characterizing the Philosophical God-Idea of Maimonides, Dr. Hartman quite
properly and vigorously stressed the AntiIdolatry motif constantly reiterated
throughout Jewish teaching about God, and especially the forceful and aggressive
Anti-Idolatry of Maimonides. One surpassingly important element in the
Philosophical God-Idea developed at length in Maimonides' Guide is the utter
unknowability of God by the human mind.14 God's essence is completely unknown to
man; only His existence is known. No affirmative attributes can be attributed to
God. God is completely, utterly unknown and unknowable. "Our knowledge of God,"
says Maimonides, "consists in our knowledge that we are unable to comprehend
Him."15 The Guide's theology is a radical Negative Theology. What is known to man
is necessarily known to him in terms of human knowledge, as he knows the world of
his existence. Now, God can not be known to man because essential knowledge of God
is available only to God himself. According to Maimonides, for man to try to know
God is as if man tried to be God.16 This doctrine is summarized in a sort of
precept: "Ilu y'dativ, he-yitiv," "If I knew Him, I would be He," a precept found
in Joseph Albo's "Ikkarim."17
The doctrine of the utter unknowability of God is ancient in Jewish Philosophy. It
was well developed by Philo,18 reiterated by Saadia19 in the l0th century, and by
Maimonides, Albo, and later philosophers of Judaism. But Maimonides espoused a
radical negative theology. He formulated the vigorous warning that ". . . he who
affirms that God has positive attributes . . . has abandoned his belief in the
existence of God without being aware of it."20 No wonder then that Maimonides
admonished the reader of The Guide that the doctrine of God's unknowability
"Should not be divulged (or revealed) to the masses,"21 and that Leo Strauss
suggested that this teaching ". . . contradicts the teaching of the law . . . and
is even subversive."22
But this doctrine, though apparently heterodox, is of even more ancient vintage.
The prophet Isaiah is quoted by Maimonides in the course of his exposition of the
unknowability of God, and in support of this doctrine. Isaiah declared, in the
name of God: "Lo mahshvotai mahshvoteikhem, v'lo darkeikhem d'rakhai . . . ." "My
thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways . . . ."23 However,
my own interpretation is, though I believe it to be hinted by Maimonides, that
this doctrine of God's unknowability dates back even further, to Moses. When Moses
inquired of God, "Who shall I say sent me?" the reply Moses heard was the
incomprehensible and awesome words, "Ehyeh asher ehyeh . . . ,"24 generally
translated as "I am who I am,' or "I will be who I will be," the words confronted
him with a double incomprehensibility. First, the meaning of the words, simply as
words, was incomprehensible. Second, the Being to Whom the words ostensibly
referred was incomprehensible. Moses later pursued the enigma by asking God to
show him His (God's) nature. In the reply that Moses received to this later
question are provided implicitly the unravelling and separation from each other of
the two earlier enigmas. For in hearing God's reply, "Ki lo yir'ani ha'adam vahai
. . . ," ". . . for man cannot see me and live . . . ,"25 Moses learned that the
Entity or Being to which "Ehyeh" refers is indeed, and must forever remain,
incomprehensible. But he also learned that the linguistic problem is resolved, and
that the meaning of the words "ehyeh asher ehyeh" perhaps ceases to be
impenetrable. Though God gives it as the answer to the question about His
identity, the locution "ehyeh" is not substantival, it is not the equivalent of a
noun; it is not a name of anything; least of all is it a proper name, like
Socrates. The locution is an admonition, a directive, which says "Do not inquire
into what I am, because I am incomprehensible. I am what I am, ask no further. Man
cannot know me, I am wholly different."
This doctrine of God's utter unknowability is the ultimate anti-idolatry. It is
possible for us to know only what God is not, and what is not God. "Only God is
God."26 Anything known or knowable is not God. God is utterly different and
unique. To worship anything known or knowable is idolatry. To give one's ultimate
and absolute allegiance or loyalty to anything but God, to any known or knowable
thing, to any person, or aggregate of persons, or to any human institution, is
idolatry. It is only that wholly other, utterly unknowable God of Philosophy that
is worthy of contemplation and of pure, disinterested, intellectual love.
Now, you may ask, isn't this radical Negative Theology barren of consequences,
morally vacuous, tantamount to a vague mysticism, and destructive of any Rational
Theology? I think not. It is not Mysticism, because it does not itself claim to
have, and radically rejects all claims to the possession of, any access to some
intuitive mystical insight into the essential nature of God. The fact that God is
unknown is a mystery, but this does not make the doctrine of God's unknowability a
doctrine of Mysticism. The doctrine is not destructive of Rational Theology,
because it is not a Theology of silence, akin to the Wittgensteinian precept:
"Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent." On the contrary, this
Theology imposes on the theologian who espouses it the duty to do a lot of
talking, by way of "unsaying,"27 morning, noon, and night, all the many things
that humans have said and will continue to be saying in their talk about God, even
when they claim that God is unknowable. It is not an ethically vacuous doctrine.
It does have ethical consequences.
Which leads me to my third and final theme, namely the answer to the question I
mentioned earlier, as to why the Imperturbable God, and the philosopher who
contemplates and disinterestedly loves Him, should be at all concerned about the
traditional commandments. Here I complete the circle, and come around to an
agreement with one aspect of Professor Hartman's thesis, though I arrive at it
from another direction. It is perhaps paradoxical, but in Judaism even the non-
anthropocentric, philosophical, idea of an utterly different God converges toward
the Halakhic, socio-ethical, Commandment-oriented traditional mandates for social
existence.
l) For Maimonides, the highest, most noble pursuit of the philosophical Jew is
indeed the contemplative love of God. However, a necessary condition, that may
make possible this kind of contemplative life for an increasing number of
philosophically minded persons, is a Torah-society. Its norms and adherence to
Commandments will assure the tranquil, just, and civilized order that maintains
the conditions for a philosophical life.
2) If only the unknowable God of Radical Negative Theology is worthy of worship--
of the highest, ultimate, absolute loyalty and allegiance--this has consequences
for social ethics, for norms and prescriptions by which to govern interhuman
relationships. In all human societies there is an unavoidable, inescapable need
for the exercise of authority, for superordinate and subordinate relationships and
positions of humans in the social order. A traffic light system is an exercise of
the authority, and a police system enforces this authority. What are the limits of
authority of humans and human institutions in a society?
Therefore, in the perspective of Radical Negative Theology, what are the limits of
the authority of humans and human institutions when they perform necessary
superordinate roles in relation to other human beings? It seems to me immediately
and most obviously entailed by this doctrine that no human being(s), no human
institution, no human law, may demand or expect or coerce the supreme, ultimate,
and total allegiance, loyalty, or obedience on the part of any other human being.
No human being(s) or institutions may "play God" toward, or "Lord it over" any
other human being. No human(s) may exercise any absolute authority over any other
person. The exercise of such absolute authority over other humans is self-
idolization; it is the "absolutization of the relative;" and it also coerces the
victim who accepts such absolute authority to in fact practice idolatry: ". . .
for unto Me are the children of Israel servants, not servants to servants."28
Thus, the otherness and unknowability of God in the Maimonidean, philosophical
God-idea, the true God-idea which Maimonides wished to keep secret from the
masses, does entail a system of social ethics. But the masses were not prepared to
understand and accept the true beliefs about God and live by them. Indeed, these
true beliefs would be likely to lead the masses to violent and disorderly conduct.
They need the necessary beliefs, e.g., that God is a dispenser of reward and
punishment, not because they are true, but rather as a means to an end, in order
to maintain a civilized society.
Maimonides does not provide a traditionalist resolution between these two
divergent God-ideas, nor does he claim to have done so. The disjunction between
these two God-ideas seems to me irresolvable in traditionalist terms, and while
the attempt so to resolve it is an interesting exercise, its product strikes me as
only an addition to almost 800 years of tension and confusion, rather than as a
contribution to clarity. This tension will continue, and, not withstanding the
tension, the spiritual and intellectual vocation of Judaism will struggle on as
heretofore. Philosophically, what is important is not resolution, but rather
clarification, a very modest adumbration of which I have tried to contribute in
this brief commentary.
Kennedy Institute of Ethics
Georgetown University
Washington, D.C.
NOTES
1. Isaac Husik, A History of Medieval Jewish Philosophy (Philadelphia: The Jewish
Publication Society of America, 1941).
2. Julius Guttmann, Philosohies of Judaism: The History of Jewish Philosophy from
Biblical Times to Franz Rosenzweig (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society
of America, 1964).
3. Shem Tov Falaquera (1225-1290), Commentary on the Guide of the Perplexed (Moreh
Hamoreh).
4. Joseph Kaspi (1279-ca.1340), Commentary on the Guide of the Perplexed, and
Amudei Hakessef Umaskiyot Hakessef.
5. Moses Narbeni (R. Moses Yosef of Narbonne) (died after 1362), Commentary on the
Guide of the Perplexed, Goldenthal, ed. (Vienna, 1852) (See Husik, Fn. 1 above, p.
449.)
6. Shem Tov Ben Joseph (ca. 1461-1489), Commentary on the Guide of the Perplexed.
7. Joseph Anateli (ca. 1194-1256), Malmad Hatalmidim.
8. Ephodi, (a Hebrew acronym for Profiat Duran) (died ca. 1414), Commentary on the
Guide of the Perplexed.
9. Joseph Kaspi Amudei Hakessef Umaskiyot Hakessef, p. 8.
10. Leo Strauss, "The Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed," in
Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1952), pp.
38-94.
11. Yaacov Becker, Mishnato Haphilosophit Shel Rabbenu Moshe Ben Maimon (Tel Aviv:
J. Shimoni Publishing House, 1955).
12. Moses Maimonidos, Guide of the Perplexed, Shlomo Pines, (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1963), III, 32 (pp. 526, 530-531 in Pines' translation) and III,
47 (p. 593 in Pines' translation). On the "Divine ruse," see e.g., Guide III, 32,
especially pp. 526-529 in Pines' translation.
13. Guide, III, 26, pp. 508-509 in Pines' translation.
14. Guide, I, 51-60.
15. Ibid., I, 59, p. 139.
16. Ibid., I, 60, and III, 21, p. 485 in Pines' translation.
17. Joseph Albo, Sefer Ha-Ikkarim (The Book of Principles) Isaac Husik, trans.
(Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1946). Volume II, p. 206.
18. Harry Austryn Wolfson, Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1948), Vol.
II, Chap. 11, pp. 94-164.
19. Gaon Saadia, The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, Samuel Rosenblatt, trans., (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1948).
20. Guide, I, 60, p. 145 in Pines' translation.
21. Ibid., I, 59, p. 142 in Pines' translation.
22. Leo Strauss, "How to Begin to Study the Guide of the Perplexed," in Moses
Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, Shelmo Pines, trans., pp. xlviii ff.
23. Isaiah, LV, 8-9.
24. Exodus, III, 14.
25. Ibid., XXXIII, 21.
26. Elliott E. Cohen, in an article in the early 40's.
27. Anton C. Pegis, "Penitus Manet Ignotum," in Mediaeval Studies, XXVII (1965),
pp. 212-226, especially pp. 219 ff.
28. Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Kiddushin, 22b.
CHAPTER IX
PHILOSOPHY,
MAN AND THE ABSOLUTE GOD:
AN ISLAMIC PERSPECTIVE
BAHRAM JAMALPUR
It is necessary to clarify the precise meaning of four fundamental concepts:
philosophy, independence, man and God.
Philosophy, by its very nature, is the reflection upon reflection; as the reason
of all reasons, philosophy is the primordial search for the ultimate horizon of
meaning. In intellectual history, there are two fundamental definitions of
philosophy:
1. Philosophy as the Love of Wisdom
2. Philosophy as the Possession of Wisdom
What most concerns the Eastern world, and particularly the Islamic tradition, is
the philosophy as the possession of wisdom.
No matter which definition of philosophy appeals to us, however, we are talking
about human philosophy and not philosophy as such. Whatever the ultimate and the
Divine ground of philosophy may be, philosophy as a human phenomenon begins with
man and is essentially related to humanity in general.
Philosophy does not belong to any particular man, race, society, nation, language
or religion. By the grace of God, it is the outcome of human understanding which
calls itself into question and so transcends all conceivable categories. Most
certainly and on contrast to what the late Professor M. Heidegger has claimed,
philosophy is not Western in its essence, nor is the only proper philosophical
language not Greco-German. Philosophy is not the slave of any race, language or
religion, because Wisdom in its very essence transcends all traditions. Philosophy
begins with the presence of man in the world, encompasses all cultures and hopes
for the transcendence of man in order to comprehend the Ultimate Mystery.
Independence is a mystery that unfolds itself throughout man's history but never
reveals itself in any perfect form since for man, as a limited being in the world,
there can be no Absolute Independence. Note that by independence we do not mean
liberation. Independence is above and beyond liberation. One attempts to liberate
one's self in order to become independent and yet one may become liberated without
achieving true independence. Liberation as a political concept by necessity
assumes a prior period of its negation, but independence as a positive ontological
phenomenon must itself be independent; thus it is a self-asserting concept.
For men of Wisdom there can be no true independence without an authentic
philosophy of independence and there can be no genuine philosophy of independence
without the veritable independence of philosophy itself. The ground of independent
philosophy is man's self-consciousness in time and in history. Therefore we must
unfold the notion of man in the light of self-consciousness and within the mystery
of time and the context of history.
What is man? Man is a being in space and time: the former accounts for his
material dimension whereas the latter constitutes an essential dimension of his
spirituality. Man, in truth, is a temporal being; he is a-being-in-the-world who
experiences the process of becoming, which conditions his very being. This
conditioning is so fundamental that it manifests itself in his entire system of
thought. As an objective being in the world of becoming he experiences a
collection of factual events which we call the objective or the quantitative sense
of time. However, due to his reflective power of consciousness man, as an
internally dynamic being, is able to go beyond the objective perspective and
condition his environment through what we may call the subjective or the
qualitative sense of time. It is the subjective interpretation of the objective
world of temporal events that creates history.
Man is an historical being. In the light of quantitative time, history creates man
and, in the light of qualitative time, man creates history. Matter, in the sphere
of body, is the symbol of the will to power. Spirit, in the sphere of
consciousness, is the symbol of the will to love. The ontological unity of power
and love is the symbol of the will to justice which constitutes humanity within
society and history.
In substance, "spirit" has two essential dimensions: first, the inner self-
identity or "I" which asserts itself from within and by means of reflection upon
itself; and second, the qualitative manifestation of the ego in time and through
history. Both aspects of the phenomenon of history are truly necessary and
complementary for the everlasting search for meaning in the realm of self-
consciousness. The first aspect is the ground of self-identity so that the spirit
may be identified by human consciousness and retain its ego throughout history.
The second aspect is the ground of the temporality of spirit which permits it to
unfold through the mystery of time, and to leap beyond factuality in order to
comprehend the transcendental aspect of history.
If "spirit" were limited to the ego it would have lacked the necessary "elan
vital" for its conscious unfoldingness, and if it were limited to pure
manifestations then it would have lost its self-identity. Therefore, spirit by
nature must possess both ego or reflection upon itself, and manifestations or the
unfolding through time and history.
The ultimate hope of any spirit is to become truly and completely conscious of
itself, and this is completely realized only when the implicit unity of the spirit
becomes explicit. The ontological assertion of the explicit unity of spirit can be
observed when the will to power and justice are united in and through love. In the
light of the spirit, the qualitative interpretation of time, which constitutes
history, provides us with the possibility of authentic self-consciousness, which
in the form of philosophy is the ground of independence.
We must remember that man can become politically free yet remain philosophically
dependent. In order to become philosophically free, philosophy itself must
experience independence. In truth, it is the destiny of philosophy to experience
independence and gain freedom. Philosophy as the possession of Wisdom calls itself
into question and for this reason after confrontation with various other
disciplines asks about itself in a manner that transcends all limitations. In
fact, it is the duty of philosophy, not only to confront other disciplines but
also to confront itself and provide us with a critique of its own.
In the beginning religion based on revelation, science based on the study of
facts, mysticism based on intuitive illumination, and philosophy based on reason,
were all unified in their search for Truth as it revealed itself on the human
horizon. But in the course of history, a necessary yet only a temporal separation
took place, so that philosophy might have a chance to reflect objectively upon
other disciplines while developing its own self-awareness. Despite this
fundamental separation, we must never forget that the call for the harmony of
religion, science, mysticism and philosophy has been with us from the very
beginning. The foundation for such assertion is the belief in the ultimate Unity
of Being (Wahdat al-Wujud). The ultimate recall of Eastern Wisdom in general and
Islamic Philosophy in particular is the awareness of various levels of human
understanding despite the unity of the whole. This is the ultimate reason why
philosophy, after its early separation, must return to the state of togetherness
with religion, science, and mysticism. Philosophy at the level of self-awareness
through independence, becomes completely conscious of this primordial duty.
According to this line of reasoning, this discussion does not center about a
purely exclusive philosophy, but rather is devoted to the spirit of independent
philosophy within the Islamic tradition.
There are two basic schools of thought within the Islamic tradition, namely,
Falsafa and Irfan. Unquestionably Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Malavi (Rumi) are the
best representatives of these Islamic movements. Consequently, we will devote the
rest of our discussion to a comparison of their notions of the Absolute God.
The most fundamental presupposition of Islamic thought is that God and Man are so
essentially related that, for us, the full understanding of one demands the full
knowledge of the other. Man cannot know man if he does not know God, and man
cannot know God if he does not know man. We must not forget, however, that such
assertion does not deny the absolute priority of God's Being and the knowledge of
God over man, since such claim is valid only in relationship to man and not in
itself. God has created man in His image, which implies that man possesses the
image of God. Furthermore, since God does nothing in vain and there is nothing
accidental about His divine intentions, God must have great love for man, whom He
has created in His image. This love by its very nature encompasses man's being and
overflows from his inner being; in the final analysis it must return to its
origin. In short, God has a unique love for man and man, as the image of God, has
a unique love for God.
According to Islam, God's love for man, which is ontologically prior to the
creation of man, is a mystery, even to the angels. The angels ask God why He wants
to create man as His own representative on earth rather than angels, since man
shall commit sin whereas angels will not. God's answer to such a common sense
objection in The Holy Quran is that "I know what you do not know."1 A mystery even
in the angels, God's love for man is a mysterious reality, even to man. Whatever
the reason behind such a gift, man's love for God, which in the beginning under
the grace of God was in harmony with God's love, is ontologically dependent upon
God's love for man.
The temporal break of this mysterious relationship, according to The Holy Quran,
is based on disobedience which is attributed, first of all to Satan2 as the
personification of evil and second, to man who possesses a weakness for evil as a
separation from God.3 If religion is taken to be what The Holy Quran tells us,
namely, "The Way to God," then the purpose of Islam as the universal religion
becomes clear. It is to awaken man and restore the temporally interrupted
relationship so that, through submission to God's will, man can possess his unity
with the whole creation, know himself, and finally, love God for whom he has been
created. This is a well-understood objective of Islam which has been accepted by
almost all Muslim thinkers. Therefore, the Muslim philosopher has one ultimate
purpose in mind, namely, to make explicit the mystery of the God-man relationship
which is expressed so implicitly in the highly symbolic language of The Holy
Quran. Performing such a noble task, the philosopher must know, not only God, but
also man. Knowing that he is inwardly related to himself and existentially so
involved in the mysterious relationship to God, the philosopher may begin with
himself, and then in the light of the divine grace, seek to know God. But the real
knowledge of man comes after the philosopher becomes aware of the divine reality
and realizes the image of God. Only then can he make explicit the implicit
mysterious relationship of God and man which ontologically are never separate, yet
whose relationship is temporally broken.
Let us now begin with the notion of God, which has the utmost priority in the
Islamic world, and focus our analysis on the comparison of Inb Sina and Molavi's
understanding of God in terms of Being.
The philosophies of the Sina and Molavi both center around Being, since without
Being Ibn Sina's esoteric metaphysics would not make any sense. Therefore, we may
say that there is an implicit fundamental agreement between Ibn Sina and Molavi
that Being is the mystery of Hikmat. Our aim in this section is to present a view
of Being which through synthesis can encompass the essential assertions of both
the esoteric approach of Ibn Sina and the mystical approach of Molavi, and yet
point to the dialectical tension between two Muslim thinkers. Whatever the mystery
of Being may be, both Ibn Sina and Molavi agree on the following four main points:
First of all, Being cannot be reduced to merely a notion in our mind, since it
implies reality in itself, and reality cannot be reduced to a sheer subjective
notion. Therefore, any philosophical system that reduces the meaning of Being
simply to an abstract term that can exist only in man's mind stands outside this
tradition. Second, man does not begin his search from non-being but rather from an
implicit awareness of Being, and this is not acquired through abstraction but is
given to man. Third, whatever the implicit meaning of Being may be, it cannot be
defined,4 since it is most primordial. Fourth, man must seek to make explicit the
notion of Being, not by sheer conceptualization and abstraction, but through
"intuition" and in the light of illumination.5
One of the fundamental presuppositions of Ibn Sina is the implicit assumption of
his ontology that there is a correspondence between the transcendent Being in
reality and being as the transcendental concept. On the one had, Being in reality
which transcends all beings is intelligible in itself, since its origin is Thought
Thinking Thought. On the other hand, Being is the first transcendental concept,
which transcends all concepts and comes into man's intellect as the root of his
intelligibility. Being in the objective world of reality is the most real and so
the most intelligible, which gives reality and meaning to all other beings. Being,
in the subjective world of man, is the most universal and so the most intelligible
idea which gives reality and meaning to all other concepts.
Since every true concept corresponds to a real being, the hope of man is to reach
an understanding of the transcendental concept of Being which would mirror the
real transcendent Being in reality. Man can accomplish this task, only because he
is a bridge between the objective world of reality, since he is a being in the
world, and the subjective world of intellection, since he is in the possession of
his own intellect. Man must seek to make explicit the implicit notion of Being so
that he may realize The Pure Being of God, which is Thought Thinking Thought.6
Although Ibn Sina never loses sight of conceptualization and argumentation, in his
more esoteric writings7 he not only points to the limitations of logic but
emphasizes the utmost importance of "intuition" which comes from the Divine
Illumination through the Agent Intellect.
According to Ibn Sina, in the light of two fundamental logical notions that man's
intellect acquires without any inference, namely, "necessary" and "possible," man
realizes the meaning attached to the Necessary Being and the Possible Being.8
Being, in the fullest sense, refers to the Necessary Being or God. Therefore, once
the meaning of God as the Necessary Being in and through itself is understood,
then its denial involves a necessary contradiction.9 Thus, in the fullest sense,
Being, the first transcendental concept, refers only to the Necessary Being in
itself, which transcends all beings. Now insofar as Being represents the being of
a created world, namely, the possible being, whether it be necessary through
another or possible in and through itself it points not only to the emanation of
God in the possible world, but also the presence of the meaning of Being in every
possible concept.
On this level, on which the term Being is applied for ten categories, one
substance and nine accidents, Ibn Sina warns us against the view that Being is
simply a name which, not on the basis of one meaning, is shared by ten categories.
For if this were the case, then the meaning of "substance is" would be the same as
"this is a substance," and to assert that "substance is" would be the same as
"substance substance," which are absurd consequences. If Being would not be used
for ten categories, according to one meaning, then we would have ten meanings of
being and then ten meanings of nothing, which is absurd, since we would not be
able to say that an entity either is or is not.10 Then Ibn Sina tells us that
Being is not a genus because, unlike a genus which is applied equally to all of
its species, the meaning of Being in the created world refers first to a substance
and secondly, to accidents; and in the realm of accidents, first to quality and
quantity and secondly, to other more dependent accidents.
Molavi, however, does not quite agree with the parallel hierarchy of beings and
concepts in Ibn Sina's ontology, where Being as reality transcends all beings and
Being as "Idea" is the first transcendental over all concepts. Molavi has no
quarrel with Being as reality. He agrees with Ibn Sina that Being, insofar as it
points to Reality in its most primordial sense, refers to God. Being in itself is
God, and God in Himself is Being.11 But Molavi disagrees with Ibn Sina on three
accounts: First of all, Molavi denies the possibility of man ever having a concept
that may mirror God.12 Of course, there is no disagreement between the two
thinkers as to the impossibility of a finite being such as man ever being able to
perceive The Infinity.13 Molavi opposes Ibn Sina's construction of a positive
notion of the Necessary Being in itself, which though, it transcends all of our
concepts, yet as the first transcendental, can reflect God. Molavi insists that
any true awareness of God, which is mystical in its nature, is by no means bound
either to an ordinary or a transcendental concept. Man possesses no concept of
God, since God is understood in terms of "The Vision" which provides no ground for
an image or a direct rational concept. Man becomes aware of God in terms of what
we may call Beyong Being--a Pure Non-Conceptual Vision of Truth--that only "The
Great Silence" can communicate.14 Second, based on the denial of the positive
concept of God, Molavi disagrees with Ibn Sina that the discursive philosophy, by
its very nature, can gain any Divine Insight. Of course, Molavi takes the
discursive philosophy to be nothing but a system of rational construction founded
on a limited tool called logic which, in fact, is taken to be a barrier against
the true vision.
Molavi's objection at this point, which appears a number of times in Masnavi,15 is
quite unfair and misleading since, as we indicated before, Ibn Sina's metaphysics
is so related to the esoteric ontology that by no means can it be reduced to a
simple logical system. In the theology of Isharat va Tanbihat,16 Ibn Sina claims
that there are two different, yet related, channels to truth. One is "The
Discursive Method," which provides a system of knowledge, and the other "The
Intuitive Method," which provides the vision of Truth. Ibn Sina points to the
beginning and the end of human knowledge as the sphere of "intuition," which
implies that although logic is used, its application is limited to a sphere
between two realms of "intuition." Yet in a rare occasion in Danishnamah-i
`Ala'i17 he asserts that all knowledge is first found by "intuition" and that the
discursive method is limited to teaching. Thus, he admits not only the possibility
but even the actuality of a mystical knowledge when all is seen through
"intuition."18 Also, the language of The Recital of Bird bears witness that when
it comes to the vision of Truth, man acquires a different mode of consciousness.19
On the basis of these remarks, it seems that Molavi has misunderstood Ibn Sina's
philosophy by reducing the system to the surface of Shifa; yet it is fair to note
that the difference between the two thinkers still remains, since Molavi totally
denies the value of any discursive thinking and asserts that only Intuition
provides us with the vision of God. Third, Molavi, unlike Ibn Sina, applies to the
world a paradoxical statement, namely, that on the one hand, the world is real
insofar as only God is Real.
It seems that what Ibn Sina conceives about the notion of "Matter" Molavi applies
to the created world. "The Prime Matter for Ibn Sina is not nothing but a
`negative potentiality' that possesses no form."20 This, of course, leads to two
basic problems: First of all, how can God create what possesses no form? Second,
since creation is understood as the outcome of God's knowledge, how can God know
that which has no actuality? Whatever the possible solutions to these unsolvable
problems may be, it is clear that "the Prime Matter" is so far removed from the
Divine emanation that one may say that it possesses no being.21 Molavi, who does
not believe in the Aristotelian notion of matter,22 applies a similar paradox to
the created world, namely, that when it is taken to be Being, then God is Beyond
Being, and when God is seen as true reality, then the world, though it is the
manifestation of God, possesses no being of its own; and in truth, the world qua
world is Nothing.23
In order to grasp Molavi's understanding of God, we must focus our attention on
the notion of the Absolute. The Absolute, by definition, is the unconditional
reality that conditions all reality since it transcends Being, and so we may call
it Beyond Being. In its "ultimateness" it stands above the logical, the
epistemological, and the existential dichotomy of subject and object. The
unconditional Absolute, by virtue of being the Absolute, can neither be considered
an object nor a subject. The Absolute is not an object, since it is not a non-
reflective entity. The Absolute is not a subject, since for every subject there is
an object that stands outside of its realm, whereas the Absolute is such that none
can stand outside of its sphere.
In truth, the Absolute encompasses the subject and the object, Being and non-
Being. The Absolute, on the one hand, is above the subject and object dichotomy
and, therefore, cannot be approached either as an object or a subject; on the
other hand, the Absolute is so close both to the object and the subject that
"knows" them qua object and qua subject through "love." This is because, although
the Absolute in itself is beyond and beyond, owing to its ultimate desire to be
known through love, it manifests Itself, which constitutes the world of subject
and object dichotomy. The world is a mirror that reflects God implicitly whereas
man in the world is a polished mirror that reflects upon this reflection and
becomes the explicit mirror of God.
Since without man the world is nothing but an unpolished mirror; then we may say
that without man the world cannot love God. Man then not only completes "the
circle of existential manifestation," but by loving God, gives meaning to the
world. Because nothing stands outside of the Absolute, man as knowing God through
love, is nothing but the highest manifestation of The Absolute Loving The
Absolute.24 Thus, Molavi rightly claims that through love as true union, all are
absorbed by and through the Absolute. Therefore, the mystic can "see" that, in
truth, there is no other reality but the Absolute.
For the sake of comparison, let us once again reflect on the fundamental notion of
God in Molavi's mystical ontology and Ibn Sina's esoteric metaphysics. First of
all, both thinkers agree that there is a reality named God who is the Absolute
One. God is the Absolute because He stands above the object and subject dichotomy
and, therefore, can be considered neither a thing nor a limited consciousness. The
Absolute God is One because there is none like God. We must note at this point
that although both Ibn Sina and Molavi make use of non-Platonic language
concerning God, their notion of God cannot simply be identified with Plotinus. For
Plotinus "The One" has no duality, and since knowledge implies the duality of the
subject and the object, One is taken to be above thought, so that It cannot know
itself or any other being.25
As we indicated before, Ibn Sina defines The Absolute as Thought Thinking Thought
and Molavi, although he admits to the unmanifested simple Absolute which is
totally present to Itself, claims that the Absolute in Its manifestation is
thought which seeks to be known through Itself. This brings us to the first seed
of disagreement, namely, when Ibn Sina uses the term "One" he means the absolute
simplicity of God's unconditional reality, which necessitates that from "One"
comes only "one." Molavi, however, has no quarrel with "the unconditional," since
he also believes that, with the exception of man, none can condition God. But
Molavi cannot admit to the absolute simplicity of God in the sense that Ibn Sina
uses this rather complex terminology because, for Molavi, there are two dimensions
of the Absolute, the not-manifested and the manifested.
When Molavi applies the term "One" to God, he means a non-composite being who
encompasses all and through many reflects His oneness. In short, Molavi is not
forced to assert the Greek idea that from One comes only one. Molavi believes that
man as the image can condition God except insofar as He relates Himself to Himself
through the manifest world. When it comes to the mystery of God's creation, Ibn
Sina, based on two doctrines that from the pure One only one can come into being,
and that from the pure Thought only thought can appear, asserts that from God the
absolute Thought emanates a Separate intellect.26 Ibn Sina describes the
descending line of creative emanation which constitutes the world of many,
primarily in terms of the dual aspects of the first intellect that, on the one
hand, is aware of God and on the other hand is aware of itself. When the descent
arrives at the tenth separate intellect, we are faced with the Agent intellect
which, on the one hand, provides "Forms" to the sublunary world and, on the other
hand, provides man with the intelligible forms which prepare the image of God for
ascension.
Molavi, although through his poetry he points to the first intellect and the
Universal Soul, never asserts a systematic model of creation and nowhere does he
agree with the emanation of intellects from God. But he finds no difficulty in
asserting that the world is nothing but the direct and the indirect manifestation
of God and, in truth, that the world is nothing but God Manifested. This brings us
to another crucial point of disagreement. Although both thinkers agree that the
world is not created out of nothing,27 Ibn Sina provides a theory of holy
emanation that at least accounts for some degree of separateness of beings,
whereas Molavi insists totally on the ontological togetherness of all beings. Ibn
Sina's theory of holy emanation on the one hand claims that the Being of all
beings is in the mind of God, since the first created intellect is nothing but an
idea in God's Mind and also in Isharat va Tanbihat28 insists upon "continuous
creation," yet on the other hand points to the separateness of possible
existential beings. But Molavi claims nothing but a continuous-all-encomassing-
manifestation of God which constitutes the world as nothing but God manifested.
Ibn Sina and Molavi both agree that all of reality depends upon God, not only in
its Being but also in its intelligibility. It is God the Absolute that must
explain the possibility, the existence, and the intelligibility of the world and
not the other way around.29 They both agree that, owing to God's goodness, He
loves man and, in turn, it is due to His love for man that He creates the world.
Therefore, God is not the world and this is the meaning of Transcendence, which is
described as Thought, or Thought Thinking Thought. But God is present in His Act
and so He must be present in the world, and this is the meaning of immanence which
is described as love, or Love Loving Love, Molavi, however, goes a leap further
and claims that the world is nothing but the unity of the manifestation of God or
God's unity manifested, which implies that the world has no reality of its own,
and there is only One Being, namely, God.
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah
NOTES
1. The Holy Quran, Sura II, Ayat 30.
2. Ibid., Sura II, Ayat 34.
3. Ibid., Sura XIX, Ayat 115.
4. Ibn Sina, Danishnamah-i `Ala'i (Theology), ed. M. Mo'in, pp. 7-11.
5. Molavi, Masnavi, Tehran Edition, Bk. V, p. 428.
6. Ibn Sina, Danishnamah-i `Ala'i (Theology), ed. M. Mo'in, p. 108.
7. Ibn Sina, Danishnamah-i `Ala'i (Tabi'yat), ed. S.M. Mishkat, pp. 141-143.
8. Ibn Sina, Isharat va Tanbihat (Iranian Translation), p. 181.
9. Ibn Sina, Najat (Cairo, 1938), p. 224.
10. Ibn Sina, Danishnamah-i `Ala'i (Theology), ed. M. Mo'in, pp. 36-77,
11. According to Molavi, "The Absolute Unity of Being" is the ground of the unity
of vision.
12. When the spirit became lost in contemplation, it said this: "None but God has
contemplated the beauty of God." The Divana Shamsi Tabriz, tr. R.A. Nicholson,
Poem XXIII, p. 91.
13. Ibn Sina, Risalah dar Haquiqat wa Kaifiyat-i Silsilah-Mawjudat, pp. 4-6.
14. Molavi, Masnavi, Tehran Edition, Bk. IV, p. 377.
15. Ibid., Bk. I, p. 56.
16. Ibn Sina, Isharat va Tanbihat (Iranian Translation), pp. 247-257.
17. Ibn Sina, Danishnamah-i `Ala'i (Tabi'yat), ed. S. M. Mishkat, pp. 141-143.
18. Ibn Sina, Isharat va Tanbihat (Iranian Translation), pp. 254-256.
19. "As God is my witness: it falls to your hidden being to appear, while it falls
to your apparent being to disappear." H. Corbin, Avicenna and the Visionary
Recital, tr. W. Trask, p. 187.
20. Ibn Sina, Isharat va Tanbihat (Iranian Translation), p. 101.
21. Ibn Sina, Khutbat al-Gharr-a', tr. K.M.K. Akhtar, "A Tract of Avicenna,"
Islamic Culture (Hyderabad-Daccan, 1935), Vol. 9, pp. 221-222.
22. According to Molavi, the so-called material world is constituted by unlimited
particles that in some sense can see the Absolute Truth. "Air, earth, water and
fire are worshippers. To us they are dead but to God they are alive." Tehran
Edition, Bk. I, p. 23.
23. Q. Ghani, Tarikh Tasawuf dar Islam, p. 421.
24. "We are even as shadows, He is all who seek,
Lo, by Him is spoken every word we speak!"
Molavi, Divana-i Shams, Tabriz Edition, p. 137.
25. Plotinus, The Enneads, Tr. S. MacKenna, Ennead VI, Tractate 9, Section 3.
26. Ibn Sina, Danishnamah-i `Ala'i (Theology), ed. M. Mo'in, pp. 111-112.
27. In this respect they both have been accused by the orthodox theologians to be
infidels. Ibn Sina strongly condemned such an impurtation in the following poem:
"It is not so easy and trifling to call me a heretic
No belief in religion is firmer than mine own
I am the unique person in the whole world and if
I am a heretic
Then there is not a single Musulman anywhere in the world."
S.H. Barani, "Ibn Sina and Alberuni," Avicenna Commemoration Volume, p. 8.
28. Ibn Sina, Isharat va Tanbihat (Iranian Translation), p. 179.
29. Ibid., p. 177.
COMMENT
On Bahram Jamalpur,
"Philosophy, Man and the Absolute God:
An Islamic Perspective"
FRANCIS KENNEDY
Dr. Jamalpur's paper makes a doubly significant contribution. First, he brings the
very important element of a specifically Islamic strain of thought. In addition,
he has chosen to focus on an area whose clarification is a vital pre-requisite to
any discussion of God, the divine nature, our knowledge thereof, etc. The paper
suggests to me a developed harmony between non-dualist Hindu concepts of maya and
the position of Molavi that only God is real. I suspect that there is a rich vein
of questions of historical fact and philosophical nuance which merits
investigation.
The main point at issue in Dr. Jamalpur's paper is its contrast of two figures.
One, Ibn Sina, or Avicenna, is closer to the ideal of the classical philosopher
stressing the importance of discursive, rational approaches to human knowledge. He
would, however, not deny an important role within his schema for in- tuition as a
(necessary?) means if we are to know God--though that phrase, `to know God' may be
overly naive and misleading. The other figure in the paper, Molavi, would rule out
conventional philosophical knowledge in the area of knowing God and rely instead
on intuition or on its religious counterpart, mysticism. (For reasons of brevity,
"intuition" and "mysticism" are used here with a greater degree of
interchangeability than I could theoretically justify).
Each of the main figures in Dr. Jamalpur's paper thus points us to the very
delicate question of the relationship between philosophy and mysticism especially
when, as in this case, the mysticism is informed and shaped by a specific, well-
defined, positive revelation. The question of this relationship is one which
underlies much of the paper. Thus we read:
In the beginning, religion based on revelation, science based on the study of the
facts, mysticism based on intuitive illumination, and philosophy based on reason,
were all unified in their search for Truth as it revealed itself on the human
horizon.
The theory for such a unity is well expressed:
God and man are so essentially related that, for us, the full understanding of one
demands the full knowledge of the other. Man cannot know man if he does not know
God; and man cannot know God if he does not know man.
The task which is laid before philosophy is almost an integral part of theology.
Thus:
the purpose of Islam . . . is to awaken man . . . so that . . . man can possess
his unity with the whole creation, know himself, and finally love God for whom he
has been created.
. . . . .
Therefore, the Muslim philosopher has one ultimate purpose in mind, namely to make
explicit the mystery of the God-man relationship which is expressed so implicitly
in the highly symbolic language of the Holy Quran.
. . . . .
But the real knowledge of man comes after the philosopher becomes aware of the
divine reality and realizes the image of God.
What then is the place in philosophy of mysticism--or of intuition--bearing in
mind the comment made above about their relationship?
I would like to sharpen this question with a few thoughts from Aquinas. In that
tradition, philosophy has an important but limited--indeed, self-limiting--role to
play. It can provide knowledge that God exists, offering also some content,
however tentative, to the idea 'God'. It can show that God is an essential--
perhaps better, existential--point of reference for us as noted in one of the
quotations from the paper. Philosophy would, however, locate the question of
mysticism in the theological, i.e., non-philosophical, camp. It would say that
mysticism--and revelation - is important, even hypothetically necessary (i.e. if
we are to know God, then . . .), but not philosophical. Even the Augustinian
tradition of Bonaventure, Roger Bacon, Henry of Ghent, even Scotus, while allowing
more room for mysticism and revelation, would do so almost at the expense of
philosophy. In the present context they might find themselves closer to Molavi
than to Ibn Sina. There is, therefore, an a-symmetry present: philosophy needs,
demands, a mystical/revealed/intuitional element, without being able to supply
that need.
If I may be allowed to jump 800 years, we are essentially `Hearers of the Word',
to quote the title of one of Karl Rahner's early works. Our philosophical
structure is such as to make us open to the gift of mysticism, or of revelation -
should that gift be offered. Further than that philosophy cannot go. There is a
void which is able--ought--to be filled by revelation, if revelation exists.
Philosophy can at most show that revelation is not a self-contradictory idea.
(There is, of course, a place for philosophy not in its own right but as a
technique for explaining, elaborating etc. the data of revelation once such data
have been accepted as revealed. That, however, is a separate question.)
From that position a philosophical position which does go further--which does seem
to have a place for intuition, for mysticism--is of special interest.
The same question might might be posed briefly from a different angle, providing
almost by a counter-argument an indication of the fundamental importance to
Western thought of the philosophy/mysticism, philosophy/revelation separation. Is
Heidegger right to claim that Western philosophy has forgotten Being? Is it the
case that Western philosophy has shunted Being, or the knowledge of Being, off to
the area of mysticism and theology, as opposed to the area of philosophy? If so,
is the undoubtedly mystical atmosphere of at least his later writings a sign that
his proposed de-struction of Western metaphysics is having more positive results
than some of his critics allow?
St. Peter's College
Glasgow, Scotland
CHAPTER X
ORIGIN: CREATION AND EMANATION
RICHARD V. DeSMET
THE NOTION OF ORIGIN
For the scientist the notion of origin designates the state of affairs which
conditions the arising of a new phenomenon. It implies not only the general
disposition of the universe and its material energy at the initial moment of this
arising, but more properly the immediate antecedents, conditions, factors and the
decisive instant of the change which initiates that phenomenon. The arising of the
latter is an event--eventus--an observable novelty, but within a basic continuity
of matter and time and becoming generally considered as evolutionary. Such an
origination is specific, not universal; and relative, not absolute. Even if the
scientist seeks the origin of the whole universe, he can only seek it through a
mental journey backwards toward a primary state of matter--as extremely condensed
energy, for instance-beyond which he can, nevertheless, assume a prior, though
undeterminable, state of the same matter.
The metaphysician, on the contrary, undertakes a more radical investigation
concerning the very being of the universe and all its components, including matter
itself in any of its states. How is it that there exists a universe rather than no
universe? This question is forced upon him by the general contingency of all the
existents which through their connections make up the universe. Whether our
universe has a first instant or is beginningless in its duration--alternatives
which both boggle our imagination--it ever appears unable to account for its
existence. Hence, we are presented with the question, not of its temporal, but of
its ontological origin. This question is not to be answered through a backward
journey in time but through an ecstasis in the etymological sense of the term, a
reaching of the mind beyond itself and the whole universe towards a Reality which
cannot be less than Being itself (Esse, Sat), Self-existent and Self-
communicative. This is generally designated as God or the Absolute--the Brahman of
Vedanta. My purpose here is not to prove its existence but to speak as correctly
as possible of the origination of our universe from this Absolute.
THE NEED FOR LAKSHANA OR ANALOGY
In all matters regarding the Absolute, language must be adapted and appropriated
to a difficult task. Our everyday language is shaped by our experience of the
relative which it normally endeavours to express. But besides its power of
expressing, it possesses various capacities of evoking, alluding to, indicating,
conveying or even signifying indirectly, yet correctly enough, what it does not or
cannot express directly. In India, its power of indirect signification or
indication is called lakshaanaa- (distinct from laksha.na: definition or
characteristic mark). Of the three chief types of laksha.na-, the one directly
useful to the metaphysician is the jahad-ajahal-laksha.na- which corresponds
closely to the intrinsic analogy of the Christian Schoolmen which itself
originates in Aristotle and Pseudo-Dionysius. It permits making sense of
theological language or God-talk.
For instance, when Shankara or some of his disciples explain that "Satya.m jn+ a-
nam-anantam" (Taittiri- ya Upani.sad, 2,1) is a valid definition of Brahman, they
use that laksha.na- and display its process. The sentence means that the Absolute
is RealityKnowledge-Infinite. The pupil who naively understands the first term
Satyam (Reality) in its primary and expressive meaning as `concrete material
substance' such as solid earth is told that he must correct this misleading
superimposition (adhya- sa) since the second term Jn+ a- nam (Knowledge)
immediately negates it. Similarly his primary understanding of Jn+ a- nam
(Knowledge) as a contingent activity or quality of the knower is to be corrected
because the third term Anantam (Infinite) debars such an understanding. Jn+ a-
nam, says Shankara, must be infinitised on the basis of the pure root jn+ a
(know), not of any of its derivatives The Absolute is not infinite Knowledge,
Know-ing or Know-er, but pure Know in the most elevated sense. And it is similarly
parama- rthata.h Sat, i.e., Being in the supreme sense of the term. Here he uses
the participle sat (be-ing) instead of the verbal root as because of an exigency
of his Sanskrit language, but his intention is similar to that of St. Thomas
Aquinas when the latter says that God is eminently Esse (Be). Although two terms
are used, their infinitisation implies that they merge in identity without,
however, losing their sva- rtha, the positive meaning of their roots, as Shankara
is careful to point out. Thus their laksha.na- is intrinsic analogy and the divine
Absolute which they define as infinite Be and Know is yet simple (akhanda,
undivided, incomplex). This example shows how in all theological topics our mind
must and can transcend the anthropomorphism innate to language through a
processing in three steps: adhya- sa, superimposition; apava- da, negation,
removal of all limitations; and parama- rtha- patti, assumption of the supreme
sense which alone is consistent with Absoluteness.
APPLICATION TO THE NOTION OF CREATION
Let us now start from an `adhya- sic' assertion of divine creation, such as we
find in the Upanishads or elsewhere. `Brahman is the Root of the world' or
`Brahman is that omniscient, omnipotent Cause from which proceed the origin,
subsistence and dissolution of this world' or `God is the Creator of all things,
visible and invisible' or `Consider the heaven and the earth and all that they
contain; know that God has made all that from nothing and that the race of men is
born in the same manner.' All such formulations affirm that the one God, the
Absolute, is the unique intelligent Source or Cause of the totality and entirety
of all other beings. But the terms they are made of are liable to many
misinterpretations and a decantation of their anthropomorphism is to be effected
by the metaphysician.
Hence, we come to a negative definition of creation, such as the classical one
formulated by Aquinas: Creation means a production of reality out of nothing of
itself or of any matter (productio rei ex nihilo sui et materiae). This will be
elaborated and completed presently.
Provided this purification is complete, the mind is ready to climb up to the level
of eminence (the Dioysian Hyperoche- or Shankarian parama- rtha- patti) and to
say, for instance, with Aquinas: Creation is the emanation of the whole universe
by and from the universal Cause (emanatio totius universi a causa universali).
THE STEP OF PURIFICATION THROUGH NEGATIONS
(APAVA- DA)
All models of production fail to give us an adequate support of representation for
the idea of creation. Creation is unique and transcends them all. Like God
himself, it pertains to no genus. Hence, we have to ascend to it by way of
negations (apophasis, apava- da). In order to reconcile the two ideas of `divine'
and `production' we have to eliminate the ordinary connections of `production'
with either pre-existing object or preexisting matter or pre-existing time, with
necessity or want, with transformation and instruments of transformation, with
mutability of the creator or his self-improvement, and with relationship that
would be a reality in the Creator.
No Independent Pre-existence of the Created
Let us, first, eliminate the weak sense of `production' as `mere manifestation'.
It does not arise from a state of latency, dormancy or concealedness, but from its
own antecedent absence (pra- g-abha- va- t), for it has no independent pre-
existence; it never exists except as divinely produced.
Virtually, however, or, to use Shankara's terminology, as still undifferentiated,
it pre-exists in the power of its Cause, just as it is eternally known by it
independently of its production. "And so," writes St. Thomas, "a creature as pre-
existing in God is the divine Essence itself" (Et sic creatura in Deo est ipsa
Essentia divina." De Potentia, III, 16, 24). This is an important application of
the theory which the Indians call sat-ka- rya-va- da, namely, of the virtual pre-
existence of an effect in the being of its cause. The statement of Bhagavadgi- ta-
, ii, 16: Na- sate vidyate bha- va.h (out of nothing, no thing can arise) is true
for an Aquinas or a Bergson as much as for the Indian schoolmen.
No Pre-existence of the Matter of the Created
Unlike any production of nature or man, creation neither needs nor presupposes any
pre-existing matter or other constitutive element. This is due to its character of
total origination. Neither is there a pool of pre-existing forms from which the
creator would draw. What is created is the universe of existents in which and with
which their matter is co-created as well as any other possible constituent.
Whether matter is energy or something else should not concern us here. What counts
is the realization that the totality of the universe derives immediately from the
Creator.
This ontological origination of all finite existents qua beings does not preclude
the temporal originations that take place within the becoming of the universe.
Matter is the permanent stuff of all transformations and generations. This prime
matter is an ubiquitous component of the beings of the material universe and never
a distinct and complete existent apart from them. As a component it is not the
term of any special creation, but shares in the ontological origination of the
material existents of the universe.
A question raised in Veda- nta philosophy is whether the Absolute itself is not
the material cause of the universe. The term used is upa- da- na which may be
rendered etymologically as `subdatum' (upa+a+da- na). It is indicated by the
ablative case `yata.h' and is thus the `whence' of the effect, that `from which'
the effect derives its substantial reality. On the level of material
transformations, that `whence' is a material stuff, for instance, clay in jars or
steel in scissors, etc. On the basis of such examples, some Indian systems have
assumed the existence of an eternal stuff, the Pradha- na or Prak.rti of the Sa-
mkhya system or the primordial atoms (parama- .nu) of Vaishes.ika, as the upa- da-
na of the universe. Nevertheless, the denotation of the word upa- da- na
transcends such specific meanings. That which provides the substantial reality of
effects need not be a material cause. In Vedanta, it is the Brahman-A- tman which
is said to be the upa- da- na of the universe and this Brahman is surely not
material since it is Spirit (Cit) or pure `Know' (Jn+ a) as we have seen earlier.
If it were the material cause or stuff of the universe, it would have to produce
it through self-mutation (pari.na- na) or atomic vibration, but any such process
is excluded from the Absolute. Yet, as its total Source, it is its immanent and
reality-giving Cause, i.e., its Upa- da- na.
Some quotations from Shankara will throw further light on this problem. The
causation of the world presupposes "no independent matter, unreducible to the A-
tman, such as the Pradhana of the Sa- mkhyas or the primordial atoms of Kana- da"
(Aitareya Upani.sad Bha- .sya, 1,1,1). "What the Shruti calls aja-, i.e., the
causal matter of the four classes of beings, has itself sprung from the highest
Lord" (Veda- nta Su- tra Bha- .sya, i,4,9). Brahman alone is "that from whence
these beings are born," i.e., their upa- da- na, as denoted by the ablative
yata.h; "there is no other substance from which the world could originate" (Ibid.,
1,4,23). But how can this divine Upa- da- na provide the reality of the universe?
Because, "in the beginning, before creation, when the differences of namesand-
forms (na- ma-ru- pa, the specific essences) were not yet manifested, this world
was but the one A- tman" (Ait.Up.Bh., 1,1,1.). These na- ma-ru- pas pre-existed
only "in the manner of something future" bha- visyena ru- pe.na), i.e., virtually,
as effects to be preexist in the actual power of their cause. "These na- ma-ru-
pas, which are identical with the A- tman in their unmanifested state, can become
the causal elements (upa- da- na-bhu- te) of the manifested universe. Hence, it is
not incongruous to say that the omniscient (A- tman) creates the universe by
virtue of his oneness with causal elements, namely, names-and-forms, which are
identical with himself" (Ibid., 1,1,2). Their manifestation, however, does not
mean that the partless A- tman undergoes a process of diversification: "the case
is rather like that of a clever magician who, independent of any materials,
transforms himself, as it were (iva), into a second man seemingly climbing into
space" (Ibid.).
No Need of Instruments or Demiurge
Considering that the creative Power need not be applied upon a pre-existing
material which it would have to shape, St. Thomas concludes that it needs no
instruments. Similarly, Shankara asserts that "the absolutely complete power of
Brahman does not require to be supplemented by any extraneous help" (Ved.S.Bh.,
2,1,24).
****
THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR METAPHYSICS
STUDIES IN METAPHYSICS, VOLUME IV
THE NATURE OF
METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE
Edited by
GEORGE F. McLEAN
HUGO MEYNELL
UNIVERSITY PRESS OF AMERICA
INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR METAPHYSICS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
PART I. APPROACHES AND METHODS
1. Metaphysics as a Discipline: Its Requirements
by Ivor Leclerc 3-22
2. Metaphysics and the Architectonic of Systems
by Reiner Wiehl 23-50
3. Truth, Justification and Method in Metaphysics
and Theology
by Richard Martin 51-68
4. Some Principles of Procedure in Metaphysics
by Charles Hartshorne 69-75
Comment: James W. Felt 77-81
5. Metaphysical Knowledge as Hypothesis
by Richard L. Barber 83-92
Comment: Errol E. Harris 93-96
PART II. IMPLICATIONS AND TASKS OF METAPHYSICS
FOR SCIENCE, ETHICS AND HISTORY
6. Metaphysics and Science
by Andre Mercier 99-103
7. Metaphysics and Science: Affinities and
Discrepancies
by Evandro Agazzi 105-121
8. Some Tasks for Metaphysicians
by Mario Bunge 123-128
9. The Problem of Metaphysical Presupposition
in and of Science
Kurt Hubner 129-134
10. Cosmology and the Philosopher
By Ernan McMullen 135-148
11. Metaphysics and the Foundations of
Ethical and Social Values
by Johannes Lotz 149-161
12. Metaphysics and History
by T.A. Roberts 163-176
INDEX 177-180
INTRODUCTION
The preceding volumes in this series--devoted respectively to Person and Nature,
Person and Society and Person and God1--progressively delineated the basic issues
of human and, indeed, of all existence. They took work on these issues beyond the
horizon of the physical and social sciences, as well as beyond such philosophical
methods as those of pragmatism and positivism.
In this process the questions raised regarding the method of metaphysics--not
unknown to Aristotle and Kant--were seen to be in urgent need of attention: Is
metaphysics a discipline; if so, what are its requirements; and how can these be
met?
Answers to such questions are needed in order that metaphysics be able effectively
to assimilate recent developments in human reflection, to evolve a rigor and
insight in proportion to its task, and to plan its research agenda for the
proximate future.
With this in view the present volume is divided into two parts. The first concerns
approaches and methods for metaphysics: Is metaphysics a discipline; if so, what
is its relation to truth, justification and the architectonic of systems? The
second part concerns the implications of such a conception of the nature and work
of metaphysics for its relation to science, to ethics and to human history.
Upon completion of its series of studies on the person, the International Society
for Metaphysics (ISM) undertook a series of investigations regarding society in
terms of its issues of unity, truth and justice, and the good. Further, having
studied intensively both person and society it seemed appropriate to extend the
investigation to the field of culture and cultural heritage understood as personal
creativity in community and in history. In this manner the work of the ISM has
constituted a cohesive and coordinated investigation of metaphysics as a living
discipline in our day.
NOTE
1. George F. McLean and Hugo Meynell, eds. (Washington: Wniversity Press of
America and The International Society for Metaphysics, l988).
CHAPTER I
METAPHYSICS AS A DISCIPLINE:
ITS REQUIREMENTS
IVOR LECLERC
INTRODUCTION: THE ISSUE
The issue of the requirements for metaphysics as a discipline faces us today with
particular urgency. It is not primarily or merely because metaphysics in our time
is strongly under positivistic and other attack. This issue must be given primary
attention for the sake of the enterprise of metaphysics itself if it is to achieve
the efficacy which, in the context of present- day thought, is required of it and
indeed necessitated by virtue of its fundamental position among fields of inquiry.
This issue has always had to be faced anew in times of great changes of thought,
because metaphysical fundamentals are ineluctably involved in them. A change of
this order occurred in the late Hellenistic age as a result of religious
developments, which brought theology into primacy for the intelligibility of those
developments, and theology indispensably required metaphysics in the
accomplishment of this task. Another such change occurred in the seventeenth
century with the momentous development of modern science on the basis of a
radically new conception of the physical, for the proper intelligibility of which
metaphysics was necessarily involved. In this century once again a change of
thought of this magnitude is occurring consequent upon scientific developments
which have eventuated in conceptions of the physical profoundly divergent from
those of the preceding three centuries. The role of metaphysics in respect of the
understanding of the nature of the physical is now again as indispensably
requisite as it was in the seventeenth century.
In these times of great change of thought it is not only that metaphysical
fundamentals are involved, but also that the very conception of metaphysics
itself--of its nature as an inquiry, of its object and of its method--is basically
affected. The recognition of this is important from the point of view of the
problem of the requirements for metaphysics as a discipline, for it is not
possible to deal with this problem in abstraction or in disconnection from the
question of the nature of metaphysics, and this question in turn cannot be
considered apart from the issue of the relation of metaphysics to the other
disciplines of inquiry.
The significance of that relation is evidenced in the very name "metaphysics": the
preposition with the accusative connotes sequence or succession, a going beyond,
and in this name indicates an inquiry of peculiar width, its object extending
beyond, and thus being general to, that of every special inquiry -- the term
itself originated after Aristotle under the influence of the prominence in
Aristotle's work of the inquiry into physis, but the term has been correctly
understood in the tradition as fully general, i.e. as going beyond every special
inquiry, to embrace all which is.
But the connection with the special inquiries is vital to metaphysics, and in
different ages different special inquiries have received pre-eminent emphasis in
respect of this connection. Thus in the middle ages it was theology which had this
prominence, and since the seventeenth century it has been what is usually called
modern science which has enjoyed this pre-
eminence. Accordingly in the medieval period the conception of metaphysics was
fundamentally affected by theology, and since the seventeenth century the
conception of metaphysics has been as deeply affected by modern science. We today
continue in this respect under the influence of modern science, as we shall see in
some detail later.
METAPHYSICS AND THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE
As an enterprise of inquiry metaphysics is an endeavour to seek and obtain
knowledge. The same of course holds for every other inquiry: each aims at
knowledge. Thus the concept of "knowledge" is implicated in every inquiry, and is
accordingly basic and general to all inquiry. Because it is general, the question
or issue of what is "knowledge" is one which goes beyond each of the special
inquiries and cannot be the concern of any one of them. It has therefore to be the
concern of that inquiry whose object goes beyond all special inquiries, namely
metaphysics.
The issue of what is "knowledge", of what is meant by the term, is neither self-
evident nor is it one which can be settled antecedently to all inquiry. On the
contrary, it has necessarily itself to be an object of inquiry. Thus metaphysics
has as a primary task the inquiry into the problem of what is "knowledge."
However, this cannot be an inquiry prior to and in disconnection from all the
other issues of metaphysical inquiry; these issues are necessarily all
interrelated, and the solution to the issue of knowledge must emerge as part of a
whole solution to the combined metaphysical issues. This means that the conception
of "knowledge" which is the outcome of the inquiry into the issue of what is
knowledge, must be consistent with that involved in all the rest of metaphysical
inquiry, as well as with the conception of knowledge involved in the special
inquiries. We cannot here enter into details of the long history of the
metaphysics of knowledge; we shall concentrate on the outcome of historical
developments specially relevant to our present situation.
Medieval thinkers inherited from Greek philosophy the conception that the term
"knowledge" necessarily connotes and entails certainty and truth. This conception
was taken over and maintained in the seventeenth century and on through the
eighteenth--as is clear in Hume and Kant--and the nineteenth. This conception was
by no means restricted to philosophers and with regard to philosophy. In the
seventeenth century the inquiry into nature was referred to both as "natural
philosophy" and "natural science--the term scientia, "science", meaning
"knowledge". The latter designation came increasingly to prevail as the conviction
grew that the new empirico-mathematical method was that which demonstrably led to
certainty and truth in the inquiry into nature, i.e. that it was that which led to
genuine or real "knowledge", scientia. This genuine science or knowledge stood in
contrast to the putative knowledge of philosophy and metaphysics particularly.
Philosophy consequently came to be extruded from concern with the realm of nature
and relegated to that of mind and the moral alone. With this division effected,
the inappropriateness of the phrase "natural science" came increasingly to be
felt--since the science of nature was in fact the only genuine science, i.e.
knowledge in the strict sense of true and certain--so the phrase gave place in
usage, from the nineteenth century on, to the single word "science."1 The
important point in this is that the basic conception of "knowledge" as entailing
certainty and truth had been taken over by "modern science", by scientists
themselves as by theorists of science--the position of the latter being epitomized
in the doctrine of "positivism", i.e. that what is "positive", "sure", "certain",
and thus constituting genuine knowledge, is that which is attained by the
empirical method of modern science.
In this century scientific developments have led to a change in the conception of
"knowledge" which is indeed far- reaching. Since the seventeenth century it had
been held that the "knowledge" sought by the new empirico-mathematical science was
constituted by the discovery of the "laws of nature", epitomized by the laws of
motion--it was in terms of these that nature was understood. These laws were what
pertained with complete generality throughout nature, and as such were constant
and unvarying. Accordingly when they were discovered one could be assured of
certainty and truth, i.e. "knowledge" of nature. What has happened in this century
is an increasing wavering in respect of the absoluteness of natural law. After the
seventeenth century the earlier conception of natural law as divinely imposed was
gradually replaced by the conception of natural law as empirical description. The
crucial change came in this century when the previously supposed absoluteness of
the Newtonian laws of motion was found to consist in statistical regularities
pertaining to vast numbers of entities. After that the conception of scientific
law in general as being statistical in character came to be increasingly accepted.
This abandonment of absoluteness pertaining to scientific laws entailed that these
laws are merely probabilities. This implies that the "knowledge" which science
seeks and attains is not "knowledge" in the earlier sense of certainty. This means
that "scientific knowledge" today has come to have a new sense in which
"probability" has replaced "certainty". Does it follow from this that present-day
developments have landed thought in a contradiction in respect of the conception
of "knowledge"-- the contradiction which Hume had sought to avoid by making a
sharp distinction between "knowledge" and "probability"? It is evident that we
have today run into a profound difficulty in respect of the conception of
"knowledge", and this is one which affects not only so-called "science" but all
inquiry, including philosophy. This means that philosophy today is faced with a
task of the first order of importance, for all inquiry must be dependent upon
philosophy in this respect. What is accordingly requisite is a renewed inquiry
into the metaphysics of knowledge.
THE ISSUE OF METHOD IN METAPHYSICS
The problem of method or procedure in this inquiry immediately comes into
prominence, and is indeed crucial in a respect in which this problem had not been
so in the beginning of the modern period, nor indeed in the medieval epoch. In
both of them fundamental presuppositions about the conception of "knowledge", of
the essential meaning of the concept, had been taken over from the respective
antecedent period. Whereas today it is precisely those fundamental presuppositions
which have been revealed as somehow inadequate and which must now accordingly be
subject to inquiry. Certainly in both those epochs the conception of "knowledge"
had been rethought in terms of the general metaphysical schemes which had
respectively been developed. This, for example, was what had been Descartes'
concern in his Regulae (1628) and his Discourse on the Method of Rightly
Conducting One's Reason and Seeking for Truth in the Sciences (1637), which were
written after the essentials of his metaphysics of nature had become clear to him.
But in both of those epochs there had been the inheritance of the presupposition
of "knowledge" as connoting and entailing certainty, a presupposition which was
not brought into question. The conception of the method of metaphysical inquiry is
closely bound up with the conception of knowledge. This is clearly exemplified in
the two antecedent epochs which we have brought into consideration above. In the
medieval one the earliest and, for most of the period, the most influential
metaphysics adopted by theology had been the Neoplatonic. In this scheme it was
held that knowledge could not have the characteristic of certainty and truth
unless the conditions of knowledge, that in terms of which knowledge was possible
at all, were constant and unchanging. These necessary conditions of knowledge, in
this metaphysical scheme, were constituted by the exemplar forms, the requisite
constancy of which was grounded in their derivation from God, the ultimate source
of everything and thus also of that in terms of which there was knowledge. This
was the metaphysics at the basis of Augustine's doctrine of "illumination". It was
essentially this doctrine which was carried over in the seventeenth century by
thinkers such as Descartes in their theory of "innate ideas" as that in terms of
which there is knowledge.
It was entailed in this metaphysical scheme, as Descartes, Spinoza and others
clearly saw, that the method of inquiry, more particularly the method of
metaphysical inquiry, had to be a deductive procedure from ultimate certain
premises. This determined the requirements of metaphysics as a discipline. The
prime requirement was to find the ultimate premises, and this was possible only
through an intuitive perception, their identity as ultimate and certain being
recognizable by their clarity and distinctness. This metaphysics of knowledge
seemed in the seventeenth century to be perfectly and admirably consistent with
the new science which was fundamentally mathematical. Descartes indeed conceived
thought per se, in so far as it proceeded soundly by deduction from ultimate
premises, as essentially mathematical; this pertained particularly to
philosophical, and especially metaphysical, thought in respect of which he
developed the conception of a mathesis universalis, a conception which was taken
over in its essentials by Spinoza and Leibniz-- and which inspired the development
of mathematical or symbolic logic in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The credibility of this metaphysics of knowledge was undermined by the increasing
recognition in the eighteenth century of the empirical component in scientific
inquiry, and that in respect of this the procedure of scientific inquiry was
inductive and not deductive at all. This situation generated a momentous crisis in
philosophical thought, particularly keenly appreciated by Hume: proceeding
deductively, as in logic and mathematics, evidently led to conclusions which were
certain, thereby fulfilling the claim to knowledge. Such certainty, and thus
knowledge in the strict sense was, on the other hand, not possible by the
empirical procedure of science, which could at most give probability. Kant came to
see that philosophy was faced with the urgent necessity of re-thinking the
conception of "knowledge," that unless a more satisfactory conception were
attainable the entire spectacular movement of modern science was doomed to be
recognized as not "science," i.e., "knowledge" in the strict sense, at all.
Kant's diagnosis of this crisis was that it was the outcome of an erroneous
fundamental presupposition with respect to knowledge. As he put in the preface to
the second edition of his Critique of Pure Reason2: "Hitherto it has been assumed
that all our knowledge must conform to objects". What was necessary to resolve the
crisis, Kant held, was a complete reorientation, in which the very opposite
assumption had to be adopted, namely that "objects must conform to our knowledge",
for only on this assumption would it "be possible to have knowledge of objects a
priori, determining something in regard to them prior to their being given". His
point is that knowledge, in the strict sense, of objects is not possible at all if
it be a posteriori--that gives probability and not knowledge; hence knowledge must
essentially be a priori. Only in this way could be secured, what Kant accepted
from the tradition, that "knowledge" connoted and entailed certainty. Indeed he
considerably enhanced this requirement by insisting on apodeictic certainty as the
sine qua non of knowledge: "Only that whose certainty can be called apodeictic can
be called science proper; cognition that can contain merely empirical certainty is
only improperly called science.3 This held particularly for scientific knowledge
of nature, since for it to be "science" or "knowledge" in the strict sense it had
to consist in an understanding of nature in terms of "universal law", and there
could not truly be such law if it were merely empirically derived, i.e. a
posteriori.
The Kantian reorientation turned on a reassessment of the "object". Traditionally
the object had typically been identified with what was taken to be the physical
being. Kant himself had done so in the physical monadology of his pre-critical
period. It is this identification which Kant abandoned. If there were to be
knowledge in the strict sense, then that identification of object known with
physical thing-in-itself would have to be rejected, for only by that rejection
would it be possible to secure the requirement of knowledge as a priori.
What was necessary was that the object in knowledge be determined by the ultimate
conditions of knowledge, by that in terms of which there is knowledge at all, and
this must be grounded in the knowing mind. To know necessarily presupposed
ultimate categories in terms of which there is understanding. Traditionally these
had been regarded as derivative from God; Kant held them to be grounded in the
very structure of the mind as capable of knowing. But that alone, as was clear
from Descartes' philosophy, was not sufficient for knowledge of the physical.
Knowledge of the physical demanded an empirical component, but that seemed
necessarily to entail the a posteriori. Further, the physical seemed to be
essentially spatio-temporal, i.e. involving in itself a spatial and temporal
structure, also cognizable only a posteriori. Carrying through the seventeenth-
century development which had removed from the physical the qualitative sensory
features, locating these instead in the experiencing subject, Kant took the
radical step of removing from the physical also the spatio-temporal, which had
seemed absolutely intrinsic to it, assigning this too to the experiencing subject,
as the a priori form of its perception--this was Kant's crucial innovation. Thus
the physical thing-in-itself was left deprived of all features in terms of which
it could be a known object. Instead in this new doctrine the known object was
revealed to be a synthetic product of the mind's activity of knowing. This meant
that the physical thing-in-itself was beyond knowledge, unknowable.
This revision of the conception of knowledge had profound consequences for the
conception of the nature of metaphysics, of its object and of its method.
Traditionally the ultimate object of metaphysics had been "what is", in the strict
sense that "what is" per se was the object, and as such was known. That is, in
this view metaphysical knowledge had to conform to and be determined by "what is"
as object. It followed from the conception of knowledge consequent upon Kant's
reorientation that "what is" per se could not be the object of metaphysical
knowledge. What was thus requisite for him was a rethinking of the nature of
metaphysics as a discipline productive of genuine knowledge. Since the inquiry
into knowledge is an inquiry which necessarily transcends all special inquiries it
must belong to metaphysics. For Kant the inquiry into knowledge became the primary
and essential concern and aim of metaphysics. That is, for him the object of
metaphysics became knowledge per se. This then determined the requirements for
metaphysics as a discipline. For Kant the primary task of metaphysics had to be a
"transcendental critique" of knowledge, in other words an inquiry into the
ultimate conditions a priori in terms of which there is knowledge. This meant that
it had to be an inquiry into thinking per se as productive of knowledge, into the
structure of thinking, and thus into the ultimate unconditioned grounds and
sources of knowledge. The determinations regarding knowledge thus arrived at
accordingly have a necessary priority to all other branches of metaphysics, such
as the metaphysics of nature and the metaphysics of morals, and must be
presupposed by these if these are to be accepted at all as constituting genuine
knowledge. This means that upon the basis of these determinations respecting the
ultimate conditions of knowledge it is then possible validly to proceed to the
determination of the requisites of, e.g. scientific knowledge of nature--such as
what is meant by "nature," by "natural law," etc.--and to the determination of the
nature of mathematics--this, according to Kant, being crucial since mathematics is
indispensable to the science, in the strict sense, of nature.
Kant's transcendental inquiry led him to the recognition, on the one hand, of
certain pure or a priori concepts or categories as the ultimates in terms of which
there is understanding, from which derive certain ideas as principles of reason;
and on the other hand, since knowledge is of natural things, to certain pure or a
priori forms of sensibility as necessary for there to be experience of natural
things. It will not be requisite for our purposes to enter into further details of
this doctrine.
The question has now to be raised respecting the method of this transcendental
inquiry or metaphysics, and of its justification. Kant is quite explicit that he
found his categories of the understanding by an examination of judgment; they were
what he saw to be entailed in the logical forms of judgment. This means that his
transcendental inquiry rested upon the presupposition of judgment as the
fundamental act of the mind, comprising within it all other acts of the mind--
again he is quite explicit about this.4 The point which is significant here is
that this is a presupposition of his inquiry. What is more, his inquiry involves
some further presuppositions, namely those of certain "faculties" of the mind--
such as the "understanding," "reason," "imagination," "sensibility." In other
words, Kant's transcendental inquiry into the ultimate conditions of knowledge
involves as a basic presupposition a particular analysis of the structure of the
mind; that is, this analysis of the structure of the mind is not itself the
outcome of inquiry, but is involved in his transcendental inquiry as a
presupposition.
We need accordingly to ask, what is the justification for this set of
presuppositions? Can it validly be maintained that they are self-evident? Such a
claim could hardly be plausible in view of the fact that other analyses of the
structure of the mind are possible and have in fact been made. Alternatively it
could be held that their justification is constituted by their coherently being
required for the consistent explanation of the possibility of knowledge as
entailing certainty--and this would indeed seem to be Kant's position. But what
does this imply with regard to Kant's method in his transcendental inquiry?
Evidently his method is not to start from a priori certainties; rather it starts
from presuppositions--which as such, are not certainties, but are subject to
justification. On the basis of these presuppositions he arrives at the categories
in terms of which apodeictic knowledge is possible. Can it be maintained that
having determined the categories in terms of which there is knowledge, we could
then know, have certain knowledge of, "judgment," the "understanding," "reason,"
etc.? This cannot be, since for Kant knowing entails judging, as it entails the
act of the understanding, so that none of these can themselves be "known"--they
constitute the presupposed conditions of knowing. Moreover, the categories,
according to Kant, are "pure concepts of the understanding which apply a priori to
objects of intuition in general,"5 and "understanding," "reason," etc. are not
"object of intuition"--for Kant "intuition" belongs solely to sensibility.6
I would submit that what is brought out by this examination of Kant's doctrine is
that what we have in it is a particular theory, a theory of knowledge, one among
possible theories, and as such standing in need of justification. Further, what is
highly relevant to our consideration is that this theory of Kant's is based upon
the presupposition of "knowledge" as entailing apodeictic certainty. It was the
intent to secure that condition, as we have seen, which constituted the basic
reason for Kant's philosophical reorientation and for his consequent theory of
knowledge and his new conception of metaphysics.
But it is precisely that presupposition respecting knowledge which has in our time
come into question. Accordingly it is no longer tenable simply to assume it or
accept it as a presupposition; it has itself to be subjected to inquiry. But if
that conception of what knowledge is be brought into question, therewith also is
Kant's basic reorientation brought into question; and this fundamentally affects
all those subsequent philosophical schools of thought which have followed Kant,
explicitly or implicitly, in that reorientation.
KNOWLEDGE, SCIENCE, AND METAPHYSICS
It has been developments in scientific thought in the last hundred years which
have had the result of bringing into question the inherited presuppositions
respecting knowledge. These developments, as we have seen earlier, had resulted in
the abandonment of the conception of natural law as absolute. As long as that
conception of natural 1aw persisted, it entailed that the discovery of natural law
constituted knowledge in the sense of certainty. But if natural law be not
absolute--perhaps being only statistical probability--then the discovery of
natural law could not constitute knowledge in the sense of certainty. The
consequence of this is that we are now being faced with the necessity of
rethinking the entire issue of knowledge, and indeed in a more thoroughgoing way
than has been done at any time since the classical period in Greece.
The issue of knowledge, as we have noted earlier, is not separable from the issue
concerning method of inquiry. Since the issue of knowledge has become crucial in
respect of science, the question of scientific method has to be brought into
special consideration with respect to the issue of knowledge. In fact appreciable
attention began being devoted, from the middle of the nineteenth century onward,
to the understanding of scientific method and particularly of the logic of
scientific method. The outcome has been the attainment of a vastly better
comprehension than was had previously of the procedure and logical structure of
induction. What especially became clear was the quite fundamental role of
"hypothesis" in induction and in scientific thought as a whole.
It is now well recognized that scientific inquiry proceeds by the postulation of
certain features as general to a field of relevant data, and by the testing of
that hypothesis in respect of its applicability and adequacy. When an hypothesis
receives a certain degree of acceptance as established it usually becomes
characterized as a "theory." The terminological change signifies the loss of the
earlier degree of tentativeness involved in the procedure, and which is signified
in the word "hypothesis." Further, the word "theory," with its etymological sense
of "a looking at, a view," has come to have the connotation of a system or scheme
of ideas, so that what is termed a "theory" tends to be something more elaborate
and coordinated than what is usually termed a "hypothesis." However, there is no
essential difference between the two, particularly with respect to their role in
scientific inquiry. The procedure of scientific inquiry is that hypotheses or
theories are developed in terms of which the relevant data are interpreted. The
data being "interpreted" in terms of the theory means that the data are revealed
as exhibiting the general features postulated by the theory or hypothesis; in
other words, the data are exhibited as conforming to "general laws." It is this
exhibition which constitutes scientific "understanding": those general features
are what "stand under" the data, characterizing their nature, what they are. The
theories which are accepted at any stage of scientific development are the best
attainable at that stage in respect of their comprehensiveness, applicability, and
adequacy. Further research usually reveals limitations and inadequacies,
necessitating amendment of the theories in question or their replacement.
With the recognition of theory as in this way fundamental in the method and nature
of scientific inquiry, we can see that scientific theory, by virtue of its being
"theory," is not something final, established, and beyond question; that is
scientific theory, as "theory," does not connote certainty. This is to say that
scientific theory does not constitute "knowledge" in the sense insisted upon by
Kant; it is precisely that conception of knowledge as entailing and connoting
certainty which is repudiated. Is the conclusion which is to be drawn from this
that we have here a conception of knowledge which pertains peculiarly to science?
This would seem improbably the case, for the following reason. There had earlier
been a strong tendency to distinguish the method of natural science from all
others--this is the tendency which had culminated in the doctrine of positivism.
But that tendency has come in the last hundred years to be reversed. The
recognition of the fundamental role of theory and hypothesis in scientific inquiry
has gradually brought the realization that this role of theory is by no means
confined to scientific inquiry. On the contrary it has become clear that theory is
equally fundamental in a range of other inquiries, including for example,
historical inquiry, theological inquiry, and philosophical inquiry in general and
metaphysics in particular. It is now readily recognizable that earlier
philosophers, such as for example those of the seventeenth century, despite their
conviction and analysis of philosophy as a deductive procedure, in fact proceeded
by the postulation of general theories--their deductive procedure being the
elaboration of the implications of their general theories into consistent systems.
Also, I have pointed out above that Kant's "transcendental critique" likewise was
constituted by the postulation of a general theory of knowledge and a theory of
the structure of the mind as requisite to his theory of knowledge. Since theory is
fundamental in the method of all these inquiries, it follows that not only does
scientific theory not constitute knowledge in the sense of certainty, but equally
others, such as historical theory, theological theory, and philosophical theory,
including metaphysical theory, do not constitute knowledge in the traditional
sense of certainty. A conception of knowledge different from the traditional one
is requisite in all these other fields as well.
THE THEORY OF THEORY
The delineation in detail of this new conception of knowledge is the task of
metaphysics, and it is one which is required to be undertaken with some urgency.
In other words, metaphysics has to engage in a renewed inquiry into the issue of
knowledge and of all that is involved in this issue. One most important factor in
this, as we have been seeing, is that of method of inquiry. What is now especially
pertinent in this respect is the question of method in metaphysics. Now we have
seen that method in metaphysics is not essentially different from that in science:
in both the procedure of inquiry is by the postulation of theory and the testing
of that theory.
But while science and metaphysics are fundamentally alike in that both are
"theories" or "theoretical structures," yet there are some most important
differences between them qua "theories." First, it is evident that they must
differ in respect of subject-matter. Both are general theories, but in science the
theory is general to certain restricted data, while in metaphysics there is no
such restriction in respect of data--metaphysical theory must pertain to all which
is. But there is another difference between them which is of basic importance; it
could indeed by seen as a corollary of the former. The complete generality of
metaphysics entails that it must pertain to not only all the special fields of
inquiry, but also equally to itself. That is to say, metaphysics as a completely
general theory must cover and apply to all special theories, and it must apply
also to itself. In other words metaphysical theory, in contrast to scientific and
other theory, must be self-reflexive theory.
This requirement is one of the utmost importance, more particularly so in the
light of metaphysics as "theory." This is specially pertinent to metaphysics in
respect of its task of producing a theory of knowledge. That theory must cover,
and be explicative of, knowledge in every domain of inquiry. That theory of
knowledge, however, must hold equally for itself. That is, it must be able
consistently to explain itself as a theory of knowledge, which means that it must
exhibit itself in terms of its theory of knowledge as itself being an instance of
knowledge.
This requirement of self-reflexivity can perhaps most readily be illustrated by
considering instances of its failure. I will take the Kantian metaphysics of
knowledge as such an instance. In Kant's transcendental doctrine knowledge is
constituted by apodeictic judgment, the doctrine itself specifying the conditions
of apodeictic judgment, such as that it has to be in terms of the pure concepts of
the understanding. But this doctrine is not itself a judgment, i.e., it is not an
instance of judgment, it giving only the conditions for apodeictic judgment. This
doctrine, rather, stands above judgment; this is the very meaning of its being
"transcendental." Thus in terms of that doctrine, the doctrine itself cannot be an
instance of knowledge; that is the doctrine cannot exhibit itself as "knowledge."
Now we have seen that Kant's transcendental doctrine is in fact a "theory," and
herein lies the fundamental difficulty in this doctrine. It is a "theory" of
knowledge, and it includes a "theory" of judgment, but--and this is its basic
deficiency--it has no "theory" of theory. The intention of this analysis of Kant's
metaphysics of knowledge is both to make clear the requirement of self-reflexivity
in metaphysical thought and theory, and to exhibit this requirement as a most
important test of the coherence and applicability of a metaphysical theory. In
this we have, I would submit, one most important requirement of metaphysics as a
discipline.
The elaboration of this requirement that metaphysics be self-reflexive theory
brings out a further task of metaphysics. It has not only to formulate a theory of
knowledge, but also, as part of that enterprise, to formulate a theory of theory.7
It is clear from what has been shown above that this theory of theory must also be
self-reflexive; that is, this theory must explain itself as a theory.
But what exactly is involved in this formulation of a theory of theory? First, it
must be emphasized that this formulation of a theory of theory cannot be
undertaken as preceding all metaphysical inquiry--to do so would be to court
failure in respect of the requirement of self-reflexiveness; rather, it must be an
intrinsic part of the entire enterprise of metaphysics, and indeed of metaphysics
in its fundamental aspect, that of ontology. This is to say, metaphysics must
raise, as a basic issue, that of the ontological status of "theory." What kind of
being is to be accorded to "theory"?
Theory can be, and has been, accorded the status of essentially "ideal" being:
that is, theory is regarded as an "idea" or "concept," a purely mental or thought
entity. This would seem to be, implicitly or explicitly, predominantly the
position of most modern metaphysics. This position, however, has the ineluctable
consequence of severing theory from its object, unless, following Kant, the object
itself be accorded the status of "ideal" being, i.e., of a thought entity. Thus on
this view or theory a scientific theory, for example, would not have natural
beings per se as its object. It is important to be clear that on this view
scientific theory can give us no knowledge at all about the world of nature in
itself.
The question faces us: what alternative to this is possible? That is to say, what
alternative is possible with respect to the ontological status of "theory"? Such
an alternative, I would submit, is possible by turning from the essentially
Neoplatonic ontology and its concomitant theory of perception, which has dominated
philosophical thought since the seventeenth century, to an essentially
Aristotelian ontology and theory of perception. Let us concentrate for the moment
on the theory of perception. On the Aristotelian position, in perception there is
an initial reception by the perceiver of the physical thing as object. From this
develops a process of mental or thought activity, one outcome of which is the
formation of a "thought," "idea," or "concept" about the object. To be validly a
"thought" about the physical entity as object, the physical thing itself must be
the object of that "thought." In other words, that thought must be attributed to
or proposed of that physical thing; that is, the physical thing itself must be the
subject of that "proposition." This means that the "proposition" must be a
synthesis of the physical thing, as received in perception, and the mental
"thought," "idea," or "concept." In this theory, contrary to Kant, the fundamental
synthetic entity in knowledge is not the "object," but a "proposition." A
"proposition" is not a "thought" alone--to use Kant's famous statement, "thoughts
without content are empty";8 the "content" must be constituted by the physical
thing as the subject of the "proposition."9 It is only in this way, by having the
physical things themselves included as the subjects of "propositions" that it is
possible to have knowledge of physical things. This constitutes the fundamental
strength and importance of the Aristotelian position.
Now "propositions" are the basis of hypothesis and theory. In fact, a
"proposition" is the most elementary form of hypothesis or theory; for a
"proposition" is a "proposal" of a certain predicative definiteness as
characterizing a physical particular. "Judgment" concerns the correctness or
incorrectness of that proposal; so that a judgment is exercised on a proposition,
and thus on an hypothesis or theory. What we have here is a singular proposition,
it having a single particular or set of particulars as its subject. A proposition
will be "general" if its proposal extends to any set of a certain sort of sets of
particulars; and it will be "universal" if the proposal covers all sorts of sets
of particulars.10 In this last case we have a metaphysical proposition, or a
metaphysical theory if the predicative proposal be sufficiently complex and
comprehensive. It should be noted that conscious perception is an instance of a
singular proposition. That is, conscious perception is not an "intuition," in the
etymological sense of a direct "looking at";11 conscious perception is a
proposal--a hypothesis or theory--of a certain selection of definitive features as
characterizing a set of physical particulars, the selection being the product of
mental activity. This means that the empirical method, in scientific and other
inquiry, is shot through and through, from beginning to end, by theory. This
metaphysical theory of knowledge cannot be elaborated in further detail here. I
will only point out that it conforms to the requirement of self-reflexiveness. For
according to this theory the procedure of inquiry by which knowledge is attained
is constituted by the postulation of theories, i.e. by the proposal of certain
predicative features as characterizing particulars, and by testing those theories
for applicability and adequacy. Integral and fundamental to this metaphysical
theory is a theory of theory, a theory which must accordingly, as metaphysical,
i.e., universal, apply to all instances of theory, including to itself as a
theory. This latter applicability is achieved by the theory of theory including a
universal theory, and by its being itself an instance of universal theory.
One further point needs to be brought out with regard to this metaphysical theory
of knowledge: it is respecting the conception of "knowledge" entailed in this
theory. This theory places a fundamental emphasis on procedure or method: this
theory is a theory respecting the procedure by which knowledge is attained, this
procedure fundamentally involving the postulation of theory. Thus knowledge is the
outcome of the procedure of inquiry. Since that procedure necessarily involves
theory, the outcome cannot be absolutely certain and final--i.e., knowledge in the
sense insisted upon by Kant and his predecessors, medieval and modern. The outcome
of the procedure of inquiry is rather a gradual approximation, an asymptotic
approach, to truth. That is to say, in the new conception "knowledge" does not
connote a final state, but rather a process of attainment.
THE DISCIPLINE OF METAPHYSICS
With the foregoing clarification of the nature of metaphysics, its method, and of
the conception of knowledge, we can deal relatively briefly with the most
important requirements for metaphysics as a discipline. The word "discipline" here
refers in one respect to metaphysics as a "system," in another to the method, the
conduct of the inquiry, and in a third to the order and control appropriate to the
inquiry. The last of these, it has been clear for centuries, needs most strongly
to be insisted on, because much of what has been produced under this title has
been rather "wild" and has tended to redound to the discredit of metaphysics. This
has been the consequence not only of the failure to exercise the orderly control
appropriate to the inquiry, but also of a failure to comprehend properly the
nature of the enterprise--an example of the latter is the view of metaphysics
which has gained some adherence in recent times, that of metaphysics as a species
of poetry.
In respect of all these senses of "discipline" and not only the last, in
metaphysics as in the other disciplines of inquiry, the first and indispensable
requirement is the logically consistent and coherent elaboration of the
implications of the basic theory to the fullest possible extent, and then the
unflinching facing up to those implications in respect to their applicability and
adequacy. Neither of these requirements is without considerable difficulty with
regard to their appropriate fulfillment, it sometimes taking generations of
thinkers to achieve those requirements, positively or negatively.
With regard to the first of these requirements, metaphysics is in a special
situation vis-a-vis the other disciplines because of its nature as extending over
all the others. This entails the necessity, as we have seen in the preceding
section, that metaphysics be self-reflexive. This means that the test of self-
reflexivity is in metaphysics a most important part of the testing of the theory
for its internal consistency and coherence.
As in every other intellectual discipline, so also in metaphysics the appropriate
orderly control of the inquiry must be grounded in its method. In metaphysics, as
in the special sciences as we have seen, the method is fundamentally the
postulation of theory and its testing. In the special sciences the testing is to a
considerable extent easier, because of the comparative restrictedness of the
relevant data. The wider the generality of the theory the greater is the
difficulty in assessing the applicability and adequacy of the theory under
consideration, and it is most difficult in the case of theories of the widest
generality or universality, namely those of metaphysics.
But there is another, and very special difficulty with regard to the testing of
theory which confronts all inquires, and metaphysics no less than the others,
though in the case of metaphysics this difficulty is even greater than in the
others. This difficulty is grounded in the fact of all inquiries necessarily
involving theory. The point is that the theory in terms of which the data are
interpreted necessarily determines the relevance of the evidence, so that what
does not accord with the theory is either not noticed at all, or in the extreme
case is dismissed as irrelevant, or at most is construed into a conformity with
the theory which is in fact only partial. Instances of these are legion in the
history of science and of philosophy. This point is especially evident in the
empirical inquiries, for as we have seen perception is shot through and through
with theory. But in the end the empirical component is significantly involved in
almost all inquiry,13 and quite definitely so in philosophy and in metaphysics
particularly.
Now that the basic role of theory in scientific and other inquiry has become ever
clear, there is requisite the concomitant recognition of the necessity for special
measures to overcome that difficulty involved in the very method of inquiry as
such, the more so since, contrary to the widely-held supposition of the recent
past, modern science and thought emulating science is no less susceptible to the
formation of orthodoxies dominating the organization of inquiry (university
departments, laboratories, professional associations, publication media, etc.)
hindering or suppressing the airing of alternative viewpoints and theories,
thereby seriously hampering inquiry and the search for knowledge and truth, and in
particular obstructing the adequate testing of theories. For it is only by the
sincere entertainment of theories alternative to our own, thereby enabling us to
see evidence which our theory has missed or not properly taken account of, that
there can be effective testing in respect of the applicability and adequacy of a
theory.
There is one other profound difficulty facing all inquiry, in the special sciences
and in metaphysics alike. This is constituted by the fact that the theories
postulated in the procedure of inquiry in some degree will inevitably involve
tacit assumptions and presuppositions. It is one of the particular tasks of
philosophy to inquire into and discover the assumptions and presuppositions
tacitly involved in the theories of the special sciences; this is a philosophical
task because the presuppositions in question are almost always ones which
transcend the special sciences under consideration, which is to say that the
presuppositions are essentially philosophical ones.
But philosophy itself, and metaphysics in particular, has the task of discovering
and critically examining its own presuppositions. This is a task of exceptional
difficulty; since these presuppositions are tacit, they are detectable only by
special methods. Fundamental in these must be comparison and contrast, for we can
see and recognize only by contrast and difference. But it is not sufficient to
compare and contrast only contemporary theories, for these could be exhibiting
common presuppositions, and most probably do.
To overcome this difficulty historical inquiry is indispensable. This, however,
itself faces special difficulties, for it is extremely easy to interpret past
theories in terms of present ones, thereby failing to find precisely what is being
looked for, namely the inherited presuppositions. The historical inquiry requisite
in this respect is an exceedingly difficult and exacting undertaking, demanding of
the inquirer a high degree of awareness of the possible intrusion of tacit
presuppositions in his own inquiry. This historical inquiry, especially in
metaphysics, needs to be pushed back to the beginnings of philosophical inquiry,
and indeed with particular emphasis on and attention to the tacit metaphysical
presuppositions involved in the very language of the originators of philosophical
theory.14 This historical inquiry is of the first order of importance to the
discipline of metaphysics, for without it we cannot be sure of what exactly is
involved in metaphysical theory at any subsequent stage. In other words, without
this historical inquiry it is impossible to make an adequate assessment of any
metaphysical theory.
It is only such a historical inquiry that will enable us to disentangle the
strands of inherited presuppositions which enter into the constitution of a later
theory--Heidegger's theory of being, for example, or Whitehead's theory of
prehension. Only thereby will we be able effectively and adequately to assess
theories for their consistency and coherence. For example, thereby we will be able
to see that Whitehead's theory of prehension involves a significant incoherence in
its combination, on the one hand, of an Aristotelian conception of the physical
entity included as object in the prehender, with, on the other, a Neoplatonic
conception of the act as belonging exclusively to the prehender.
The importance of this historical inquiry is not, however, restricted to its value
in respect of the assessment of theories for their consistency and coherence; it
is equally valuable in enabling a more effective assessment of the applicability
and adequacy of theories, since through that inquiry we are able to have so much
greater a discernment of what exactly is involved in the theories under
consideration.
But there is another equally considerable advantage accruing from the historical
inquiry into presuppositions. This in respect to the formulation of new theory.
Not only are we, as a consequence of the clarification of what exactly is involved
in concepts, rescued from falling into inconsistency and incoherence, but
correspondingly, viable alternatives become all the more readily visible and
available to us.
In summary, I would urge that this historical inquiry should be seen as
constituting a most important and highly valuable, indeed quite indispensable,
requirement in the discipline of metaphysics. We need to build on and carry much
further the great movement of historical inquiry begun in the nineteenth century,
but which has tended recently to have rather diminished. I see the possibility, on
the basis of this historical inquiry, of metaphysics in the future becoming a much
more strictly disciplined inquiry than it has on the whole been in the past, with
a consequent vast gain in respect of its rightful contribution to the entire world
of inquiry and learning.
Emory University
Atlanta, Georgia
NOTES
1. This has not been true of German, in which the word "Wissenschaft" has until
recently retained the wider denotation.
2. The following quotations are from the Norman Kemp Smith translation of Kant's
Critique of Pure Reason, B xvi.
3. I. Kant, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, tr. James Ellington (The
Library of Liberal Arts, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1970), Preface, p. 4.
4. Cf. Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, ed. Lewis White Beck (The
Library of Liberal Arts, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1950), Part II, par. 39,
Appendix to the Pure Science of Nature, Of the System of Categories (p. 71).
5. I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 105 (Kemp Smith, p. 113).
6. Cf. Prolegomena, Part II, par. 21a.
7. It was from conversations with Gottfried Martin shortly before his death that I
first fully began to appreciate the importance of a theory of theory. He was then
struggling with the problem, but I am not aware of his having arrived at a
solution. 8. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 51, B 75.
9. It will perhaps be recognized that I have here adumbrated Whitehead's theory of
"propositions". Cf. Process and Reality, Part II, Ch. IX.
10. Cf. Process and Reality, Part II, Ch. IX, Sect. I.
11. Plato has been correct in rejecting the earlier sense of noein as a direct
perceptual looking at, seeing the true state of affairs [cf. Kurt von Fritz, "nous
-and NOEIN in the Homeric Poems" (Classical Philology, XXXVIII, 1943, pp. 79-93)
and "nous, NOEIN and their derivatives in Pre-Socratic Philosophy" (Classical
Philology, XL, 1945, pp. 223-242, and XLI, 1946, pp. 12-34; reprinted in The Pre-
Socratics, ed. A.P.D. Mourelatos (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1974, pp. 23-
85)], accepting from Parmenides that it is an intellectual insight or intuition.
12. The adequate demonstration of this is only possible by the elaboration of an
entire metaphysical system, which is of course not possible here.
13. The most notable exception here is the kind of inquiry of which pure
mathematics is the most prominent instance. The "theory" involved in pure
mathematics is not a "proposition" as in scientific theory and philosophical
theory, since it does not include physical entities as its subject--there has in
the past been a great deal of confusion in thought as a result of a failure to
make the requisite distinction. The clarification of the ontological status of
mathematics is a most important part of the task of metaphysics.
14. A very good example of this kind of inquiry is that of Kurt von Fritz in the
papers mentioned in note 11 above.
CHAPTER II
METAPHYSICS
and the
ARCHITECTONIC OF SYSTEMS
REINER WIEHL
METAPHYSICS AS THE SCIENCE OF SUBSTANCE
I shall begin my observations with a very general and provisional definition of
the concept of metaphysics: metaphysics is the theoretical preoccupation with the
ultimately fundamental things. In saying this I speak intentionally of theory and
not of science (scientia) and doctrine (doctrina). In this way I can, for the time
being, exclude one of the most controversial questions, namely, whether
metaphysics is a science and doctrine in any sense and on what conditions it could
possibly become such. With this provisional definition I also avoid intentionally
any talk of man as such. For this, too, would anticipate a major point of
controversy in metaphysics, namely, whether as a particular being amongst others
man is in any sense an object of metaphysical cognition, or whether such an object
must be traced to something more fundamental whose concept forms the necessary
condition for all human knowledge, and finally to man's knowledge of himself.
According to the above formula for the concept of metaphysics, the definition of
its nature requires finding a valid definition of what is fundamental and of the
theory thereof. The following provisional description of what is fundamental may
suffice here: it must be fourfold, namely, be most comprehensive, most general,
most real, and finally most perfect. The manner of dealing theoretically with this
fourfold fundamental may be characterized as thought. A more terminological
version might say that metaphysics is the logic of substance, but it is more than
the mental examination of this or that basic feature of things.
Unity and Eternity
It can be said with some justification that theoretical physics, as the science of
the laws of nature, changes into a metaphysics of nature precisely when the
established laws of nature can be seen to be the most general laws of this kind.
Similarly, ethics, as the theory of human action and of successful human life,
becomes a metaphysics of morals at the point at which it is concerned not only
with the acceptance and rejection of certain currently operative norms of human
conduct, but also with the absolutely perfect as the most comprehensive
determining factor of human existence. Inherent in metaphysics' specific way of
considering objects is a tendency towards unity, a drive towards examining the
interconnection between the various single elements of things.
Metaphysics, as the logic of substance, is the theory of the unity of substance,
the knowledge of the fundamental connection between the elements of things. The
corresponding attribute "metaphysical," when understood in this very general
sense, is not a specific characteristic of ancient philosophy in contrast to
modern philosophy. It describes just as well the early modern philosophical
rationalism of Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, and the speculative systems of
idealism of Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. Kant's famous proposition in the
introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason is most certainly right: "In all men,
as soon as their reason has become ripe for speculation, there has always existed
and will always continue to exist some kind of metaphysics." (B 21) Our present
time too has a characteristic metaphysics which, however, hidden and repressed it
might be, must somehow disclose its distinctiveness and permit its comparison with
the familiar images of traditional metaphysics.
That metaphysics as a whole presents an appearance which is diversely entangled,
if not even full of contradictions, is not generally disputed by its "friends and
foes," but noted repeatedly. It is equally indisputable that this inconstant
appearance has repeatedly, and in many different ways, given cause for reflection.
The judgment and the evaluation of change in metaphysics is in turn subject to
change, and facilitates different intellectual conclusions. Scepticism as regards
the possibility of metaphysical knowledge is one such consequence; the design of a
new architectonic for a metaphysical system is another. If it is at all
permissible to speak of a modern metaphysics, this distinguishes itself from the
traditional metaphysics of the antiquity and of early modern times by its
concomitant historical consciousness, that is, by consciousness of the
constitutive character of its own temporality.
That such a consciousness was lacking in the old metaphysics, or at least was not
constitutive of it, both leaves its mark on that kind of metaphysics and makes
possible via negationis a description of modern metaphysics. The old metaphysics
conceived its object, substance, from the definitive viewpoint of timelessness, or
being beyond time; to take Spinoza's famous formula: sub specie aeternitatis. This
kind of observation seems on the one hand to be mapped out by the object, the
absolute substance in its various essential features. The comprehensive whole, the
general and the law-like, the actual and concrete, the perfect and best, when seen
in its respective fundamental and substantial character, all seem to call
inevitably for the idea of the everlasting, of the being able to be such and not
other. This consideration of objects sub specie aeternitatis seems to be evoked
just as necessarily by the types of investigation, i.e., the logic of substance.
Thought in this type of investigation must be conceived as adequate to its object
and related to it in a certain way. Accordingly, thought counts as substantial and
even fundamental with regard to substance.
Ancient and Modern Truth.
Metaphysical knowledge, therefore,as the logic of substance and the theory of its
unity, takes the form of an absolute foundation. However, this absolute foundation
need not completely exclude the idea of change with regard to absolute substance.
Rather, change belongs among the most evident essential features of things and
must have a systematic place within the foundation. As a result the various
essential features of substance as such and their unity reveal a correspondingly
varying affinity to change. Thus, reality seems more probably to be compatible
with change than with perfection, with the comprehensive whole than with the
general and law-like. In considering objects sub specie aeternitatis in regard to
the idea of absolute immutability the old metaphysics reaches only the boundary at
which problems emerge; it does not move beyond this boundary to the concept of a
metaphysics, which, in accordance with its essence, is changeable: this boundary
is set by the truth in classical metaphysics. It is not merely that the object of
metaphysical thought, namely, substance, was conceived sub specie aeternitatis,
nor that the manner of metaphysical cognition as the foundation of substance arose
in thought sub specie aeternitatis, but above all that the aim of the foundation,
namely, truth as absolute and fundamental, was understood only in relation to the
eternal. The main problem of the traditional logic of substance as founded sub
specie aeternitatis was the basis of the obviously essential features of things,
motion and rest. This foundation implied a quite analogous problem for the
corresponding theory of the unity of substance, namely, the basis of truth and
falsity. These problems were intensified by the distinctive character of an
intellectual foundation in terms of eternity, in relation to which motion seemed
especially problematic. Thus ancient philosophy attempted to solve these two basic
problems by putting forward analogous paradoxes: that both motion and falsity are
non-existent and their reality a mere illusion. Besides Scepticism, Eleatism and
Sophism were the great challengers of ancient ontology and metaphysics, and one of
the great intellectual endeavors of classical Greek philosophy was to "save"
motion as well as falsity and deception.
Plato's Theaetetus is the impressive document of this rescue attempt. Classical
ancient philosophy created paradigms for a foundation not only of motion and rest,
but also of truth and untruth, the latter in conjunction with the development of a
classical form of philosophical criticism. Truth is thereby absolutely
distinguished from mere correctness of perception, opinion and certain conduct.
This difference results on the one hand, from the direct relationship of truth to
knowledge as the foundation of substance whence truth gains its specific
characteristics of constancy and necessity. On the other hand, these criteria
clarify why a distinction has to be made between truth and correctness. Human
behaviour which is concerned with correctness must be possible even when the
knowledge guiding this conduct is imperfect. Further, this knowledge must be
applied to a certain situation and thereby be necessarily limited.
The human knowledge guiding action need be assured only as provisional, not as
fundamental knowledge. Correctness and incorrectness change from case to case and
allow for examination in each case. The relationship between truth and untruth is
something quite different. The possibility of a philosophical critique demands
that untruth find its systematic place within a foundation of substance. The
result of this for the relationship between untruth and truth that is this: 1)
untruth is given only under presupposition of truth and in relation to it--and is
defined as such (veritas est index veri et falsi); 2) untruth is both well
distinguished from truth, and not distinguished from it, since it is truth not as
such, but only when regarded from a limited and particular standpoint and on the
specific conditions of this limitation; 3) accordingly truth relates to untruth,
not as if the latter were something quite different, but as truth in a specific
imperfection: a provisional truth, which has not yet been recognized in regard to
the conditions of its specific limitation, and which therefore is not yet
absolutely comprehensive, general, actual and perfect truth; and 4) the
relationship between untruth and truth is to be conceived of under these
fundamental conditions as the specific movement of truth itself, as the way and
method which has as its goal a comprehensive, general and complete knowledge of
truth.
A movement is differentiated according to its various phases, a method is
structured according to its single, constitutive steps. Each phase of the movement
of truth, each of its methodical steps is determined by the following formal
aspects or moments: a) positing a definite and limited standpoint, and the
definition thereof; b) reflection on the essential conditions of this positing and
the definition thereof in relation to the above definition of positing; c) the
synthesis of both the given definitions and the definition of their correlation;
d) positing this synthesis as of a limited standpoint and reflection on its
relationship to the initially posited standpoint with a view to gaining a more
general and comprehensive standpoint.
As has already been said: not only did classical ancient ontology and metaphysics
avoid Scepticism, it tried also to overcome the paradoxes of Eleatism and Sophism.
Its most important discovery in this endeavour was that of the constitutive
correlation of truth and method in the most general sense. In spite of this
discovery it did not succeed in bringing the concepts of motion and truth into
complete harmony with the idea of substance and its grounding. Nor was the tension
between truth and correctness, knowledge and opinion resolved; this continued as
tension between an ontology of substance and a pragmatic ethics in modern times.
Metaphysics in the modern age has placed itself deliberately traditional in the
context of ancient metaphysics and has attempted at the same time to reconcile
this tradition with the spirit of modern scientism. This is especially true of
Hegel's superb attempt to solve all the problems of traditional metaphysics by
changing the contradictions in its appearance into constitutive phases of the
movement of truth, into dialectical steps of the metaphysical cognition of truth.
Hegel himself understood this systematic reconstruction as the completion of truth
and the end of the history of metaphysics. For this systematic reconstruction he
coined the formula of the subjectivization of substance, and determined
subjectivity as the principle by means of which the ancient idea of truth could be
completed in the changed conditions of the modern age. That formula of the
subjectivization of substance, as well as the principle of subjectivity, is
exposed to obvious misunderstandings. It is not wrong to speak of a revision of
the traditional ontology of substance in favor of an ontology of subjectivity, but
it would be wrong to see in this revision a fundamentally new ontology. It is not
as if the traditional logic of substance were replaced by a logic of motion and
the idea of a grounding of substance in pure thought were invalidated. It would be
more appropriate to speak not of such a revision, but of a reversion of the
traditional priorities in the relationship of the object, method and truth of
knowledge.
Method and Knowledge.
For ancient ontology and metaphysics it was almost self-evident that the object
had the first priority in this relationship. Especially at those times when it
wished to proceed methodically, knowledge had to orientate itself by the essence
of the thing and its inner structure. It was exactly against these pretended
essence of the thing that the degree of the compulsoriness of knowledge and its
method was to be measured. The philosophy of early modern times reversed this
relationship. It raised knowledge to the first principle and made its inner
structure the methodical order according to which every possible objective order
was to find its orientation.
In his systematic construction of the perfectly completed metaphysics Hegel tried
to combine the objective priority of ancient philosophy with the methodical
priority of the modern. In this way, the thinking of the antiquity was to be
reconciled with that of the modern age. This was to happen through holding the
concept of truth to be the first principle just as the antiquity had in fore-
knowledge understood it, but by viewing this concept at the same time as
inseparable from the method of cognition. Reflexivity, processuality and
subjectivity became the supreme principles, because of the idea of truth in
antiquity and in order to penetrate that idea conceptually in the philosophy of
modern times. Reflexivity meant primarily the absolute relationship of completed
truth to itself in each of its limited and conditional modes of appearance.
Processuality meant primarily the movement of truth in its various constitutive
phases, such that in each step the previous and the subsequent were also
considered. Subjectivity was awareness of one's own external conditions, thereby
becoming aware of one's own specific limit, and thus expanding the scope of one's
effectiveness.
Reflexivity, processuality and subjectivity belonged inseparably in the unity of
the concept of truth and its methodical movement. In this context the essential
features of truth itself were to provide the standard by which the essential
features of things were to be measured, which were to be ordered according to
their respective relationship to this standard. Thus, the methodical order of
metaphysics looked in principle like this: the comprehensive whole becomes an
absolute totality through the gradual expansion of its respective, limited
entities; the conceptual-general becomes a concrete-general through a gradual
concretization of the abstract; the real-actual becomes finally actual and
actualized freedom through a phased actualization of more and more real
possibilities; and the perfect is completed by the gradual, methodical completion
of the unity of the comprehensive whole, the concrete general and the truly free
in the absolute unity of thought. This construction of the system of completed
metaphysics has, through its consciousness, brought the history of this
metaphysics to a close. It is true that it has not produced the historical
consciousness as such, but it has made a quite considerable contribution to the
profound change which the function of this consciousness, in regard to the
continuation of the metaphysical tradition, has gone through.
The general concept and nature of modern historical consciousness constitutes an
exceptional paradox in connection with the idea of metaphysics. For, as the
consciousness of a modern metaphysics, it is in no way simply the consciousness of
the truth of a methodical movement, a history continually pressing for self-
fulfillment. Nor can this consciousness be interpreted as equivalent to the
consciousness of an advance of metaphysics toward its necessary conclusion.
Finally, neither is this historical consciousness an absolute scepticism towards
the whole tradition of metaphysics or an awareness of its definitive end. Modern
historical consciousness, by which metaphysics is bound, is as divisive as it is
conflicting. It divides every possible metaphysical standpoint into one inside and
one outside of metaphysics, and thus into a halved metaphysical standpoint.
Thereby the respective specific limitations of this standpoint becomes, together
with its ontological conditions, conditioned in two ways. It is no longer only a
limitation made by another limited standpoint of metaphysics and its metaphysical
requirements, but beyond this it is also and mainly a limitation by a certain non-
metaphysical standpoint and its definition.
The Reduced Concept of Metaphysics.
Metaphysics today seems to concern itself less directly with the general
foundations of things and their grounding, than with this and that phenomenon as a
mere phenomenon. For this metaphysical phenomenalism the understanding and
interpretation of certain individual traits of metaphysics wins absolute priority,
while what lies behind these metaphysical phenomena evades intellectual
consideration. Historical consciousness is essentially related to relativity and
scepticism. But this consciousness is not a certain scepticism, which would itself
be based on a certain concept of truth, thus facilitating its constant connection
back to an ontology and alethiology. Rather, the scepticism of the historical
consciousness of modern metaphysics is based on withholding judgment in regard to
the validity of this or that concept of truth, or even in regard to any
conceivable concept of truth at all. Such scepticism is compatible with the idea
of a system, but not with the implementation of a system as self-contained and
final. It can only accept systems as provisional, and a temporal succession of
such systems only as a manifold of alternatives of various intellectual-linguistic
phenomena of expression of fundamental importance. The historical consciousness in
metaphysics certainly contributes today to that extreme, intellectual reserve,
which allows only a consideration of certain traits of a traditional metaphysical
system with regard to particular qualities and their relations.
Amongst these qualities, that of inconsistency plays an outstanding role, in part
because a construction of partial traits appropriate to it is relatively easy to
contrive. Also from such a construction conclusions for re-ordering can be drawn
relatively easily without the inconsistency having to be sounded out and the
consequences of the specific purge having to be thought through to a conclusion.
Hand-in-hand with this withholding of judgment by the historical consciousness
goes the doubt regarding the traditional idea of a grounding of substance through
thought. This doubt leads in turn to a gradual reduction in previously binding
form of the definition of the intellectual-linguistic expression in metaphysical
thought. With this, the fundamental way of looking at a problem of metaphysics
begins to change. Just as important, if not more important than the grounding of
substance through thought, becomes the question of the understanding and
interpretation of the varying forms of such a grounding. With that, the problem of
the grounding of interpretation, especially with regard to traditional
metaphysics, gradually begins to be of consequence; alongside a hermeneutics of
metaphysics there emerges a metaphysics of hermeneutics.
THE PLURALITY OF STANDPOINTS
AND PHILOSOPHICAL CRITICISM
With his systematic construction of the completion of the history of metaphysics,
Hegel not only constructed the undertaking of thinking through from scratch
antiquity's concept of truth in terms of the conditions of modern philosophy,
namely, the principles of reflexivity, processuality and subjectivity. At the same
time he sharpened beyond recognition the characteristic of ancient philosophy:
philosophical critique demanded that one "put oneself into the power of one's
opponent." Ancient philosophy knew its external standpoints as partially opposite
points of view. Such positions, running at least partially counter to philosophy,
were: the standpoint of the natural attitude to life and of the common-sense
knowledge of perception and experience, the standpoint of human ability and of the
mastery of a particular technique, the standpoint of true knowledge as reached in
science, and, finally, the standpoint of practical shrewdness and of moral
insight.
The Integration of Perspectives in a Fundamental Ontology.
All these positions were so fundamental in ancient Greek philosophy that it did
not wish to exclude them completely from the general grounding. It was more a case
of bringing them into relation with the ontology of substance, of showing them
their specific limit in the foundation and of letting them by degrees take their
part in it. In this way, the above positions were by no means only opposite points
of view or external standpoints; rather, they marked out points of transition into
the philosophical grounding of substance. The ancient grounding of substance, its
theory of the substantial unity of things, saw itself as the science ((episteme)
of principles (archai), as a well-ordered, true knowledge of the foundations of
the Being-that-truly-is (to ontos on, ousia). The first fundamental principles of
this being are not regarded here as located exclusively in the philosophical
grounding of ontology. Rather, the foundations of things are so conceived that as
principles they pervade all areas of the world accessible to man; they establish
the structure of the order thereof and thus also have their place in those
positions which seem external to philosophical ontology.
Thusfar, we have seen the principles as facilitating the transition and gradual
integration of these positions into ontology. At the same time, however, the
specific imperfection of the related area is revealed in the particular manner of
the conception of these principles from such an external standpoint. Principles
form the basis of natural perception and experience, but they are comprehended
only sensuously, if at all, in this area rather than in their truly fundamental
function. That is why this area is also an area of contingency and demands that
its knowledge be secured through technique and science. A particular technique
gives man the security of a specific ability which connects skill both with
experience and with a particular knowledge of rules, regularities and causes. But
a technique is aimed at a knowledge of causes, not for its own sake, but rather
only insofar as this knowledge guarantees the security of ability. That is why the
technical knowledge of causes remains in the end without a base and open to being
revised and falsified.
What first connects the individual science with the individual technique is the
generality of the knowledge of causes. At the same time, it differentiates itself
from technique by examining the causes of its own area for their own sake; in so
doing it directs itself towards the most general and fundamental causes. That is
why the philosophy of antiquity sees in the idea of science some constitutive
reference to a science of principles, which, pursued for its own sake, seeks the
first causes of the Being-that-truly-is. But above all principles determine the
area
of human action and conduct; and practical knowledge and moral wisdom also refer,
as a knowledge of principles, to the unified general view of a science of
principles.
Accordingly, one can make this generalization: in relation to philosophical
ontology there are as many external positions to be distinguished as there are
basically varying principles, varying conditions, and kinds and modes of their
conception. To the degree that philosophical ontology is able to integrate these
external positions, the order of the external positions will be revealed through
the order of principles. The ancient science of principles was able to regard
itself as a fundamental science and so at the same time as the most universal
science in relation to its external positions. At the same time, it also claimed
thereby to be the most rational and well-founded science. The maximum of
rationality claimed was understood as a maximum knowledge of principles inasmuch
as it no longer conceived of this from a special mode of access, as they appear
for men (pros humas) and under specific, respective conditions of access, but in
their true condition, actually, as the first elements (ta prosa, ta stooicheia) of
the Being-that-truly-is (to alethes).
Finally, that science of principles also saw itself as the highest and most
perfect and most worthy science, not so much because it was able to demonstrate
its maximum of universality and rationality in relation to its external positions,
but as a science of the highest, most perfect and most worthy--as "Theology." This
claimed maximum of good was given not exclusively as an activity for its own sake,
but through the nature of the object as the Being-that-truly-is, namely, the
divinity of this being and of its truth and beauty. The ancient science of
principles was a theory of the fundamental, hierarchic order of things in relation
to this fundamental science and its own inner order. But this hierarchic order is
and remains a manifold one; it is diversely structured according to the many
external standpoints and the corresponding manner of condition and mode of
conception of its principles.
The natural world, that of ordinary life (Lebenswelt),is ordered according to the
hierarchy of the importance of its goods. To a certain degree this order is
followed in the ordering of its techniques, but only to a certain degree. For a
guiding, architectonic technique is defined as such in comparison to other
techniques as having a superior goal, not only according to the standards of the
generally accepted material order of goods, but also according to internal,
"technical" criteria. The order of the sciences also touches the hierarchy of the
other orders without being congruent with the order of technique regarding the
essentials and causes, or with that of ethics regarding the norm of the end in
itself. Finally, the hierarchy of values and goods in ethics and politics concerns
all these hierarchies of values from the viewpoints of their possible realization
and of truth, and thereby assumes an all-important function as a standpoint
external to philosophical ontology. In their relations all these hierarchies
orientate themselves according to the manifoldness of the value maxims of the
science of principles.
External and Internal Standpoints.
Through the systematic construction of its completed history, Hegel posited
ontology and metaphysics absolutely; by so doing he negated the multiplicity of
possible, external standpoints. This absolute positing occurred on the deliberate
condition that modern thought and its philosophy allows itself to be reduced to
one single, essential, pre-ontological standpoint, which requires integration into
modern ontology; namely, to the standpoint of a finite human consciousness and the
inseparably connected ideas of an absolute and methodically self-organizing
science. This modern integration of a pre-ontological standpoint into ontology
proceeded in its methodology in a dialectical and epagogical way. Like ancient
philosophical critique it used analogy in regard to the condition and modes of
conception of identical principles. But the reduction of multiple possible stand-
points external to ontology to a single one was necessarily combined with a
reduction of the manifoldness of analogy in the use of principles to one single,
absolute analogy; namely, to the analogy of the principles of consciousness and
subjectivity in regard to the identical principle of truth. By means of this
single and absolute analogy a pre-ontological theory of the history of
consciousness was related to an ontology of the occurrence of truth.
The necessary result of this was the singleness and absoluteness of one hierarchy,
namely, that of the methodical steps of the explication of truth itself. Like all
mediations of opposites, this unique attempt at a "reconciliation" of modern
thought with that of the antiquity could not help, abstracting at least in some
respect from the specific peculiarity of the opposing relata. This is as true of
the peculiarity of ancient thought as for modern thought. However much Hegel's
concept of truth is related to that of antiquity in regard to the essential
features stated above, it is equally far from it in regard to the consequence of
having one single and absolute valid hierarchy of values (if one disregards the
manifestations of late Platonism).
Metaphysics and the Natural Sciences:
Causality and Universality
But the specific nature of modern thought is also insufficiently defined in this
mediation. This peculiarity does not lie in making the principle of consciousness
the unique principle, nor in binding this consciousness to the idea of an
absolutely valid universal science, but in defining this as a mathematic,
empirical natural science. One can say with a certain justification that in modern
times it is precisely this science which forms the only relevant external position
to ontology and metaphysics. But it can just as well be said that in terms of its
conscious self-understanding this universal, modern natural science is nothing
other than a modern metaphysics.
In this twofold manner of speaking the dilemma of modern metaphysics becomes clear
as resulting from the singleness of an external position to it. Either modern
metaphysics regards itself with respect to the new universal natural science as
the absolute foundation and tries by means of this, its own grounding, to
integrate the other science as a pre-ontological knowledge according to its own
standards of truth; or the opposite case occurs, and the modern universal natural
science which makes of itself the absolute foundation and, if need be,
appropriates elements of metaphysics according to its own methodology.
The modern, universal natural science, when understood as metaphysics,
distinguishes itself from the traditional science of principles first
fundamentally in regard to its methodology. The method of the latter was based on
a definition of the nature of pure thought, as for example that of the external on
observation and experiment on the one hand, and the application of mathematics and
geometry on the other. It is evident that this difference in the methodical basis
was bound to imply a correspondingly fundamental difference in regard to the
concept of rationality and to the standards of evaluation thereof. Above all
however, the modern universal natural science, when regarded as modern
metaphysics, is to be understood from the viewpoint of its reductive character. It
reduces to a minimum not only Aristotle's theory of a diversity of modes of
causality, but also the above-mentioned diversity of the essential features of
things.
Amongst these, first and foremost, only the element of generality and of maximum
universality seems able to maintain its uncontested validity; with it the norm of
true knowledge as of a universally valid and necessary one is preserved. Less
uncontested, but nevertheless still valid, is the element of the comprehensive
whole also in regard to the idea of a maximum totality and in the form of a
concept of the extensive continuum, which can be conceived of both as a
comprehensive whole and as the form of the absolute totality of being.
Difficulties arise here from linking this concept to the corresponding idea of a
maximum. On the other hand, in the metaphysics of modern, universal natural
science the fundamental concept of the real and of actuality becomes precarious,
first of all as such, and then especially the corresponding ideas of a maximum and
of a hierarchy of realities.
Finally, the element of perfection becomes quite dubious, which, in the form of
the idea of the good and the causa finalis, played such an important role in the
ontology of the ancients. There seems to be no autonomous place to be found for
this element in the new metaphysics of natural science. Here the reductive
character of this metaphysics emerges especially sharply, for perfection imagined
in respect to the idea of a maximum here reduces itself to the function of a
regulatively interpreted, relative maximum of generality, compulsoriness of
validity and uniformity of theory of this universal science.
But most importantly the consequence of the described reduction for Hegel's
foundation of speculative ontology is none other than that there can only be one
single and absolutely valid hierarchy, namely, the hierarchy of generality and
universal validity. Only the interpretation of this single and absolute hierarchy
differs here and there: on the one hand, a hierarchy of degrees of freedom, on the
other, a hierarchy of degrees of probability.
The Idea of Reflection.
Modern metaphysics constitutes itself as the antithesis between a metaphysics of
nature and a metaphysics of freedom. But its modern character is at first only
very superficially characterized by this antithesis. Hegel was not the last who
tried to give metaphysics a new basis, and the manner of his new kind of grounding
was not the only definitive one, despite its far-reaching effects. Amongst the
previous attempts at providing a new foundation, undoubtedly those of Kant and
Leibniz were especially important, above all because both were directly involved
with the specific nature of this modern natural science. However, the manner of
involvement was highly different.
The so-called rational metaphysics of early modern times in its specific
expression in Leibniz had its special characteristics in the fact that, so to
speak in a countermove to empirical science, it gives first priority to the
element of perfection of all other, varying substantial elements of things and
thereby to the idea of a maximum of such perfection and to a hierarchy of objects
oriented to this standard. Accordingly, it is also secondary to this basic concept
that the norm of rationality of theory and the norm of its order are oriented. In
this groundwork of a theory of substance a maximum of perfection means moral
perfection of a highest being, in which a maximum of freedom is combined with a
maximum of conceivable good (ens perfectissimum). By this maximum are measured the
degrees of freedom and the sequence of goods. But perfection also defines the
element of the actual and the real, both absolutely as well as in regard to the
maximum of reality. Just as the highest perfection coincides with the highest
reality (ens realissimum), so in each individual finite thing the degree of its
reality corresponds to the standard of its perfection, measured by the standard of
perfection and reality.
Perfection also determines the comprehensive whole in its respective, unified
totality: the highest monad, which takes into itself all other monads and which at
the same time is the most real and perfect. And finally, the substantial element
of universality also receives its determination by the element of perfection of an
act of cognition: an act of knowledge is perfect as the adequate and complete act
of cognition of a being with regard to the degree of its reality and perfection
and in respect to the comprehensive whole as the maximum of the perfect unity.
Consequently, the element of perfection (perfectio) carries above all in this
modern foundation of ontology the burden of providing a basis for a rational
science of principles in relation to the universal science of nature. Kant's
critique of this foundation has many sides, but it can be especially understood as
a critique of the fundamental function of the concept of perfection. According to
that critique, this concept is not sufficient to fulfill all those functions,
especially not to define the rationality of the fundamental science and to mark
out the limit between it and empirical natural science.
It is well known that on the basis of this critical recognition and for the first
time in the history of modern philosophy, Kant put the real, critical question in
regard to metaphysics: how is this possible as a science. One can best paraphrase
the most important starting point of his observations as follows: he saw that as a
science of principles metaphysics was clearly and evidently distinguishable from
the empirical natural science, but in that regard to the norm of rationality it
could not be fundamentally different. That was the reason for his undertaking to
find a new ground for metaphysics as a science by examining the methodical
foundations of the modern natural science, mathematics and empiricism with regard
to their principal foundations. It was the reason also for his attempt, by means
of a methodical distinction between analytical and synthetic knowledge on the one
hand and knowledge a priori and knowledge a posteriori on the other, to find the
requirements for an appropriate definition both of the rationality of metaphysics
and at the same time of the modern natural sciences. In the answer to the
question--how are synthetic judgments a priori possible--he thought he could find
the key to solving the whole cluster of problems. But was the last formulation of
the question in itself sufficient to provide a new basis for metaphysics also and
above all as a science? Had not this critique of the principle of perfection
expressly put into question the possibility of an internal order of such a
science?
The Art of Construction.
The second main part of the Critique of Pure Reason, "The Transcendental Doctrine
of Method," in its third main chapter entitled "The Architectonic of Pure Reason,"
brings the importance of this formulation clearly to the fore:
By an architectonic I understand the art of constructing systems. As systematic
unity is what first raises ordinary knowledge to the rank of science, that is,
makes a system out of a mere aggregate of knowledge, architectonic is the doctrine
of the scientific in our knowledge, and therefore necessarily forms part of the
doctrine of method. (Italics mine.)
To the above, Kant adds something like a provisional philosophical definition of
the concept of system:
By a system I understand the unity of the manifold modes of knowledge under one
idea. This idea is the concept provided by reason--of the form of a whole--insofar
as the concept determines a priori not only the scope of its manifold content, but
also the positions which the parts occupy relatively to one another. The
scientific concept of reason contains, therefore, the end and the form of that
whole which is congruent with this requirement.
He explains this unity of form by means of an analogy with the animal organism:
The whole is thus an organized unity (articulatio), and not an aggregate
(coacervatio). It may grow from within (per intus-susceptionem), but not by
external addition (per appositionem). It is thus like an animal body, the growth
of which is not by the addition of a new member, but by the rendering of each
member, without change of proportion, stronger and more effective for its
purposes.
But how is this system of pure reason to be realized, and thereby metaphysics to
be a science? On what conditions does an art of systems stand at all?
The critique of reason is needed, and it "in the end, necessarily leads to
scientific knowledge; while its dogmatic employment, on the other hand, lands us
in dogmatic assertions to which other assertions, equally specious, can always be
opposed--that is, in scepticism." (Introduction, B22/23). It is, accordingly, this
critique of reason, from which is to be expected, not only the answer to the
question how metaphysics is at all possible, namely as synthetic knowledge from a
priori concepts, but above all, how it is possible as a science. Kant described
the relationship between the critique of reason and the science of metaphysics
which has to be grounded anew by means of the concept of transcendental
philosophy: "I entitle transcendental all knowledge which is occupied not so much
with objects as with the mode of our knowledge of objects insofar as this mode of
knowledge is to be possible a priori. A system of such concept might be entitled
transcendental philosophy" (Introduction, B25; italics mine).
But the critique of pure reason in no way coincides with transcendental
philosophy. It only forms its beginning, because the latter "must contain, with
completeness, both kinds of a priori knowledge, the analytic no less than the
synthetic," while in The Critique of Pure Reason "we have to carry the analysis so
far only as is indispensably necessary in order to comprehend, in their whole
extent, the principles of a priori synthesis, with which alone we are called upon
to deal." (Ibid). It is Kant's transcendental philosophy, that is philosophical
ontology as the first part of the totality of metaphysics, which is to be given a
new foundation by a critique of pure reason. This philosophy takes the form of a
system and can thus claim scientific character. Accordingly, we will have to look
for the key to the foundation of this character in The Critique of Pure Reason. Is
it also the basis for something like an "art of systems" or might it presuppose
this?
The critique of pure reason should answer our question why metaphysics is possible
as a science. As we have shown in general, it must also answer the other two
questions, how pure mathematics and pure natural science are possible because it
is concerned to prove a unified concept of rationality (sensibility) in
metaphysics and natural science. But, on the other hand, the critique of pure
reason is concerned with the "idea of a special science" (Introduction, B24),
which has in common with metaphysics as a whole and with transcendental philosophy
as ontology (vgl. B873ff) the form of the scientific. But what is this metaphysics
to be based upon: on a science, which is perhaps always provisional and
preliminary, which we will call the critique of pure reason; or, on the other
hand, on an art, namely an art of systems, which alone ensures for the critique of
pure reason the to-be-ordered character of an initial, critical science? Is the
new metaphysics based therefore upon science or upon art? A possible answer to
this question should be sought by means of a more exact analysis of the
relationship between the concepts of system and of schema.
PRINCIPLES OF SYSTEMATIC UNITY
The question whether metaphysics is possible as a science can be replaced, in
accordance with the connection between the idea of system and of science, by
another: how is metaphysics possible as a system and as the systematic unity of a
general human fundamental knowledge? If it is true that metaphysics is the
theoretical preoccupation with the "first principles of human knowledge," then the
architectonic or the art of systems is for these principles, and it is exactly
those principles which have to be connected in a scientific form.
System and Schema
In Kant's attempt, to answer the question he himself posed, one concept plays a
key role at which the following observations are aimed, namely the concept of a
schema: "The idea (i.e., the form of a systematic whole) requires for its
realization a schema, that is, a constituent manifold with an order of its parts,
both of which must be determined a priori from the principle defined by its end."
(A833) In regard to the concept of a schema, is the nature of the unity of the
whole of this manifold and of the order of its parts? How is it distinguished from
the corresponding unity of system, the implementation of which it is supposed to
help? Is its unity analogous to that of the system; does it already include in
embryonic form all that is included in the other, and do schema and system
represent only various phases of the "inner growth" of the idea, or of the system
of knowledge? Is its methodological nature given along with it? Kant's concepts of
schema and system are not inseparably bound up with the concept of metaphysics,
but they are designed as a result of the question as to the possibility of
metaphysics as a science. However, the connection of the above set of problems
underlies certain theoretical conditions in his theory.
To these belong among others: 1) the distinction between acts of cognition from
principles, on the one hand, and acts of cognition from empirical principles on
the other; in short, between pure knowledge of reason and empirical knowledge of
reason; 2) the distinction between the philosophical and mathematical knowledge of
reason on the basis of a unified ideal of rationality; 3) analogy in the
relationship of the knowledge of reason and sense to their specific objects as the
condition of a systematic unity of all knowledge of reason. The question is,
whether these specific conditions of a system of metaphysics are to be regarded as
valid or whether they are rather suitable for concealing general conditions in the
use of schemata for the constitution of systems.
The first of the above-mentioned requirements was, in Kant's eyes, so important
that he linked it with a general methodical maxim, which one could really label
the principle of his style of thought: "It is," he remarks in regard to the
question of the system of metaphysics, "of the utmost importance to isolate the
various modes of knowledge according as they differ in kind and in origin, and to
secure that they be not confounded owing to the fact that usually, in our
employment of them, they are combined." (A842) More definitely and directly in
respect to metaphysics as a science he says "that the mere degree of subordination
(of the particular under the general) cannot determine the limits of a science; in
the case under consideration, only complete difference of kind and of origin will
suffice."
It is well known that Kant claims to have connected for the very first time a
standard principle and a methodical leitmotif for the fundamental distinction of
these types of cognition and so to have created for the first time the conditions
for a "scientific" metaphysics. Until then one "noticed not a special kind, but
only a certain precedence in respect of generality, which was not sufficient to
distinguish such knowledge from the empirical. For among empirical principles we
can distinguish some that are more general, and so higher in rank than others."
This distinction is not only absolute, but above all necessary to the condition
for a system of reason:
The schema, which is not devised in accordance with an idea, that is, in terms of
the ultimate aim of reason, but empirically in accordance with purposes that are
contingently occasioned (the number of which cannot be foreseen) yields technical
unity; whereas the schema which originates from an idea (in which reason propounds
the ends a priori; and does not wait for them to be empirically given) serves as
the basis of architectonic unity; not in technical fashion, in view of the
similarity of its manifold constituents or the contingent use of our knowledge in
concreto for all sorts of optional external ends, but in architectonic fashion, in
view of the affinity of its parts and of their derivation from a single supreme
and inner end, through which the whole is first made possible, can that arise,
which we call science, the schema of which must contain the outline (monogramma)
and the division of the whole into parts, in conformity with the idea, that is, a
priori, and in so doing must distinguish it with certainty and according to
principles from all other wholes.
Accordingly, only a schema which is designed with a view to the idea of reason
itself, is capable of achieving systematic unity. Technical unities have, without
Kant expressly noticing it, the scientifically insufficient form of a mere
aggregate. It holds for the schema of reason, that it is the design of a whole and
its division from one principle a priori. The second necessary condition for a
possible system of metaphysics is the distinction between the philosophical and
mathematical knowledge of reason. Both kinds of cognition have in common that they
are a knowledge of reason a priori, which is organized in synthetic judgments a
priori. Kant criticizes a certain distinction between both kinds of cognition with
respect to the object which says that "the former, the philosophical, has as its
object quality only, and the latterthe mathematical quantity only. In this kind of
distinction "the effect is taken for the cause." This form of mathematical
knowledge is regarded as the true cause for its being traceable to quanta. This
difference of form is seen as that between a knowledge from concepts (philosophy)
and "a knowledge gained by reasons from concepts" (mathematics). It is only from
this difference of form that there results a difference in regard to the
categorical determination of objects: "For it is the concept of quantities only
that allows of being constructed, that is, exhibited a priori in intuition;
whereas qualities cannot be presented in any intuition that is not empirical."
The above-mentioned difference of form means that a mathematical concept, as, for
example, that of the triangle, can be so constructed in pure idea, that the
constructed figure not only makes clear the corresponding concept in an exemplary
way, but also at the same time guarantees it "universal validity for all possible
intuitions which fall under the same concept." On the other hand, "I cannot
represent in intuition the concept of a cause in general except in an example
supplied by experience." That is the reason why this concept requires beyond its
clarification by such an example a proof of its necessity and universal validity.
Mathematical and philosophical knowledge are, according to Kant, based on the
condition of a schematization of their concepts. But the schematization of
mathematical concepts in the construction thereof gives their objects, while the
corresponding schematization of the philosophical fundamental concepts gives only
the necessary condition for the concepts to be able to be brought into relation
with the objects of experience. This basic difference in the form of philosophical
and mathematical knowledge has, however, important methodical consequences:
definitions, axioms and proofs play here and there an outstanding role as
methodical instruments. Kant did not demand that one completely do without these
instruments in philosophical knowledge, but that one should become aware of their
specific difference of performance in the respective knowledge of the object.
Form and Object of a Science.
So, he concludes, for instance, in regard to the definitions "that in philosophy
one must not imitate mathematics by beginning with definitions, unless it be by
way simply of experiment." For "neither empirical concepts nor concepts a priori
allow of definition," the former do not "for since we find in it only a few
characteristics of a certain species of sensible object, it is never certain that
we are not using the word, in denoting one and the same object, sometimes so as to
stand for more, and sometimes so as to stand for fewer characteristics." In the
other case concepts do not a priori allow for definition "for I can never be
certain that the clear representation of a given concept, which as given may still
be confused, has been completely effected, unless I know that it is adequate to
its object."
The third condition for a possible system of metaphysics is directly connected to
the above two. It demands not simply a fundamental distinction between the pure
knowledge of reason and the empirical knowledge of understanding, in the sense
that the first is to be attributed with an unconditional and absolute universal
validity. Beyond that it demands also analogy regarding the respective
relationships between objects and regarding the necessary conditions for the
possibility of such relationships:
The understanding is an object for reason, just as sensibility is for the
understanding. It is the business of reason to render the unity of all possible
empirical acts of the understanding systematic; just as it is of the understanding
to connect the manifold of the appearances by means of concepts, and to bring it
under empirical laws. But the acts of the understanding are, without the schemata
of sensibility, undetermined; just as the unity of reason is in itself
undetermined, as regards the conditions under which, and the extent to which, the
understanding ought to combine its concepts in systematic fashion. But although we
are unable to find in intuition a schema for the complete systematic unity of all
concepts of the understanding, an analogon of such a schema must necessarily allow
of being given. This analogon is the idea of the maximum in the division and
unification of the knowledge of the understanding under one principle.
The analogy says accordingly: The various categories in respect to the pure
concept of the understanding a priori, allow themselves to be brought into
relation to the unity of the extensive continuum (of pure intuition) under the
condition of a principle of homogeneity and its application in the form of
schemata, which respectively correspond to the categories. Analogously, the
relation of reason to the unity of the understanding, or to the unity of a
possible knowledge of the understanding, likewise demands principles after the
analogy of those schemata in the form of principles or maxims:
Reason thus prepares the field for the understanding: 1) through a principle of
the homogeneity of the manifold under higher genera; 2) through a principle of the
variety of the homogenous under lower species; and 3) in order to complete the
systematic unity, a further law, that of the affinity of all concepts - a law
which prescribes that we proceed from each species to every other by gradual
increase of the diversity." (A657)
Kant names these principles: "homogeneity, specification, and continuity of
forms." They have the character of maxims, in respect to postulata, which
apparently demand something contrary, but in fact they are only able to facilitate
in mutual complementation the aim of reason, the completion of the systematic
unity. So, the requirement that "rudiments (or principles) must not be
unnecessarily multiplied (entia praeter necessitatem non esse multiplicanda)" must
be combined with its complementary, namely, that the diversity of principles
cannot be reduced without necessity (entium varietates non temere esse minuendas).
But the third principle, according to Kant,
arises from the union of the other two, inasmuch as only through the processes of
ascending to the higher genera and of descending to the lower species do we obtain
the idea of systematic connection in its completeness. For all the manifold
differences are then related to one another, inasmuch as they one and all spring
from one highest genus, through all degrees of a more and more widely extended
determination." (A658)
Just as Kant had distinguished between images and schemata as different conditions
of the relationship of concepts to intuitions, and had accordingly distinguished
these relationships themselves, so, too, in relation to an analogon of schema a
corresponding distinction was indicated. The analogon of a schema is to be
imagined as the plan of a universal division of a single and highest genus, which,
for its part, can be made visually imaginable. Let us now inquire about the
function of this analogon of schema in the construction of a systematic unity of
all knowledge of reason.
The Architectonic Form of Knowledge.
In preparation for a possible answer, let us take a look at the theory of
metaphysics which chronologically immediately precedes Kant's, but which in
systematic terms represents an interesting and relevant opposing concept. This is
the theory of J.H. Lambert in his main work, "Conception for Architectonic or the
Theory of the First and the Simple in Philosophical and Mathematical Knowledge"
(Anlage zur Architektonik oder Theorie des Ersten und des Einfachen in der
philosophischen und mathematischen Erkenntnis, 1771). Lambert intentionally chose
the word "architectonic" as the title of his work. In doing so, he referred to
Baumgarten's Metaphysics, where architectonic is equated with ontology, or with
the metaphysica generalis. He justifies his use of the words: "It is an abstract
from architecture, and, with its design on the structure of human knowledge, it
has a quite similar meaning, especially in reference to the materials and their
preparation and arrangement at all, and when the reference is such that one
charges oneself with the aim of making an effective whole thereof." (XXIX)
Let us at first ignore the question whether the procedure of building a house can
be understood as a process of inner growth according to Kant's idea of the unity
of system. Let us first ask about the position of Lambert's theory with respect to
Kant's premisses regarding the possible unity of a system of reason. The first
impression is that in Lambert's theory none of these conditions is fulfilled and
that, measured by Kant's standards of science, the theory must be rejected as
unscientific. There seems to be (1) no clear distinction between the knowledge of
reason and of understanding, and even less a unifying principle and a methodical
leitmotif to depict the unempirical concepts of human knowledge in their
completeness. Thus, there seems to be (2) no definite distinction between
philosophical and mathematical knowledge; the conditions for Kant's critique which
opposes determining mathematical knowledge from its object, quantity, seem to be
fulfilled here. So we see an apparently natural use made of those methodical aids,
definitions, axioms and proofs, which in Kant's opinion are primary and really
permissible only in mathematics. Finally, there is also (3) no theory of the
analogy between the object relations between the pure knowledge of reason and the
empirical knowledge of the understanding in regard to their conditions of a
possible relationship to intuitions.
However, on closer viewing, Lambert's "Architectonic" contains parts of a theory
which can very well be brought into relation to those conditions of a system of
metaphysics in Kant and can be compared with these. Thus, for example, (1) the
methodical demand is made that a distinction must be made in ontology between
simple and complex fundamental concepts, and so a demand of Kant's is met, that
the concepts under examination are a priori "elementary concepts and be clearly
distinguished from those derived or combined thereof." Further, there is (2)
clearly a consciousness of the differences between philosophical and mathematical
knowledge, not only in respect to the task of clarifying the first and simple
concepts, but also in the critical evaluation of rudimentary definitions and above
all in regard to a methodically fundamental distinction between postulata and
principles; and, finally, (3) in place of a schema there is a register and table,
which make visually imaginable the possibility of the combination of the first and
simple concepts to make a system of metaphysical "fundamental doctrines."
Yet, throughout the whole "Architectonic" there is a fundamentally different
methodical sequence. Thus, against the methodically fundamental principle of the
metaphysics of Wolff-Baumgarten, which demands above all the definition of those
first principles held to be unclear, Lambert has given priority to the answer to
the question, "where the (first and simple) principles are from, how one reaches
them and of what use they finally are." However, in this formulation one can at
first see a direct parallel to Kant's inquiry after the origin and the function of
elementary concepts, but not in the manner of the reply. Lambert also demands
method in the answer to the question, but this method is fundamentally different
from Kant's transcendental method which proceeds from the meagerness of the proof
of the universal validity and necessity of the elementary concepts. What then does
Lambert's method consist of in regard to the definition of the origin and
usefulness of the fundamental concepts? It consists, in a word, in a diversity of
methods, for which the Aristotelian dictum holds that basically every object in
its own singularity requires its own singular and adequate method.
Thus, Lambert requires, in accordance with his "provisional attempts, to at last
find out, which of these methods would do," a provisional, exemplary idea of the
methods themselves. The following procedures for the discovery of the origin of
the fundamental concepts are named: (a) an abstraction from the manifoldness of
examples, special cases, idioms, etc.; (b) a separation from the combination with
other concepts, whether these are simple or complex, empirical or otherwise; (c)an
examination of semantic fields and their histories in order to thus achieve
grounds for the gaining of conceptually crucial parts; (d) the examination of the
general imagery of language in regard to the distinction between the real meanings
and their transposition, especially in the transference of the language of the
physical world to the world of the intellect; and finally (e) the examination of
the intentions and aims connected to the respective theory of concepts.
The latter standpoint concerns not only the manner of the clarification of origin,
but also the usefulness of the concepts. As there, so here also, the different
kinds of usefulness and the corresponding procedures for their definition are to
be distinguished. Such kinds are:
10 The indication of the special sciences and their parts, as to where the said
propositions are applicable; 20 a quantity of examples taken from the special
sciences, by which the announced announcements is elucidated; 30 the practical,
insofar as the matters dealt with other tasks, which are concerned with dealing
with something; 40 the practical, insofar as tasks emerge, which are concerned
with finding, explaining or defining something, etc.
It is precisely the last mentioned manner of usefulness, which we can elucidate by
means of the key word heuristics, which plays an outstanding role in Lambert and
"makes up a considerable part of the applied doctrine of reason." (XXVIII)
If one compares the doctrines of reason of Lambert and Kant as theories of the
origin and use of pure elementary concepts in regard to the manifoldness of the
sense of origin and usefulness, then the first of the two seems necessarily the
one which takes the manifoldness of the standpoints more adequately into account
and through its intentional distinction; it also takes into account the methodical
standpoint of a critical preparation of metaphysics as a science. In contrast to
this, the distinction of Kant's theory lies in the combination of a specific
theory of origin of the elementary concepts with a special theory of their use in
a unifying theory, which, as a transcendental philosophy, should form the
scientific foundation for a system of metaphysics. Lambert makes as a basic
methodical demand that there is required, above all in the treatment of abstract
concepts, "the distinction between the different kinds of origin, causes,
intentions, natures, etc." As a result the "architectonic" remains in regard to
the origin and usefulness of its basic concepts directly and intentionally
connected to experience. Further, in contrast to transcendental philosophy, which,
as an unempirical science, wishes first of all to prove the reference of
experience in the pure knowledge of reason, experience remains possible.
System as the Unity of Inner Qualities.
The comparison of both "architectonics" in regard to the area of possible
experience leads, however, to a key problem which Lambert entitled that of a
theory of qualities. If one "understands" by that "the true inner qualities," then
according to Lambert these "are still far too unknown to be able to think of a
real theory (of them)." In the most cases, in which the word is used, one thereby
shows a mixture of qualities, relationships and combinations, but not true,
individual qualities. This theory is further directed critically against the
metaphysics of Wolff-Baumgarten. First of all it is against its general part, the
ontology, insofar as this pursues a basic division of its object area into a
theory of inner and outer predicates of the object as such (ens quatenus ens). It
also touches the central area of metaphysics, the simple substances, on the theory
of which is based the possibility of rational cosmology, psychology and theology.
This problem of the true, inner qualities, and with it that of the simple
substances has now, however, found expression in Kant's philosophy, especially in
its definition of the relationship of transcendental philosophy and metaphysics.
One aspect of this expression is the basic distinction between nature in its
formal and material meaning:
If the word `nature' is taken only in its formal meaning, as it signifies the
first inner principle of all that belongs to the existence of an object, then
there can be as many natural sciences as there are specifically different objects,
of which each must contain its own singular inner principle of a definition
pertaining to its existence. Otherwise, nature is also taken in its material
meaning, not as a composition, but as the concept of all objects, insofar as they
can be objects of our senses and `consequently' of our experience, by which
therefore the whole of all appearances, that is, the world of the senses with the
exclusion of all non-sensual objects is understood.
Certainly, what Lambert noticed in respect to the possible progress of metaphysics
holds true for all sciences: "that a science, of which one can claim to elucidate
within a certain period of time or to straighten out at the Leipzig fair, having
first made a settlement with a publisher, is no science." Kant also tried to
sustain the idea of progress in metaphysics by referring to its school concept in
relation to the truth. But at the same time he was in earnest concerning the idea
of the inner growth of the idea, which already contains in its schema the whole
according to its possible division. The position regarding the problem of the
inner qualities and the simple substances forms a kind of preliminary decision
about the concept of progress in metaphysics. Lambert has linked the progress to
the progress in its individual, theoretical parts, as for example in the general
theory of form of the theory of qualities. The latter, for its part, depends upon
the continuation of empirical research. Kant, on the other hand, tried to make the
continuation of metaphysics--at least on the level of thought--independent of the
continuation of the empirical sciences. This aim was served particularly by the
above-mentioned distinction between nature in its formal and material meaning.
Transcendental philosophy forms the basis for metaphysics by its critical
limitation to the object area of nature in its material sense. Accordingly, a
scientific metaphysics constitutes itself as the system of phenomenology of the
pure knowledge of reason. This scientific metaphysics is based accordingly on the
bracketing of the concept of inner, true predicates and simple substances, to
which those relate. The analogon of a schema in the form of the systematic unity
of the principles of homogeneity of specification and affinity holds, for its
part, only under the condition of this critical limitation. In Lambert's theory,
too, we find a principle, which we can regard as corresponding to this analogon of
schema. One can call this principle that of the optimum, that is, of the best
possible number of data, that is, of conditions.
Lambert interprets this optimum as the minimum of principles or of simple, primary
concepts: "Every science, (and, with that, metaphysics, also, inasfar as it wishes
to be a science) should lead to one's being able to find, in any given case where
it is applicable, from the smallest number of given parts, the remaining parts
which are determined by or related to it." (par. 15) Accordingly, the "Table of
the Fundamental Doctrine" contains a minimal register of basic concepts, but it
illustrates beyond that a minimum of possible combinations amongst these
elementary concepts (whereby not every combination and permutation is possible).
In contrast to Lambert's "Minimal principle" Kant's analogon of schema combines an
absolute minimum in the form of one single, general, and highest principle with a
maximum of division of the whole for an optimum of systematic unity. According to
Kant, this optimum makes possible a principle, which we can regard as a variant of
the principle of coherency, the principle of the continuity of forms, which, on
the basis of the principle of affinity, continually facilitates the transition
from the genus to the species. In a negative characterization it is said:
And since there is thus no void in the whole sphere of all possible concepts, and
since nothing can be met with outside this sphere, there arises from the
presupposition of this universal horizon and of its complete division, the
principle: non datur vacuum formarum, that is, that there are not different,
original, first genera, which are isolated from one another, separated, as it
were, by an empty intervening space, but that all the manifold genera are simply
divisions of one single highest and universal genus. From this principle there
follows, as its immediate consequence: datur continuum formarum, that is, that all
differences of species border upon one another, admitting of no transition from
one to another per saltum, but only through all the smaller degrees of difference
that mediate between them." (A659)
But, as has been said, the above-mentioned limitation to nature in a material
sense holds good, not only for the knowledge of the understanding, but especially
for its hypostatization in the pure knowledge of reason. Therefore, there are no
inner and true qualities of objects to be found in the system of reason and
relatable to simple substances. One cannot simply say that the principle of
coherence is damaged in Lambert's table. Coherence is, rather, defined definitely,
not as the law of continuity of forms, but as the regulatively determined
combination of the primary, simple concepts, which is defined more closely in
general principles. This table leaves room at the same time for concepts of
substance, of force, and for the Leibnizian calculus of qualities. Both theories,
Lambert's and Kant's, have one thing in common in the dissimilarity of their
effort on behalf of metaphysics. Their respective metatheory, serving the purpose
of such a foundation as science, conceals, each in a different way, a basic
question of metaphysics, namely the extent to which its
concept is bound to a theory of simple substances and to the inner, true qualities
of things.
Universitat Heidelberg
Heidelberg, Germany
CHAPTER III
TRUTH, JUSTIFICATION AND METHOD
IN METAPHYSICS AND THEOLOGY
RICHARD M. MARTIN
So far as their constructive progress and development are concerned, metaphysics
and theology are becoming increasingly difficult fields of study in these closing
decades of the twentieth century. The simplistic views and formulations that
satisfied philosophers in previous centuries have been tried and found wanting,
even though they may be based on insights of permanent value. In their growth to
maturity, these subjects are now becoming "hard" ones, akin to the "hard
sciences," leaving their "soft" progenitors in the wake of history. More austere
methods of thought and of writing than heretofore are now required. Prominent
among these are those based on modern logico-semantics, which, as Whitehead
observed prophetically many years back, will proceed to lay the foundation for
aesthetics and to "conquer" ethics and theology.
Let us begin with a brief survey of some recent work aimed at harmonizing
metaphysics and the sciences, and then go on to some general comments concerning
certain current and widespread misunderstandings as to the use of logical methods.
These latter will focus primarily on the semantic notion of truth and the problem
of justification, which problem, it will be contended, is essentially the same for
metaphysics as for the sciences.
In his Forgotten Truth, Huston Smith makes much of the numerical character of
mathematics, neglecting perhaps the fact that, in its type-theoretic or set-
theoretic format, quantity plays a relatively small role in mathematics.1 Further,
he thinks that "numbers and their logical operators are the only symbols, or
rather signs, that are completely unambiguous: 4 is 4 and that is the end of the
matter." But much depends here upon the set theoretic structure provided, each
different set theory giving rise to a different characterization of `4', indeed
even to different "meanings." And if the underlying logic is taken as a many-
valued logic, say, there turn out to be many alternative numbers 4 to consider.
Thus the situation in mathematics itself is not quite so clear-cut as Smith would
have us believe. Now "the alternative to numbers is words," Smith contends. Where
numbers are signs, words are symbols, and therefore by their very nature
equivocal: their ambiguity can be reduced but never eliminated." Such a contention
needs a considerable defense, especially in view of recent work on the logical
form of natural-language sentences and the problem of "disambiguation."2 In fact,
it is very doubtful that the language or languages of mathematics, and the "exact"
sciences in general, differ very much from natural languages in the use of "signs"
rather than "symbols" or in the matter of containing or not containing ambiguous
sentences. In each case the ambiguous sentence presents itself for
disambiguation--unless of course it is the very richness of ambiguity itself that
is aimed at. The difference between numerals and words is less sharp than Smith
would have us believe. Nor is it true that "logicians flee . . . [the] meanderings
[of words] in favor of fixed and adamantine glyphs. The despair of logicians is
the humanist's glory." In the logical analysis of language the meanderings are
squarely faced and codified, and the humanist's glory is thus quickly becoming a
subject for the logician's purview. The situation is similar to that concerning
the language of mathematics a few generations back.
One of the key differences between what Smith calls `the primordial perspective'
and the contemporary one is, according to him, just that the scientist counts and
measures and the humanist, more particularly, the metaphysician and theologian,
does not. At several points in some recent papers, however, it has been suggested
that the use of numbers in theology is not ill-advised.3 In fact, their use leads
to a deeper, more subtle, and more sensitive characterization than has been
available heretofore of certain topics concerned with the divine will. Of course,
at this stage these are mere suggestions, but surely ones with a good deal of
further heed.
Whitehead contended, in a famous adaptation from Walter Pater, that "all science
as it grows towards perfection becomes mathematical in its ideal." This is of
course very questionable. Let us construe science in a broad sense, as with
Whitehead, to embrace all domains of systematic knowledge or Wissenschaften. A
safer historical description would then be to the effect that all Wissenschaften
as they grow towards perfection become logistical in their ideal, and thus lend
themselves to the application of a semantical predicate for truth. In particular,
then, even the more or less traditional theism, which Smith refers to as the
philosophia perennis, is of course included here. Elsewhere the attempt has been
made to show in detail how some strands of the perennial tradition--the
philosophia perennis is not just one view, but several woven a bit loosely
together--may be formulated in a sufficiently precise a logistical way to allow a
clear-cut notion of truth for the language-system involved.4 In discussing the
forgotten truth of traditional theism, we should be sure not to forget the truth-
predicate of modern semantics.
"The multivalence of language enables it to mesh with the multidimensionality of
the human spirit," Smith continues, "depicting its higher reaches as numbers never
can. Equations can be elegant, but that is a separate matter. Poems cannot be
composed in numbers." These are not the words of a poet such as Vale+ ry or
Berryman, both of whom spoke frequently of the exactitude in the use of words in
writing poetry--as exact as that of the mathematician in his use of numbers,
Berryman once remarked in one of his more sober moments. The multidimensionality
of the human spirit need not be neglected if our discourse concerning it is to be
suitably formulated or articulated in modern terms.
According to Smith, science, in the narrow sense as practiced by professionals, is
limited in its exclusion of discourse concerning values, purposes, life meanings,
and quality. We cannot be sure in advance, however, that sciences allowing such
discourse will not develop in the course of time. But even so, theological
discourse accommodating such topics can be formulated in a relatively precise,
even wissenschaftlichen, way to some extent as regards values, purposes, and life
meanings, as has been shown in the papers referred to. As regards duality, surely
the material of Nelson Goodman's, The Structure of Appearance,5 to which Smith
makes no reference, is an important attempt to subject discourse about quality to
cogent logical form. In all of these examples, a theory is formulated with
sufficient precision to allow the application of a semantical truth-predicate.
A similar point has been made by I.M. Bochenski in his The Logic of Religion (pp.
62-63).6 "But man is constituted in such a way that he always tends to axiomatize
his discourse; and the religious man is no exception in this respect. There will
be, consequently, a more or less pronounced tendency in believers to order . . .
[their religious discourse] by axiomatizing it. Such an axiomatization is the
field of what is called `theology' (or `Buddhology') in the strict meaning of the
term . . . ." Under
`axiomatization' here one can include partial formalizations also, about which
more will be said below; in any case the applicability of suitable truth-
predicates to the sentences of any such theory is assured. Once these and other
such caveats to Smith's book have been registered, there is much that is admirable
in his discussion of the parallels and divergencies between science and
philosophia perennis as he conceives it. In calling attention to the parallels, he
emphasizes general descriptive similarities rather than specifically
methodological ones. For each (pp. 98 ff.), "things are not what they seem" at
first blush unaided. In each "the other-than-the-seeming is a more; indeed a
stupendous more." In each, "in their further reaches the . . . mores cannot be
known in ordinary ways" but rather "admit of being known in ways that are
exceptional." Further, "the distinctive ways of knowing which the exceptional
regions of reality require must be cultivated," and such "profound knowing
requires instruments." In science the instruments include both theoretical
constructs and telescope, spectroscope, and the like, whereas in the philosophia
perennis they are the "revealed texts, or scriptures or "ordering myths" of that
tradition accepted as definitive. Smith's discussion of these parallels is
illuminating and surely on the right track. As we go further along the track,
however, sameness of ontology might be discovered, some one basic soul or mind-
stuff of which matter, mind, soul and spirit are all specific manifestations. But
this is for the future perhaps, and Smith finds enough that is striking in
restricting discussion to the results of contemporary science.
On the methodological parallels between science and religious discourse, Bochenski
is more enlightening. He notes (in The Logic of Religion, pp. 61-62) that "from
the logical point of view, the situation in RD [religious discourse] is very
similar to that which we find in the discourse of natural sciences. The P
-sentences [the sentences of objective faith directly accepted by the believer]
play in RD a role closely similar to that of experimental sentences in those
sciences. The only question which may arise in both cases is whether the given
sentence really does belong to the class under consideration, that is, whether it
really is a P-sentence, or a duly established protocol sentence. . . ." Once this
is determined, the parallel is evident. Bochenski gives (on pp. 64-65) a
"comparative table" as between methods in physics and theology. The physicist
"starts (theoretically) with experimental sentences" just as the theologian
"starts (theoretically) with P-sentences." The physicist then "explains the
experimental sentences by other sentences from which the former may be deduced."
The theologian similarly "explains the P-sentences by theological conclusions
which are such that from them P-sentences may be deduced." The physicist "deduces
from the explanatory sentences new ones which may be verified by experiment" just
as the theologian "deduces from the theological conclusions new sentences, which
may be verified by seeing if they do belong to P." Both the physicist and the
theologian "explain the first-grade explanatory sentences by further explanatory
sentences in the same way" and verify such sentences by examining their
consistency with other sentences in the system." And finally, just as the
physicist "introduces new `theoretical' terms not found in protocol sentences" the
theologian "introduces new `theological' terms not to be found in P-sentences."
The various items of this table are not intended to provide an exhaustive, or even
wholly accurate, description of procedure in either science or theology. Such a
description, it seems, has never been given for either, owing no doubt to the
sheer difficulties involved. Nonetheless, the table is valuable in calling our
attention to methodological parallels usually overlooked, and helps to supplement
Smith's list of similarities.
In the chapter, "Justification of Religious Discourse," in The Logic of Religion,
Bochenski considers several theories concerning "the activity by which the
acceptance of a (meaningful) sentence [of RD] is justified." These comprise in
particular the "blind-leap" theory, the "rationalistic" theory, the "insight"
theory, the "trust" theory, the "deductivist" theory, the "authority" theory, and
the "theory of the religious hypothesis." It is clearly the last that he favors,
but curiously gives it no more space than the others, which for the most part he
dismisses as inadequate. Let us glance at Bochenski's theory of the religious
hypothesis and then reflect how, one by one, the other theories may be viewed as
contributing to it. The comments here, mutatis mutandis, concern scientific and
metaphysical hypotheses equally well, as Bochenski himself observes.
The gist of the theory of the religious hypothesis is that "the believer
constructs before the act of faith, as an explanatory sentence, the very BD [basic
dogma] of the religion concerned. This sentence--called here `[the] religious
hypothesis'--serves to explain his experience." Formally, Bochenski goes on to
note, "the procedure by which the religious hypothesis is established is closely
similar to that used in reductive [abductive] sciences. The starting point is
experimentally established sentences. The hypothesis is such that they may be
deduced from it; it permits predictions and can be verified by new experimental
sentences." It should be observed, however, as Bochenski notes, that the
experimental sentences of a given science form a much narrower class than those
relevant to the religious hypothesis, the latter including all manner of sentences
concerning the personal life of the believer, sentences concerned with moral,
social, and aesthetic values, and so on. All such sentences must be formulated in
a sufficiently precise way, for the relevant semantical truth-predicate to apply.
The very breadth of the sentences relevant to a religious hypothesis explains the
difficulty of the believer's persuading someone else of its truth or
acceptability; the other person's experiences may be very different. "No two
persons have the same total experience and, consequently, a hypothesis which seems
to be quite plausible to one of them does not need to appear to be plausible to
the other . . . ." Also the difficulty in overthrowing someone's religious
hypothesis by falsification is due to its very great generality. As Bochenski
notes, "one must be very little instructed in the procedures of science to think
that a dozen facts inconsistent with a great physical theory will lead
automatically to its rejection. But the religious hypothesis seems to be far more
general--that is, it covers far more sentences--than even the most general
scientific theory. There- fore, it is much more difficult to overthrow it." The
generality is not, however, that of containing "more sentences," for in both an
infinity of sentences must be allowed. It is rather that the religious hypothesis
is more general in its relevancy to more kinds of sentences than in a science, or
even in all the sciences put together.
Bochenski goes on to reflect upon explanation and prediction on the basis of a
religious hypothesis, but no crucial differences emerge as between these and
explanation and prediction in the sciences. Of course the vocabulary of the
religious hypothesis is broader, and a great deal of work needs to be done to
characterize that vocabulary in a logically acceptable way. Some useful steps in
this direction have perhaps been taken in some of the papers already referred to.
There is enough germ of truth in the other theories of justification Bochenski
discusses to suggest that some aspects of them may be incorporated in the theory
of the religious hypothesis. In the blind-leap theory the believer makes a "leap"
from "nothingness to full faith without any logical or experimental foundation."
Well, not without any, but perhaps with very little. This need not matter once the
religious hypothesis is firmly accepted. Some features of a "rationalist" theory
are incorporated in the theory of the religious hypothesis, in particular, use of
the methods of logical deduction-reduction or discovery also, if and when reliable
rules of reduction or discovery such are formulated. Once a religious hypothesis
is held, there is "trust" in it and in the objects it deals with. And of course
"deductions" are made in particular from the general hypothesis to further
experimental sentences. Also the role of authority may be helpful to some in
calling attention to relevant experimental sentences, to the very nature and
formulation of a religious hypothesis, and to its deductive consequences. In some
such ways as these, then, there may be seen to be some little grain of truth in
all of the other theories. Bochenski states most of them, it might be thought, in
so severe a form as to make them unacceptable.
There is also much in George Schlesinger's recent discussion of theism and
scientific method that is admirable.7 He claims (p. 201) "that the traditional
theist need not recoil from examining his basic propositions by a method of
inquiry which adopts the standards employed in science. On a correct understanding
of the essence of scientific method, Theism does not stand to lose from such an
inquiry; in fact it gains, emerging from it with enhanced credibility." The author
does not deny that (p. 2)
the classical theistic hypothesis greatly differs from the kind of hypotheses
advanced within science. . . . Yet the question whether all the laws of nature and
the initial conditions are what they are without there being anything behind them,
or that they are what they are because of the will of a minded, very intelligent,
and powerful being seems intelligible in a very straightforward manner, no less
than many questions asked by scientists and more so than some questions asked by
metaphysicians.
We are thus invited to view God as somehow incorporating the "laws of nature" and
the "initial conditions." Finally, the implicit aim of the author is "to exhibit
the richness of the philosophy of religion" and "to show that it impinges upon
nearly every important topic in philosophy in general," especially upon some
crucial ones in the philosophy of science concerning confirmation and
confirmability.
To give an even moderately accurate description of scientific method is no easy
task, as already remarked, and it is far from clear that Schlesinger has done
this. His description revolves around two "elementary principles," Principle A and
Principle E. The latter is (p. 157) that "when a given piece of evidence E is more
probable on H than on H' then E confirms H more than H'." Principle A is (p. 161)
that "when H and H' are similarly related to all the available evidence, we regard
H as more confirmed than H', if and only, H is more adequate than H'." Much is
made of these two "principles," which the author contends "are inevitably to be
employed [by scientists] when searching for any hypothesis." It is claimed that
they are "justified" and that they characterize the very heart of scientific
method. The principles cry out, however, for a clear-cut foundation in which such
key terms as `more probable than', `confirms', `more confirmed than', and `more
adequate than' are fully explicated. In view of the immense difficulties
encountered by all attempts at the explication of these notions as applicable to
scientific language-systems of even comparatively simple a structure, it is
unlikely that we should accept Schlesinger's principles at the face value he asks.
Also they must be intimately related to the detailed characterization of
observation, experiment, the making of hypotheses, testing, verification, and so
on and on.
Even if we remain within the domain of scientific languages, we are overwhelmed
with the amount of work needed to "justify" these principles. But this is as
nothing compared to what is needed if our language is augmented to enable us to
state the thesis of theism. Schlesinger never states it, incidentally, nor does he
explore the nature of the terms needed for such statement. He assumes apparently
that this is all easy sailing. But it is not, as should surely be evident from the
papers referred to. Not only the key notion of God, but such "analogical" words as
`omnibenevolent' and `omnipotent', need exact definition. One could perhaps reply:
the tradition tells us perfectly well what these terms mean. But this of course is
not the case, if the thesis of theism is to be stated in sufficiently precise a
way that the exact techniques of logic, semantics, and confirmation theory may be
applied to it. Schlesinger frequently uses the terms `logically compatible',
`logically possible', and the like, in ways that also need further clarification
as to just what kind of a "logic" is being presupposed: a first-order logic? a
higher-order one? one containing suitable meaning postulates? and so on.
Schlesinger claims "that by employing the most elementary principles underlying
scientific method we may construct certain aspects of the world as constituting
empirical evidence confirming Theism." He never states how much evidence, however,
nor is it clear from his account that the evidence for theism is actually greater
than for some alternative. Also the use of the truth-predicate is essential in any
clear delineation of a theory of confirmation, so that here too we should not
attempt to justify "forgotten truth" without at least a passing glance at `true'
in the semantical sense.
In his recent Atheism and Theism8, Errol Harris also discusses the problem of "The
Rational Basis of Theism" in a pivotal chapter with that very title. Although the
metaphysical ambient of his discussion is very different from that of Smith,
Bochenski and Schlesinger, there is a similar underlying aim. Harris, however,
thinks that "formal logic"--and therewith presumably confirmation theory also--is
not appropriate for attempting to delineate the rational basis for theism, it
being (p. 67) "appropriate to only a certain level of thinking." Another kind of
logic is needed "which is universal in its scope" (p. 68) and which "displays
itself in specifically different phases of thinking, of which formal logic (in any
of its forms) is only one." This universal or "dialectical" logic, Harris thinks,
is sui generis and cannot be formulated as an applied formal logic in the usual
sense, that is, with suitable non-logical constants as primitives and with
appropriate meaning postulates concerning them. However, Harris has nowhere,
either here or in his other writings, even so much as hinted at a single rule or
principle of such a logic formulated with the necessary rigor in modern terms. It
is therefore not clear how he can be so sure about its nature, and how it differs
from modern formal logic, prior to any suitable formulation. Such surety in
advance inevitably leads to blocking the road to inquiry, one of the worst of all
methodological sins according to Peirce.
Whatever "dialectical" logic is, there is no reason to suppose that it cannot be
formulated, along with other metaphysical views, on the basis of formal logic in
the modern extended sense. Harris, like Findlay, seems to conceive of formal logic
in terms of its state of development prior to 1910 or thereabouts, and both seem
to refuse to allow the subject to grow.9 If only they would take account of recent
developments, they would see how inappropriate their strictures of it really are.
Of course, formal logic must now be taken in the wide sense in which it has been
taken here.
That the techniques of modern logic are an inestimable help to metaphysicians is a
commonplace among those who use them. Indeed, so great is this help that they
wonder how it was ever possible to do without them. Although the use of such
techniques is becoming more and more widespread, there are many who resist them
and, as already suggested, like Peter Damian see in logic the machinations of the
devil himself. Much of this resistance, it seems, rests upon misunderstanding of
one kind or another. It is safe to say that no one who takes the trouble to master
the intricacies of modern logic continues his resistance for very long. But many
things stand in the way of being motivated to attain this mastery. Let us reflect
for a moment upon the most important of these, with the aim of removing some of
the misunderstandings surrounding philosophic logic, its nature and scope, and the
use of logical methods in metaphysics generally. Most of these points have been
made elsewhere, but no harm will come from reminding ourselves of them here.10
In the first place, we should not think of logic in just the sense of Principia
Mathematica, say, or of axiomatic set theory. Such "logics," if such they be, are
in some respects too restricted, and in others too inclusive. They are too
inclusive in embracing vast portions of mathematics in their scope, and too
exclusive in not embracing logical semiotics (syntax, semantics, and pragmatics),
as well as the calculus of individuals, a theory of intensionality, and an event
logic. These latter are the very stuff of which metaphysics is made, the areas of
theory most helpful to the philosopher, and curiously, the very ones to which
least attention has been paid in recent years.
Nor should we think of logic as being the exclusive possession of logical
positivism, as is so often done even now, these many years after the virtual
demise of that view. The subject-matter neutrality of logic has often been pointed
out. It is true, of course, that the positivists were pioneers in using logic for
philosophic purposes, and this perhaps is their most lasting contribution--the
really positive part of positivism, as it were. But it is also widely recognized
that other kinds of philosophers may reap its benefits also, as has been
emphasized by thinkers so diverse as Gilbert Ryle, Heinrich Scholz, K. Go¦ del,
Charles Hartshorne, and Frederic Fitch.11
Closely related with Ryle's point is one made by the English mathematician A.B.
Kempe as long ago as 1886.
Whatever may be the true nature of things and of the conceptions which we have of
them in the operations of reasoning they are dealt with as a number of separate
entities or units. These units come under consideration in a variety of garbs--as
material objects, intervals or periods of time, processes of thought, points,
lines, statements, relationships, arrangements, algebraical expressions,
operators, operations, etc., etc. . . .12
In all discourse, philosophical or otherwise, the entities dealt with are thus to
be handled as separate units. Some of them are given proper names, and usually
they are taken as values for variables--or if not, they are handled as constructs
in terms of entities that are. That this is the case seems to be a necessity of
discourse if the "operations of reasoning" are to take place, and without such
operations there can be no philosophy--in the Western sense--worthy of the name.
Josiah Royce also made essentially the same point in 1914 when he noted that
without objects conceived as unique individuals, we can have no Classes. Without
Classes we can . . . define no Relations, without relations we can have no Order.
But to be reasonable is to conceive of ordersystems, real or ideal. Therefore we
have an absolute logical need to conceive of individual objects as the elements of
our ideal order systems. This postulate is the condition of defining clearly any
theoretical conception whatever . . . . To conceive of individual objects is a
necessary presupposition of all orderly [thought and] activity.13
Again, some of these objects are given proper names, and some surely are taken as
values for variables. These objects are variously grouped into classes; or, as we
say equivalently, certain properties are ascribed to them, and certain relations
hold between or among them, these classes and relations usually being regarded as
designated by suitable predicates.
It is often very difficult to be able to decide what predicates are to be taken as
primitives and which are to be defined via suitable nominal definitions. There is
often considerable latitude here and to some extent the choice may be arbitrary.
Every predicate occurring in the system must be either primitive or defined--there
is no other possibility. Once the primitives are chosen, as a result usually of a
good deal of trial and error, the remaining predicates are defined. Although
defined predicates sensu stricto may always be eliminated, the definitions of them
"are at once seen to be the most important part of the subject," as Whitehead
noted in 1906. "The act [of giving a definition] . . . is in fact the act of
choosing the various complex ideas which are to be the special object of study.
The whole subject depends upon such a choice."14 Here again there are often
alternatives, with difficulty in selecting the most suitable.
Once primitives are decided upon, suitable axioms or meaning postulates are needed
to characterize them. But before it is profitable to axiomatize, a great deal of
analysis and experimentation must take place, presystematically as it were. It is
often advisable to try to determine what principles or laws are to obtain,
irrespective of which are ultimately suitable as axioms. The problem of
axiomatization is often a merely technical or mechanical one once a suitable
parade of principles is laid out. Thus we should not disparage what are often
spoken of as partially formalized systems, systems in which the full primitive
vocabulary is fixed, as well as the formulae and some at least of the crucial
principles, but without specification of axioms. We can often make enormous
headway with only partially formalized systems. In fact, it is likely that such
systems are of greater interest for metaphysics than fully formalized ones.
Metaphysics --in its preliminary stages anyhow--seems to have more to do with the
basic vocabulary chosen, the kinds of terms and formulae admitted, and general
principles characterizing that vocabulary, than with any specific choice of
axioms.15
Even in partial formalizations a very considerable technicality usually results.
Of course, in these days technicality is unavoidable, whether we use partial
formalizations or not. Peirce noted years back that the philosophy of the future
would have to employ a "fiercely technical vocabulary." Indeed, it is difficult to
see how this can be avoided in an age of highly sophisticated methodologies such
as our own. This is a circumstance we must accept and welcome, for fierce
technicality is with us whether we like it or not. Gone is the day when philosophy
can be done in just common-sense terms with horse-and-buggy procedures, as already
suggested above. It is interesting to note that the latest word, even from Oxford,
is to this effect.
Those who insist upon keeping metaphysics close to ordinary language must now face
the fact that the analysis of ordinary language itself is slowly giving way to the
exact study of logical form. The problem of "representing" or mirroring ordinary
sentences or texts in exact logical or semantical structures is one of the most
important problems in contemporary structural and transformational linguistics.
Although still in its infancy, the study of logical form promises to revamp to its
very roots the metaphysical study of language. Enormous progress has been made in
this kind of work in recent years, which cannot be overlooked by the metaphysician
who wishes to keep abreast of contemporary developments.
Sometimes it is contended that the use of logical methods in philosophy depends
more heavily on language, and how we say it, than on what is said and on what is
being talked about. Language takes over and true philosophy is given short shrift.
This contention of course misses the point that semantics is now a part of logic,
and that semantics is the study of how words relate to objects and how sentences
relate to what is meant. Thus there need be no neglect of the objects talked about
or of what is intended to be said about them.
Sometimes it is contended that the use of logical methods in philosophy provides a
kind of "straight-jacket" or rigid form which does violence to the subtlety of
what is intended -- the fit is never quite right. Logic distorts, so we had better
abandon it altogether. The answer to this kind of objection is a question tu
quoque. Is the fit ever quite right if natural language is used? A similar point
used frequently to be made by Philip Frank about physics. No physical theory ever
quite encompasses or explains all the phenomena we would like it to. There are
always a few recalcitrant circumstances that refuse to fit. Clearly there should
be here a two-way adjustment. We must seek ever-more comprehensive theories,
which, however, are not to be abandoned, ceteris paribus, to fit a few
recalcitrant circumstances. Physics is a vast, integrated edifice not easily to be
upset.
A similar point has been made by H.L.A. Hart (in conversation) about the use of
logical systems in the law. If the system is too narrow, let us go on to make
every effort to formulate more comprehensive and adequate ones for the purposes at
hand.
Another objection frequently brought against the use of logical methods in
philosophy rests on the contention that such methods are appropriate only for the
sciences and perhaps for the philosophy of science, but not for the more "humane"
parts of philosophy such as aesthetics, ethics, theology, and metaphysics. Such a
contention is to make a fundamental duality where there is none, as already noted.
Of course there are important differences among these subjects, just as there are
important differences among the sciences. Some methods are useful in some and
others in others. But logic is common to all of these, being not only subject-
matter neutral but closely interwoven with the very texture of language.
It is interesting to recall, looking almost two millenia back, the contention of
Plotinus that dialectic is "the precious part of philosophy: in its study of the
laws of the universe, philosophy draws on dialectic much as other studies and
crafts use arithmetic, though, of course, [italics added] the alliance between
philosophy and dialectic is closer" (Enneads, I.3.5-6). Now semiotics here is in
essentials merely dialectic in modern garb. As a matter of fact, semiotics is of
much greater interest for, and help to, philosophy than is mathematics. The
alliance is closer. Mathematics and logic have always been strange bedfellows
anyhow, and never stranger than in the recent proliferation of metamathematical
and model-theoretic techniques for philosophical purposes.
There is an increasing use of logical methods in analyzing and reconstructing the
great historical metaphysical views. Sometimes this is holistic, sometimes
piecemeal. Such work can be very illuminating in updating views or arguments that
might otherwise languish as mere historical curiosities. The aim of such work is
in part historical, to help see precisely what is being said. But it may also be
reconstructive and may part in very substantial ways from the historical text.
Again, such work may be useful in helping to preserve what is of permanent
importance. Inevitably this kind of work will increase in the years to come. The
great historical views die hard, and rather are semper reformanda in the light of
new knowledge.
Of course, logic-cum-semiotics is itself also under continual development. We must
not suppose it fixed once and for all for a new dogmatic slumber. New methods and
formulations should be welcomed in an open-armed, inquiring spirit. But at the
same time, progress in logical matters is slow and difficult and not every
nouveaute+ can pass the critical scrutiny demanded of it. As a matter of fact,
there are fewer alternatives than is commonly supposed, once analyzed to their
logical bedrock with maximum logical candor.
There is also the "it can't be done" attitude. Logical methods may be suitable for
some purposes but not for others. Sometimes the "it can't be done" is insisted
upon dogmatically. The Dutch intuitionist Brouwer for years apparently insisted
that his mathematical views could not be formalized. Over the years, however, the
work of Heyting and others, with ever. improved formulations, convinced him that
they could be. Of course nothing succeeds like success, and the best way to
convince those who think that it can't be done is to go ahead and do it. Often of
course a few easy phrases will not suffice for this, but only years of hard work.
Progress in metaphysics is par excellence "progress in clarification." Progress in
the sciences, or in society, is something else again, to say nothing of progress
in the arts if there is any. In metaphysics, however, the great historical views
must be continually kept alive by viewing them in the light of what we now know.
This is almost always a matter of more adequate formulation of precisely what the
view is, of probing more deeply into its foundations, of showing it adequate in
this or that respect in which it was previously thought wanting, in showing how it
may be brought into accord with modern science, and so on. The conscious use of
logic is almost a sine qua non for such progress.
Some metaphysicians are impatient of logical methods, claiming that they
accomplish too little for the effort required. This is rarely the case, however.
The situation is rather the other way around, that is, new problems and
difficulties emerge under closer logical inspection, problems that would not have
been seen otherwise. In this way logic is often a means of genuine discovery.
Nelson Goodman has pointed out that
I cannot hold the logical philosopher up . . . as a man who has found a magic key
to all the riddles of the universe; rather, he seems to have found a way to cause
himself of good deal of trouble. It is true, as the unlogical philosopher and the
unphilosophical logician often point out, that the way of the logical philosopher
is much like that of any transgressor.16
He transgresses the bounds of conventional philosophy with deeper, more thorough,
and more searching formulations, and he insists that "unphilosophic logic" itself
be subject to the same philosophic scrutiny as are other systems, especially as
regards ontic commitment and ontic involvement--this latter being the ontic
commitment of the metalanguage.17
By "logic" throughout has been meant, of course, a semiotics based upon the
standard first-order theory of quantification, as already remarked, without sets,
classes, or relations as values for variables in any wise or form. Some logicians
find this too severe a restriction, and wish to include also a higher-order logic,
a set theory, and perhaps also a model theory, or semantics of "possible worlds"
as well. There are many objections to including these, not least of which is the
excessive ontic commitment and involvement. We do not wish "our logic . . . to be
responsible for more of our ontology than is the extralogical part of our system,"
as Goodman has put it (ibid., p. 39).
And some of us are not willing to countenance . . . abstract entities [such as
classes, relations, and sets as values for variables] at all (if we can help it)
either because we are nominalists or because, for the sake of economy, we want to
commit ourselves to as little as possible. If either nominalism or plain parsimony
leads us to insist upon a logic that is not committed to abstract entities, then
we shall have to forego a large part of the usual modern logic--namely, most of
the theory of classes and relations. This will make the going hard . . . . The
difficulty of doing without a philosophically objectionable technique is not,
however, any sufficient reason for retaining it.
These admirable statements are beyond reproach and totally persuasive. Even so, we
should go one step further: We do not wish our logic to be responsible for any
ontology at all, irrespective of whether it be more or less than in the
extralogical part of our system. Otherwise we should have to give up one facet of
the requirement of subject matter neutrality.
It is often complained that logical philosophy is excessively complicated, too
many symbols are used, the formulae are too long, and so on. But of course, once
the new problems are opened up, the unlogical philosopher must now do without
symbols and formulae what the logical philosopher can do with them. The situation
is thus just the other way around. The problems are there and can no longer be
avoided, and nonsymbolic procedures are seen to be intolerably complex in handling
them or perhaps not able to do so at all. And in any case, the problems are
usually more difficult than the unlogical philosopher supposes, as Russell pointed
out at the end of his "On Denoting."
I will only beg the reader not to make up his mind against the view [put
forward]--as he might be tempted to do on account of its apparently excessive
complication--until he has tried to construct a theory of his own. . . . This
attempt, I believe, will convince him that, whatever the true theory may be, it
cannot have such a simplicity as one might have expected beforehand.18
Finally, a word concerning "verification" and "validation." Both topics raise
problems of enormous difficulty in the methodology of the sciences and hence a
fortiori in that of metaphysics and theology. Only a few items need be mentioned
here. No easy comments concerning these topics are forthcoming at the present
stage of research--there is just too much that we are ignorant of in the
methodology of the sciences. However, there is progress in the right direction, it
is hoped, to which attention may be called.
The analysis of both verification and validation must be given in terms of truth.
To verify is to find that a given sentence is true, or at least to come to accept
or take it as true. To validate is to verify a sentence of general form, whereas
we verify only a singular sentence. Sophisticated methodology of the sciences
makes use of the notion of degree of verification, the degree of the strength of
one's acceptance of an hypothesis. As already suggested, there is every reason to
think that such a notion will also prove useful in metaphysics and theology.
Variant notions of probability loom large in contemporary methodology of science.
For the most part, these are confined to contexts of a purely extensional kind.
Methods are readily forthcoming, however, for handling probability statements in
all manner of intensional contexts via the Fregean notion of the Art des
Gegebenseins, the notion of an entity's being taken under a linguistic
description.19 Thus, instead of speaking of the probability of a class, say,
relative to a given reference class, we must speak instead of the probability of
that class under a given Art des Gegebenseins relative to that reference class,
likewise as taken under a suitable Art des Gegebenseins.20 The use of probability
notions in intensional contexts can be accommodated in this way--subjective
probability, confirmation or logical probability, as well as statistical
probability.
Finally, it would seem all but impossible to discuss verification and validation--
and indeed justification also--very deeply without a theory of human acts or
actions, which in turn would rest upon a prior theory of events. We need not take
events as the only realities, as the process metaphysicians would have us do. But
we must at least at some stage recognize events, actions, processes, and states
happening or taking place or occurring. And we must recognize that the logical
properties of such occurrences differ radically from those of non-eventival
entities.
In sum, then, there is no roya1 road to metaphysical knowledge. The problem of
verification and validation in metaphysics presupposes that for the sciences, and
if anything is more difficult. The domain of principles or axioms required is
wider as well as the admitted types of verificatory experiences, as Bochenski has
pointed out. Adequate discussion of these topics is thus very difficult and must
await adequate solutions to the corresponding problems for the sciences. There is
no special metaphysical insight here that enables us to skip over the formidable
difficulties involved. The situation is rather the other way around. Metaphysical
insight itself should help us to find adequate solutions to these problems as
confined to just the sciences, which then can be used for the wider purposes at
hand.
These various comments are by no means intended to supply a thorough analysis of
the role of logica1 methods in metaphysics and theology, but only as a few
reminders of points that are often misunderstood or neglected. Readers familiar
with those methods will have found them for the most part superfluous; those who
are not are invited to join the sodality of those who are in order to get on with
the metaphysical jobs ahead of us.
Milton, Mass.
NOTES
1. Huston Smith, Forgotten Truth, the Primordial Tradition
(New York: Harper & Row, 1976), pp. 12-13.
2. Recall some of the material in the author's Semiotics and Linguistic Structure
(Albany: The State University of New York Press, 1978).
3. See the author's "On God and Primordiality," The Review of Metaphysics, 29
(1976): 497-522 and "Some Thomistic Properties of Primordiality," The Notre Dame
Journal of Formal Logic, 18 (1977): 567-582.
4. Cf. the author's Truth and Denotation (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1958).
5. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951).
6. (New York: New York University Press, 1965).
7. George Schlesinger, Religion and Scientific Method (Philosophical Studies
Series in Philosophy, Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1977).
8. Errol E. Harris, Atheism and Theism (Tulane Studies in Philosophy, Vol. XXVI:
1977).
9. Cf. John Findlay, "Ordinary, Revisionary, and Dialectical Strategies in
Philosophy," Erkenntnis 11 (1977): 277-290. 10. Cf. Truth and Denotation, Chapter
I, and the author's Logic, Language and Metaphysics (New York: New York University
Press, 1971), Chapter I.
11. See especially Gilbert Ryle, Dilemmas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1954), and Heinrich Scholz, Metaphysik als Strenge Wissenschaft (Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, l965, but first published in l941).
12. A.B. Kempe, "A Memoir on the Theory of Mathematical Form," Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society, 177 (1886), 1-70.
13. See Royce's Logical Essays, ed. by D. Robinson (Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown
Co., 1951), p. 350.
14. A.N. Whitehead, The Axioms of Projective Geometry (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1906), p. 2.
15. Cf. Truth and Denotation, pp. 17ff.
16. N. Goodman, Problems and Projects (Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill,
1972), p. 40.
17. See the author's Existence, Belief and Meaning (New York: New York University
Press, 1969), Chapter lI.
18. Logic and Knowledge (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1956), p. 56.
19. See Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, ed. by P.
Geach and M. Black (Oxford: Blackwell's, 1952), pp. 11 and 57.
20. See the author's "On the Language of Causal Talk: Scriven and Suppes,"
Pragmatics, Truth, and Language (Dordrecht, Boston: Reiedl, 1979), pp. 192-205.
CHAPTER IV
SOME PRINCIPLES OF PROCEDURE
IN METAPHYSICS
CHARLES HARTSHORNE
METAPHYSICS AS NONEMPIRICAL THEORY OF REALITY
Popper's definition of `metaphysical' is the most useful one: statements are
metaphysical or nonempirical if no conceivable observations would falsify them.
Metaphysics is trying to clarify ideas so general that any experience must be
compatible with them. This means, not that no experience is relevant to their
truth but that any experience, actual or conceivable, is relevant. Hence empirical
falsification--or, in the usual sense, verification--is ruled out.
Objections to a metaphysical statement must be on conceptual rather than
observational grounds. It is, however, a conceptual objection to argue that no
experience illustrative of the meaning of the statement can be conceived. Without
illustrations an idea cannot be clarified, and only experience, actual or
conceivable, can provide the illustrations. The other basic objection is
inconsistency. It is characteristic of metaphysicians, in their weaker moments, to
try to escape charges of inconsistency by refusing or failing to provide
unambiguous experiential meanings for their terms. Consider Spinoza comparing his
"modes" in "Substance" to drops of water in an ocean, or to the three-sidedness of
triangles. Neither example really does the job assigned to it. I am perfectly
convinced. that Spinoza did not clearly know what he meant by "modifications" of
Substance. It was a non-idea, not a false idea.
The not unreasonable Aristotelian-Whiteheadian "ontological principle" that the
abstract is real only in the concrete implies that if we understand concreteness
we also understand abstractness, and hence that a proper theory of concreteness
will sum up metaphysical knowledge. So I define metaphysics as theory of
concreteness. Also, since we can give meaning to `real' or `concrete' only by
their illustrations in experience, and since an experience includes whatever is
given in it so far as given, theory of concreteness coincides with theory of
experience. This is what idealists of every type (but hardly materialists or
dualists) have seen, however unclearly. The problem is to clarify the insight.
The objection to metaphysics that there may be several metaphysical systems all
equally clear and consistent in themselves but incompatible with one another (so
that only empirical evidence could decide among them) rests on a myth. The
sufficient reply is, Show us two such systems. Every metaphysics in history has
had its aspects of unclarity or dubious consistency. Mutually incompatible but
internally flawless systems are by that very feature shown to be unmetaphysical.
They are not on the final level of generality, but in some fashion
specializations.
Take Leibniz's Principle of Sufficient Reason. Is it clear and selfconsistent?
Either one simply assumes the full definiteness of the concrete and particular as
there in the reason, so that the problem repeats itself, or one is claiming to get
the more from the less, the logically stronger from the logically weaker, a plain
fallacy. Either way sufficient reason for the particulars is lacking. It took
Leibniz's genius to hide the absurdity with wondrous subtlety. Nonarbitrary
contingency is noncontingent contingency. Similar remarks could be made about
Spinoza's attempt to show the necessity of his "modes". Metaphysical failures are
not factual mistakes, they are failures to make full sense. Every metaphysician
sees this as true of his opponents.
At the heart of Hegel's Logic there is a logical blunder, which is found centuries
earlier in Chinese Buddhism. The blunder is in supposing that if A and B are
similar, or different, then each requires the other to be itself. Of course A
cannot resemble or differ from B without B. But it does not follow that A requires
this relation to be itself. Eisenhower resembled and also differed from
Washington, and this relation doubtless meant something to Eisenhower. But it
meant nothing to Washington, and it is not evident that there was any such
relation in Washington's world. If A exists but B does not, then A has and needs
no relation to B, not even as a definite possibility. Hegel (and his Chinese
predecessors) violated the logic of comparison relations. Russell, holding that no
concrete entity requires any other, in an opposite way also violated that logic,
as can be seen from the standpoint of another and greater logician, Charles
Peirce. I refer to Peirce's concept of Secondness or dependence--which at least in
some cases is nonmutual.
The objection that metaphysics must be a priori yet synthetic involves ambiguity.
Judgments are formally analytic or synthetic, but what is formally synthetic may
become analytic when undefined meanings are reasonably defined. Metaphysical
categories require each other: if there is necessity, there is contingency; if
independence then also dependence. Universal symmetrical denials of dependence
(Hume, Russell) or of independence (Spinoza, Blanshard) destroy their own meanings
(Maxims 5b and 10 below).
Metaphysical questions are conceptual, and conceptual analysis must answer them.
Linguistic analysts are right in this. But they tend to be monolithic empiricists
in the nonPopperian fashion; or to analyze chiefly trivial matters, or extreme
cases of bad metaphysics (arrived at by violating one or more of the 14 maxims we
are about to consider.) Also conceptual and linguistic are not in all respects
synonyms.
SOME MAXIMS OF METHOD
I find the following maxims of metaphysical method useful. 1. Take human
experiences as the initial samples of concrete reality or actuality, and try to
explain the abstract or potential in terms of aspects of concrete experiences.
2. Look to practical life and its most general pre-suppositions for the
indispensable ideas and ideals that philosophy, including metaphysics, is to
clarify and purify.
3. Trust terms in ordinary (or, in some science or nonphilosophical discipline,
standard) language -- for their ordinary or standard purposes; trust terms
standard for some school of philosophy only so far as they prove explicable by
ordinary or truly standard terms, together with examples from direct experience or
practical life.
4. Do not overestimate the ease with which the metaphysical import of experience
and practice is to be discerned, considering
a) that it is the unusual, not the universal or essential, aspects of experience
which stand out;
b) that there is no reason to think our human awareness can ever be without
qualification "clear and distinct", like that which theologians attribute to
deity; and
c) that consciousness is selective; hence, without suitable guiding ideas as to
what to look for in experience we are likely to miss much that is relevant to our
quest.
5. For such guiding ideas look to mathematics or formal
logic, as (however successfully or otherwise) Peirce did in his
categories of First, Second, Third, and Aristotle did in his
use of the distinction between substance and property as analogous to that between
subject and predicate. Examples:
a) Take relations of dependence to be of primary importance, since all inference
turns on them;
b) Interpret symmetrical relations as special cases, as equivalence
(biconditioning) is a special case of the normally one-way or simple conditioning
or dependence;
c) Look for ontological correlates of the modal terms possible, necessary,
contingent;
d) Distinguish levels of abstractness or of logical strength, and avoid the
fallacy of misplaced concreteness;
e) Avoid fallacies of division (e.g., "tables do not feel, therefore the molecules
in tables do not feel") and fallacies of composition (e.g., "stars and planets do
not feel, therefore the cosmos as a whole is insentient").
6. Seek formally exhaustive divisions of possible doctrines (employing less crude
devices than mere dichotomies, rather at least trichotomies, thus all, some only,
and none), and search for principles by which to eliminate all but one possible
doctrine.
7. With contrary doctrinal extremes (e.g., all relations external, all internal)
look for an intermediate position combining the advantages and avoiding the
disadvantages of both extremes.
8. Use experiential falsifiability (Popper) not verifiability as primary criterion
of "empirical", or non metaphysical.
9. Be cautious about asserting the zero case, as in "such and such is not
experienced"; remembering that while observation of X as present may establish its
presence, inability to detect a presence is not always equivalent to detecting the
corresponding absence ("no elephants here" may be safe, but "no microbes here"
risky). Not to know that we experience something is not the same as not to
experience it. Negative introspection is even more fallible than positive
introspection.
10. Honor the principle of contrast, avoid saying that absolutely "everything" is
such and such--unless you want the such and such to be as devoid of distinctive
character as the most general idea of entity, in contrast to bare nothing.
11. Since metaphysics is searching for the most general meaning of `concrete', try
to find ideas applicable to every thing conceivable as concrete, (and singular,
note maxim 5e above), though (maxim 10) not to absolutely everything, singular or
collective, concrete or abstract.
12. Expect such ideas to be variables with uniquely great ranges of values, rather
than constants or definite values under a variable. (Example: causal determination
of events by previous events, and creative transcendence of such determination,
may be viewed as matters of degree, whereas classical determinism takes the
determination to be absolute or infinite and the creativity to be zero. The
absolute degree and the zero degree are, at best, infinitely special cases, not
general principles. They are therefore suspect as metaphysical. (And it is a
matter of logic that they could not be established empirically.)
13. Since universal ideas must be variables, not constants, and since deity is a
universal idea (knowing all, influencing all, etc.), expect God to be a variable
with infinite range of possible values, not a mere constant--in some sense the
most flexible and alterable of all realities, in spite of being the most secure of
identity and permanence. See this combination as the problem, not the mere absence
of change or novelty. Learn from Carneades and Hume (also Barth, Berdyaev, and
many other modern theists) to distrust the simplistic idea of God as wholly
immutable cause of all change.
14. Keep the lines of communication open with various forms of philosophizing, and
with various religious, scientific, aesthetic specializations: also, look for
rational grounds for agreeing or disagreeing with other philosophers, living or
dead, and for better causes of disagreements than the self-serving one that the
others are stupid.
THE APPEAL TO EXPERIENCE
Maxim 1 is a revision of Descartes' cogito. The point is not that everything
except one's self can be doubted. Doubting is not "as easy as lying." The point is
rather that initially the natures of both the given "self" and the given "world"
are problematic, by comparison with momentary experiences. We know what it is like
to experience; for each moment we remember more or less vividly how we have just
previously been feeling, thinking, perceiving and remembering. But the self as
something always the same yet always different is initially a puzzle; also, though
we cannot, except verbally (by the pragmatic test) doubt that a worldly Something
includes us and much else; the character of this something is by no means
initially clear. Were it clear, the two thousand, or three thousand, years of
natural science would scarcely have been needed and would have yielded results
less mysterious than the present ideas of electrons, etc. Through memory we know
what experiences are like, but how much does mere perception tell us about the
nature of physical stuff or process? Memory relates experience to experience;
subject and object are here alike, and both are somewhat well known in their
intimate qualities. Perception relates human experiences to the things least like
them, "inanimate objects". Materialists talk as though perception were no problem,
while memory, the experience of experience, is a problem. They are trying to
explain the best known by the least known, the most alien to our self-knowledge
and hence most difficult to understand.
Subjective idealism is the opposite mistake. If memory is self-awareness,
perception is the nonpersonal aspect of givenness, how the nonself is given. Those
who hold that only one's own mental states are given are denying that perception
occurs. This is one of the perennial sophistries, hoary with age. It can hardly
survive the application of Maxim 2, and is open to other objections.
It remains true that whereas (in spite of Husserlj) physical realities are as
genuinely given as are our experiences, it is the experiences whose essential
properties are initially better known. We can, apart from science, know how
remembering differs from perceiving and both from anticipating the future, or how
hope differs from fear, and so on and so on, much more definitely and surely than
we can know what it is to be a rock, cloud, or tree. And even the physicists are
deeply puzzled by the question, What is matter? set over and above the mathematics
that enables us to deal successfully with it.
Husserl could almost be said (in his Ideen) to have tried to derive all wisdom by
the application of Maxim 1, with little attention to anything like the other
Maxims. This has always, since I encountered Husserl in 1923-24, seemed to me a
naive and unfruitful way to philosophize. What we need to know is indeed there in
experience, but a turtle or a baby has experience. To extract from experience its
deepest message is not to be accomplished simply by gritting one's teeth and
determining to give complete and exclusive attention to the given. That is not how
the human mind is able to get knowledge. God may derive all wisdom from divinely
intuited Evidenz, but we can derive very little by simply staring at the given
while trying to forget the world given in experience, or (the Epoche) trying to
persuade ourselves that while it seems to be given it may not exist at all. This
begs the whole question of realism.
The source of the error is not far to seek. It has two aspects. a) All human
intuition is indistinct, as Democritus, Epicurus, and Leibniz sagaciously saw. We
have no God-like "clear and distinct" intuitions, certainly not of the data of
perception. b) The other aspect is a natural but unwarranted assumption about
dreams, that they are "mere mental states" for which no real givens exist. Quite
the contrary, in all dreams, as Bergson so well describes, actual bodily states
are intuited. In my dreams I find all sorts of physical, bodily, conditions as
directly intuited. It follows that the hypothesis, "suppose all experience were
like dreams," does not yield the conclusion, "then there would be no physical
world." Rather the argument must run, suppose all experience were as dreams and a
certain theory of what dreams are were true, then there would be no physical
world. This argument is worthless; for no one knows what dreams, so described,
could possibly be. The notion of mere mental state, of experience without data,
real givens, is no better than the notion of a proposition that affirms only
itself. "Experience not of an existing world" is mere verbiage, for all anyone can
show. So it does not matter what conclusions may seem to follow from the use of
this verbiage. Heidegger, Ortega, and the French phenomenologists, also
Wittgenstein and Ryle, agree at this point, and I see this as a fairly definitive
judgment on one aspect of Husserl's enterprise.
In the previous paragraph points (a) and (b) mutually support one another. It is
the indistinctness with which the world is given that makes it so easy to
misinterpret the evidences of experience and misdescribe dreaming experience. The
apotheosis of this latter error is Malcolm's essay on dreaming. As he told me,
Malcolm had not read the essay of Bergson, the best philosophical writing in all
the centuries on what dreams are. Malcolm here badly violated Maxim 14 as well as
Maxim 9. Indeed he violated Maxim 3, for, as he admits, in talking about dreams
one has to use the language we employ about waking experiences, whereas Malcolm
wants to deny that there is a significant analogy between waking and dreaming
awareness.
The literature of metaphysics is vast. But of this literature how much expresses
thought that proceeds according to a defensible methodology? Attacks on
metaphysics can stress real weaknesses, for there has been plenty of bad
metaphysics. But nothing follows about the impossibility of at least relatively
good metaphysics. That issue is still open.
University of Texas
Austin, Texas
COMMENT
On Charles Hartshorne,
"Some Principles of Procedure in Metaphysics"
JAMES W. FELT
A few years ago a philosopher wrote: "The vague whole truth and the sharp half-
truth about philosophic fundamentals--for these we scarcely need professional or
full-time philosophers. It is the sharp vision of the whole truth we ask of the
philosophic profession."1 The philosopher was Charles Hartshorne and in the
present essay he has given us a persuasive bit of evidence (if we had none other)
both that he practices what he preaches and that metaphysics is alive and well in
America.
The essay is remarkable first of all for its unity of viewpoint. It exemplifies
Bergon's statement that "a philosopher worthy of the name has never said more than
a single thing . . . ."2 It is also remarkable for its reflective balance, its
historical wisdom, and its tautness of expression. It is itself proof that
metaphysics is possible and worth doing. It lays emphasis on concreteness as
experiential, on memory as more importantly constitutive of experience than
perception, and on the ineluctably objective character of experience.
Yet there are positions taken in the essay with which I am distinctly
uncomfortable, and for the sake of discussion I should like to single them out.
Doubtless some of my difficulties stem from misunderstanding, but I suspect that
in larger part they are symptomatic of a different view of how to go about doing
philosophy. Perhaps it is a matter of emphasis, for in another place, though
unfortunately not also here, Professor Hartshorne wrote: "Since technical logic
alone cannot establish a metaphysics, intuitions being also needed, and since
these, at least as put into words and conceptualized, are not infallible or
invariable from person to person, how far philosophers can ever agree is deeply
problematical" (CSPM, xviii). Not only may some such divergence of intuitional
viewpoint obtain between us; in this paper he seems to write as if he had
forgotten the importance which he earlier attributed to intuitional thinking.
I therefore briefly mention, in order of their appearance, difficulties which I
find with the essay.
(1) By way of preliminary clarification, we must understand the first paragraph of
the essay in the light of Hartshorne's Maxim 9 and his caution in another place
against confusing "what is not observably present" with "what is observably
absent" (CSPM, 79). The philosopher who does not observe in his experience value
or aim or the feeling of causal derivation, would not necessarily have observed
their absence. But why is Popper's definition so very "useful" for metaphysical
procedure? Popper devised it not so much to do metaphysics as to discriminate it
from empirical science. To say that experience, any experience, cannot fail to
have the universal characteristics of all experience, hence cannot be observed to
lack them, is indeed true, perhaps even tautological, but does little to get us
started metaphysically. What interests us in metaphysics, I should think, is
rather the "divination" (as Whitehead put it) of just what those characteristics
are which all experience has. And I see no way of doing this apart from a kind of
intuitive observation, even though it is not "observation" in the usual empirical
sense of the word.
(2) I therefore think it fallacious to say flatly, "Objections to a metaphysical
statement must be on conceptual rather than observational grounds." I even wonder
whether Hartshorne quite believes it himself, at least in practice. For he grants,
as we have seen, the need for intuitions, and are not these more fundamentally
observational than conceptual? In another place, for instance, in refuting the
proposition: "There is a beauty of the world as a whole, but no one enjoys it,"
Hartshorne argues: "Even in thinking `the world as a whole', we enjoy a glimpse of
its beauty, or we should not have this thought. There is no experience and no
thought absolutely without aesthetic fulfillment" (CSPM, 289f.). Does Hartshorne's
conviction rely on conceptual analysis or rather on direct intuition?
(3) I do not think that Hartshorne's response to the objection he raises early in
his essay is satisfactory. For the sake of clarity I expand this objection a
little, as I understand it: "if metaphysics lives up to its Popperian definition,
then there could arise equally clear, internally consistent but mutually
inconsistent systems with no way of telling which is true and which false, since
empirical observation is excluded. But this amounts to admitting that their truth
or falsity has no sense, hence that they are equally nonsensical."
To this objection, if I have it right, Hartshorne gives two distinct replies: (a)
that there are not in fact two or more such "clear" systems; (b) if there were,
they would by that very fact be unmetaphysical, merely specializations of some
more ultimate (metaphysical) system.
But a is true only if we insist on an unreasonably rigorous sense of clarity. I
think that few would quarrel with Hartshorne's own observation (CSPM, 69) that he
knows of no system, including his own, which is ideally and patently clear. But if
we take "clear" more realistically, does not the objection still have weight? I am
sure I could find philosophers of several other viewpoints who are convinced that
their own systems are just as clear and internally consistent as Hartshorne's; who
find his conceptual argumentation unconvincing; and who might with some
plausibility claim that their systems are more faithful to experience than his.
Surely that is the sort of claim Whitehead made when he criticized Hume or
mechanistic determinists. Like Wordsworth, his complaint was not primarily logical
or conceptual but intuitional (I would even say observational): that something had
been left out of their accounts which nevertheless constituted an important part
of experience.
Reply b, on the other hand, seems no more effective. Even if we grant that, in the
nature of things, there is only one possible ultimate metaphysical system, the
valid conclusion to be drawn is not that both systems referred to must be
unmetaphysical, but rather that at most one of them can be metaphysical. The
interesting question is which, if either, is faithful to reality. The practical
concern lies in choosing between competing metaphysical systems, or bettering one
we have, and for that I submit that appeal to experience plays just as fundamental
a role as logical analysis.
(4) "Metaphysical questions are conceptual," writes Hartshorne (p. 8, par. 3),
"and conceptual analysis must answer them. Linguistic analysts are right in this."
(See also CSPM 94). But is not this a heavy overstatement and even a violation of
Maxim 10? To be sure, some metaphysical questions are conceptual. Also, in an
earlier quotation Hartshorne acknowledged the distinction between intuitions and
their embodiment in words or concepts. Nonetheless, I believe that Bergson was
nearer to the truth when he asserted that the method of metaphysics is "mainly
intuition" (CM, 42), however much he may have overstressed its function to the
neglect of metaphysical conceptualization.3 Has not Hartshorne given away too much
to the linguistic analysts?
(5) Does not the second half of Maxim 3, amount to a kind of reductionism, even
perhaps an instance of what Whitehead called the `Fallacy of the Perfect
Dictionary'?4 Perhaps I have not understood how Hartshorne means the words
"explicable" and "together with," but it sounds as if he means that the technical
terms of a metaphysics cannot denote ideas which are not in common use. Yet he
admits with Whitehead, that in many ways philosophy is akin to poetry. Is an
ultimate metaphysical principle, such as Whitehead's `Creativity', really
"explicable" by ordinary terms, any more than is Eliot's `stillpoint' in Four
Quartets?
(6) Maxim 5 identifies what Maxim 4 called the "guiding ideas as to what to look
for in experience," and it tells us that we should "look from the outset to formal
logic." I find this astonishing. Or does "from the outset" mean only "to start
with, not necessarily to finish with"? Surely it is not in virtue of the
principles of formal logic that we recognize, for instance, that all experience is
fundamentally value experience, or that it has the character of ongoing synthetic
process. And even though we grant that the principles of formal logic arise from
the structure of experience, it does not follow that all that is important, or
even that most that is important about the structure of that experience will be
reflected in formal logic. Yet Hartshorne says that it is to formal logic that we
should turn in order to know what to look for in experience.
(7) I cannot agree (Maxim 13) that deity is a universal idea, and certainly not
just on the grounds that `God' is defined as knowing all, influencing all, and so
forth. But even if we can define `God' in purely universal terms, this is more a
descriptive than an essential definition. That whatever exemplifies the definition
is unique does not, it seems to me, make the notion `God' universal. And notice
how the first sentence of Maxim 13 begins with "universal ideas" but ends with
"the most flexible and alterable of all realities" (not "notions" or
"`realities'"). Even if we grant that the idea of God is universal, we begin the
sentence with an idea and end it, voila- , with God (not `God'), a reality (not a
notion). It is not hard to sense here the affinity in Professor Hartshorne's
thinking with the ontological argument, even if one did not know he had written
books about it.
(8) In summary it seems to me that Hartshorne stresses too much the logical, and
too little the phenomenological, aspect of metaphysical method. In doing so he
gives the impression of a kind of apriorism that maps out the logical structure
into which real experience must perforce fit. This is too Procrustean for my
taste. In a well-known passage Whitehead wrote: "The true method of discovery [in
metaphysics] is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of
particular observations; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative
generalization; and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by
rational interpretation."5 It seems to me that by the use he has made of Popper's
definition of metaphysics Hartshorne has prevented himself from landing again in
experience, for, as he says, "objections to a metaphysical statement must be made
on conceptual rather than observational grounds." Does he in fact disagree with
Whitehead's notion of metaphysical method? If he does, it seems to me a
retrogression rather than an advance.
Yet I commend Hartshorne's conclusion, that many instances of bad metaphysics do
not prove it is pointless to try doing good metaphysics. It recalls the parallel
conclusion drawn by another philosopher of our century: "If metaphysical
speculation is a shooting at the moon, philosophers have always begun by shooting
at it; only after missing it have they said that there was no moon, and that it
was a waste of time to shoot at it."6
Santa Clara University
Santa Clara, California
NOTES
1. Charles Hartshorne, Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method London: SCM
Press, 1970); hereafter `CSPM'), p. 93.
2. Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind (New York: Philosophical Library, 1946;
hereafter `CM'), p. 132.
3. For an attempt at restoring the balance see my "Philosophic Understanding and
the Continuity of Becoming," in the International Philosophical Quarterly (1978),
375-93.
4. Modes of Thought (New York: Capricorn Books, 1958), p. 235.
5. Process and Reality (New York: Macmillan, 1929), p. 7; my emphasis.
6. Etienne Gilson, The Unity of Philosophical Experience (New York: Scribner,
1937), p. 309.
COMMENT
On Richard L. Barber,
"Metaphysical Knowledge as Hypothesis"
ERROL E. HARRIS
In order to grasp the significance of Professor Barber's thesis it is necessary to
know what he understands by the hypothetical, and this he nowhere explicitly
states. However, it would appear that by hypothetical he means what is not
immediately and originally disclosed in experience. What is immediate and
original, then, will be categorical. Assertoric propositions could, presumably, be
formulated only about what is immediately presented. Again, the objection to his
position that Professor Barber considers implies that the hypothetical excludes
certainty and so is, presumably, the purely problematic, an implication which
Professor Barber does not repudiate.
The thesis we are to discuss then would seem to be that all metaphysical knowledge
is problematic and is not itself immediately experienced. If I understand him
aright, Professor Barber is maintaining that metaphysics is the inference to, or
perhaps better, the hypothesizing of, the conditions on which our immediate
experience, which is certain and indubitable, would be what it in fact is; and
this must include the hypothesis of the conditions on which our hypothesizing
would constitute an adequate explanation of what we immediately experience.
Now I find this position somewhat puzzling. Why, on this thesis, should anybody
ever philosophize at all? If immediate experience were certain and indubitable
surely it would require no explanation. If Professor Barber, or anybody else, were
to object that one can be immediately certain of the presence of isolated
particulars which are not self-explanatory and the occurrence of which in one's
experience needs explanation, then I should demur. For to be certain of the
immediate presence of a particular one must be able to identify it precisely, and
that would involve relating it to a great number of other particulars, some
present and others not. So the immediate certainty of the presence of any
particular involves immediately certain knowledge of much else, which, if one has
it, leaves no need or room for explanation. It is when and because such knowledge
is lacking, when the elements of our so-called immediate experience conflict, or
when there are gaps in its continuity, that we raise questions and seek
explanations. And it is just for such reasons that Professor Barber finds
explanation necessary. The totality of his experience, he says, is incomplete; its
contents do not immediately include components or aspects which tell of their
sources, and so forth. All of which is evidence of the uncertainty of immediate
experience. And, if lack of certainty makes knowledge hypothetical, immediate
experience will be as hypothetical as any other and our distinction between the
hypothetical and the assertoric will collapse.
We may question further what experience is immediate, whether indubitable or not.
Few nowadays will countenance the old empiricist dogma that sense-data are the
immediate simple elements of experience. There is today widespread agreement that
sense-data, as special objects of consciousness, do not exist, or at any rate are
not immediately given (and so not strictly data). The common sense notion that
sensuous perception is immediately given has been discredited by psychological
evidence, and a tolerable consensus of opinion among philosophers of science is
that all observation is theory-laden and that there is no theoretically neutral
observation language. The doctrine of immediate intellectual intuition--whether of
the `simple natures' of Descartes, or of Aristotle--is equally dubious. The
allegedly self-evident is always evident in the light of some background knowledge
or with tacit reference to some systematic context. Even cogito ergo sum is itself
a discursive nexus of thought and being, a connexion of concepts which holds by
virtue of a sophisticated appreciation of meanings derived from a complex system
of ideas.
If the assertoric is confined to the immediate, and if no immediate knowledge can
be identified, all knowledge once again becomes hypothetical; and this, or
something like it, seems to be Professor Barber's own conclusion. Metaphysics he
thinks is subject to high degree of uncertainty, but all other knowledge likewise,
in inverse proportion to the limitation of its scope, is liable to some degree of
uncertainty.
Such a position, however, is clearly untenable, for the hypothetical must rest
upon a categorical base, and every conditional nexus must have factual ground. If
all knowledge were merely problematic it would dissolve away into total ignorance.
The objection frequently raised against the coherence theory of truth, that no
proposition could ever be established if every statement depended for its truth on
other statements, is valid against the view that all knowledge is hypothetical,
for we should always be referred to prior conditions as the grounds of any
supposition. There must be some firm ground on which to rest even doubts, and some
categorical affirmations from which questions can arise. If all knowledge were
merely probable there would be no basis on which to assess the degree of
probability of any. Those who abjure certainty forget that probability is a degree
of truth and can be estimated only by reference (tacit or otherwise) to some
standard of verity which must itself be unquestionable. To abandon certainty
altogether, therefore, is to embrace scepticism--a position which, if radical and
unqualified, refutes itself by its own assertoric claim. Accordingly, we must, and
we invariably do, claim categorical truth for some knowledge, and our question is
whether metaphysical knowledge is to be included in what we assertorically
maintain.
Clearly the categorical foundation of all our knowledge must be whatever ranks as
the criterion of truth, and what that is only metaphysics can decide. It is true
that different philosophers advocate different theories of truth, not all of which
can be accepted. There must then be some hypothetical elements in metaphysical
knowledge. But what nobody can deny except inconsistently is that there is and
must be some ultimate truth--some criterion of judgment. So there must also be at
least some categorical element in metaphysics as well, and it may well be that the
categorical and the hypothetical are inseparable. In fact, the very nature of
thinking makes their inseparability unavoidable.
Metaphysics, I have said, must necessarily assert the existence of an ultimate
truth. This knowledge is not simply categorical but is apodictic. Now it is
commonly held that necessary knowledge is so by virtue of necessitating
conditions, so that all necessary propositions are really hypothetical. This is a
doctrine put forward both by F.H. Bradley and by Bertrand Russell. It is
maintained that the universal (which is likewise necessary) is always
hypothetical: All S is P being equivalent to, If anything is S it is P. But the
hypothetical asserts a nexus, and if the assertion is to be true the nexus must be
grounded in fact. If what is S is also P it must be because of some factual
character of both of the terms which connects them invariably. If whales are
mammals it is because they suckle their young and breathe through lungs, etc.
Consequently every hypothetical has a categorical aspect, and categorical,
hypothetical and necessary are all inseparable. Metaphysical knowledge is thus
certainly to some extent hypothetical, but it cannot be so exclusively, and for
that very reason is also, and perhaps more essentially, both assertoric and
apodictic.
There is, moreover, another reason why metaphysics is always categorical. It is a
philosophical science and so, unlike empirical or exact (i.e., mathematical)
science, it is self-reflective. Whatever it asserts, therefore, must be true of
itself and it must affirm the existence of its own subject matter. This is not
true of other sciences. Geometrical propositions hold good whether or not there
exist in actuality any perfect circles or dodecahedra. In fact, though the
geometrician will usually tell us that such figures cannot be constructed with
perfect exactitude, nevertheless everything that he demonstrates about them is
necessary. But it is so only on the hypotheses that the geometer states: it is
hypothetical knowledge. But philosophical sciences cannot be purely hypothetical,
because whatever they affirm of their subject matter necessarily includes the
thinker who affirms and who cannot, without self-stultification, call his own
existence in question. Thus, when a metaphysician makes statements about reality
in general, he necessarily includes himself in the subject of the statement. For
he is part of reality and therefore whatever is true of reality in general must be
true also of him. Of course, he may judge hypothetically of both, but then, as I
have already said, the ground of his supposition must be what is actually true of
the real. I cannot speak of a merely possible world of which I am a member because
my own existence is for me an inescapable reality and cannot be a mere
supposition.
Hence the subject matter of metaphysics cannot be merely suppositious as the
subject matter of geometry may be. And Professor Barber himself hints at this
necessity when he gives as examples of metaphysical questions: `What is real?',
`what is the nature of "reality"?', `What is it that is?', 'What is, or has,
being?'. These questions, with one accord, make no question that there is some
reality, that something has being, the nature of which is of primary significance
and the ground of all else. Any attempt to deny this would be self-defeating, and
its assertion is categorical. It is hardly debatable that it is also metaphysical
and is therefore at least one exception to Professor Barber's thesis.
Many years ago an acquaintance of mine was being interviewed for a philosophical
appointment. `What is your attitude towards reality ?' he was asked. He replied
with firm assurance and perspicacity: `I accept it.' Who, indeed, could do
otherwise, and how could we do so merely hypothetically?
CHAPTER VI
INTRODUCTION TO THE PANEL:
METAPHYSICS AND SCIENCE
ANDRE+ MERCIER
Professor Agazzi, realizing the positivist and empiricist view of the proper task
of reason, which is also held more or less by analytical philosophers, asserts
that metaphysics has always been characterized by a "synthetic view" of reason. It
is, he says, because of this kind of creative freedom that metaphysics has been
mistrusted. But now it appears that science too needs a "synthetic use" of reason,
for it is impossible to derive scientific theories from a mere analysis of
experience.
Moreover, metaphysics is, according to Agazzi, a field of experience like science.
Descartes was wrong when he held reason to be that which warrants certainty
against doubt, but conversely the empiricists are also wrong, when they maintain
that experience is the sole source of understanding. Actually, says Agazzi, there
is a methodological affinity between science and metaphysics, even though the
standards of rigor are different in one or the other.
Now, some philosophers allege certain negative features of metaphysics but not of
science. They speak of a personal view of the world, a want of objectivity and the
like--objectivity being understood as intersubjectivity. However, this is not
quite so, even though metaphysics does not fulfill a criterium of
intersubjectivity identical with that of science as is usually conceived. It is
scientific discourse which is intersubjective: metaphysics, Agazzi says, is a
discourse which claims the right not to take anything for granted, whereas science
takes for granted a whole set of institutional criteria. Consequently, metaphysics
must renounce the "comfortable" status of intersubjectivity of science, for it can
promise nothing from the beginning of its enterprise. This is not arbitrariness or
anything of the like. On the contrary, it is a feature of the extreme severity of
metaphysical discourse proper inasmuch as it aims at being more than
intersubjective. Hence if we interpret objectivity with intersubjectivity,
metaphysics is not objective.
At this point I should like to interrupt my summary of Agazzi's paper to contend
that it is correct to identify objectivity with intersubjectivity. I have indeed
attempted in many of my publications to show that objectivity, which is a
fundamental--indeed, the fundamental--mode of science, does not follow from an
assumed intersubjectivity of science, but that intersubjectivity itself follows
from the fundamental objectivity of science. There is an authentic
intersubjectivity too in other enterprises of the mind, in particular in art,
where art corresponds however to a subjectivity as its authentic mode of knowledge
just as objectivity is the mode of science. Hence I refuse to assume
intersubjectivity as a criterium of "scienticity," and an argument that says that
metaphysics is not a science because it lacks intersubjectivity, is to my mind
wrong. The fact that some kind of formal objectivity can be derived formally from
some kind of formally defined intersubjectivity is no proof whatever of the
assertion that objectivity follows from intersubjectivity. Any discourse, even
wrong, can be put into a formalism. Here, of course, the word wrong means not
formally incorrect, but not in agreement with the real.
Continuing with Agazzi's paper, he notes that metaphysical systems as world views
are not arbitrary, because they must be in agreement with empirical evidence and
it is a fact that all such systems as have been put forward have been suggested by
"reality," either in order to reflect a special feature of reality or to avoid an
aspect of reality as appears undesirable to logos. Metaphysics yields unitary
pictures enabling an understanding of what has first been explained, and curiously
enough, Agazzi says, one cannot explain that which has not been understood
beforehand. Hence, there must be a kind of global appreciation, i.e., even
scientific theories reveal an important hermeneutic moment. Is it true, Agazzi
asks, that such hermeneutic efforts are in metaphysics bound to personal
intuitions? No, he answers, or only partially.
I should rather say that this is not--even though partially --a fact, as many
anti-metaphysicians say, but a hypothesis which nobody can prove. Another
difficulty which I encounter in Agazzi's text understanding is his sudden
reversal, when he first says that one needs to understand what has first been
explained, and then asserts that in order to explain one has to understand.
Agazzi's next point concerns the apparent difference between a cumulative progress
of science and a frustrating destiny of metaphysics. Metaphysics, it is said,
tackles "eternal problems," while science gives clear answers to questions clearly
put. Actually, Agazzi says, this is an oversimplified and optimistic view of
science which of late has been severely criticized especially by Kuhn and
Feyerabend. Not only is the positivist view wrong--and here, wrong has the same
meaning as a moment ago--it is not in agreement with the modern conception of
verifiability versus falsifiability (cf. Popper).
I should like to ask whether Kuhn and his school have really been the first to
utter such a critique. While I recognize their merit, Kurt Huebner, has long
taught similar things, not to insist upon authors who are long dead, going back to
Duhem, or even those still active like Margenau and even myself.
The problem "What is progress?" cannot in our days be handled as it was in the
19th Century, as Agazzi, of course, knows. He asks: can a progress be ascertained
in metaphysical inquiry? His answer is: yes, for certain things can no longer be
maintained in the field of metaphysics. This, however, is a negative statement,
whereas supporters of the idea of scientific progress argue with positive
statements. There is, Agazzi notes, besides a global evaluation, also a local
evaluation of progress in relation with "normal science" as produced by routine
work until "the vein offered by a certain paradigm is exhausted." I like this
metaphor, which of course is very Kuhnian. Metaphysics, he adds, works similarly
and goes through its own paradigms too.
This is an important argument, and on many occasions I have noted the same about
art, calling the attention of philosophers to the fact that what is called by Kuhn
`paradigms' in science has its counterpart in `styles' in art. Styles become
exhausted, each in its own time, and are replaced by radically "new" styles just
as scientific paradigms do. It is therefore a feature, not of science alone, but
of all human cognitive enterprises, including metaphysics. Therefore, science is
not characterized by that particular feature.
The next point made by Agazzi is very important: if metaphysics, he says, is an
effort of "knowing inside a belief," science is so too, within certain
restrictions which do not count for metaphysics. These restrictions, if I
understand him well, make the difference between metaphysics and science. Both
have an affinity, but the deep distinction resides in their different thematic
interest: the point of view of the whole for metaphysics, several limited points
of views for the various sciences. He concludes that metaphysics, though right in
claiming its cognitive status, cannot be attributed the additional character of
being a science.
I do not quite see what this additional character is. If it is a question of
addition, then a science is simply "metaphysics + this additional character." If
metaphysics is ontology, I can agree that physics for instance is ontology too,
but of what? To my mind, the additional character is not really additional but
restrictive, viz., the explicit character of things considered by physics or
science in general being finite, multiple and in interaction with one another,
which is not the focus of the interest of metaphysics proper.
If Agazzi is in agreement with me, then what is the difference--non finite, non
multiple, non interactive--which calls the attention of the metaphysician?
Professor Bunge's contribution is short and formal, and contains theses about (i)
what he calls the "science of metaphysics," (ii) the "metaphysics of science" and
(iii) what he calls "emergence." Metaphysics, he claims, can be turned into a
rigorous science, and he gives formal arguments. This seems to contradict what
Agazzi said, viz., that metaphysics is not a science.
Secondly, Bunge asserts that science has metaphysical presuppositions, as of
course has been said by others before him. But he is more precise: There are
theoretical metaphysical presuppositions and heuristic metaphysical
presuppositions of science. If we accept this, I ask: how does Bunge conciliate
the fact that he can make metaphysics into a rigorous science with a metaphysics
of science? If this were so, then, the metaphysics of science would be a "rigorous
science of science." But what is that?
Finally, emergence is said by Bunge to be a metaphysical concept. I say concept
and not notion as he does, for reasons of conformity to the vocabulary to which I
am used. Bunge connects this concept of emergence with novelty. My question is
whether there is a relationship between Bunge's emergence-novelty connection and
Agazzi's analysis of the Kuhnian argument about paradigms?
Bunge concludes with a pessimistic note: He doubts that a definitive science of
metaphysics or a definitive metaphysics of science will ever be built. I, for my
part, should rather be optimistic. For, if these final stages were at hand, the
philosophers of science would have nothing to do.
Professor Hu¦ bner's first questions are: What is a presupposition; what is
metaphysical? His answer reads: metaphysical presuppositions in science are groups
of premisses which contain only a priori and valid statements.
His next question is: are there such presuppositions at all? He answers: There are
such in science, viz., instrumental, functional, axiomatic, judicial and normative
ones. Axioms, e.g., are neither empirically true nor false. So they can never be
falsified; they have a meaning, though, viz., for, and not by experience.
Such presuppositions resemble the rules of a game, namely, the "game of
experience." I like this phrase, for already mathematics is a game, but not the
game of experience: it is "pure-game" if you please. Mathematics is not a science
but a power. Therefore, if the question of the relationship between science and
metaphysics is posed, then the other question, namely, about the relationship
between mathematics and metaphysics deserves similar treatment as well.
Hu¦ bner should be able to answer, for, he goes on explaining that logic never
teaches anything about reality, whereas metaphysics, or at least metaphysicians,
claim to speak about reality. Perhaps what Russell calls the "really real," in
contradistinction to the more minute reality tackled by the sciences, is the
reality approached by metaphysics. A special dialectic follows, says Huebner,
which is reflected by that reality but which could not compete with the necessity
asserted in formal logic.
Hu¦ bner too has an argument about the dependence of presuppositions upon the
historical situation in which they are made. But he insists that this does not
make them arbitrary and talks of "the logic of a situation." Hence, he says, let
us give up the idea that there are necessarily true presuppositions in science.
What there is, are metaphysical presuppositions, for we can never grasp reality as
such.
In my book Erkenntnis und Wirklichkeit I have explained the same idea by saying
that we always try to rape nature or reality. This never succeeds, because all we
are able to do is to make clothes which more or less suit reality and that all our
theories are nothing but clothes. We know about the clothes, because we made them,
but not about the real body they actually conceal from our view. What is the
difference or likeness, between scientific, and metaphysical clothes?
CHAPTER VII
METAPHYSICS AND SCIENCE:
AFFINITIES AND DISCREPANCIES
EVANDRO AGAZZI
SCIENCE AS THE MODEL OF KNOWLEDGE?
An inquiry today concerned with the problem of characterizing metaphysical
knowledge cannot bypass the fact that the broadly accepted paradigm of knowledge
in our days, is represented by science. Evidence of this is easily found when one
considers the simple fact that every inquiry that aims at being taken seriously or
at qualifying itself as rigorous and objective research, immediately claims to be
a (perhaps new) science. This does not imply at all that metaphysics, in order to
be taken seriously today, must try to qualify as a science as well. But it surely
implies that, if science has actually become the present model of knowledge, a
comparison with science is inevitable if metaphysics wants to be considered a kind
of knowledge in some acceptable sense.
This pure consideration of principle is furthermore strengthened by a
consideration of fact, namely, that the model of science has been exploited for a
long while in contemporary philosophy in order to discredit metaphysics or, at
least, in order to remove it from the realm of knowledge proper. The history of
positivism and neo-positivism, many positions within analytical philosophy, beside
the generic atmosphere of the scientistic mentality, are too fresh as memories to
be in need of any detailed exemplification. They all show how science has been
taken as the most convincing argument for proving that metaphysics was not so much
a false knowledge, as simply no knowledge at all.
As a defense against this attack, two main positions can be adopted. The one
maintains: there are several kinds of knowledge, scientific knowledge being only
one among other possible and actual ways of acquiring knowing which exist beside
science. This position is certainly reasonable and can be defended with some
success, but it is rather weak from the viewpoint of our issue. For it would be
too easy for the opponents of metaphysics to accept the above statement and then
say that science does constitute the proper and fullest standard of knowledge--
metaphysics, together with common sense, unsystematic thinking, unorganized
experience, personal approaches to reality, sentimental or aesthetic worldviews,
would be seen as vague, generic, unreliable and provisional kinds of knowledge.
It is therefore much better to adopt a second position, which assumes that
knowledge as such has some unique general features, but admits of some further
specifications depending upon the particular subject matter toward which the
effort of knowing is addressed in the different cases. By adopting this attitude,
one would surely be able to recognize that the general and characteristic features
of knowledge have been brought to a particularly clear and effective degree of
maturation and consciousness in science (which deserves, therefore, its being
promoted to the paradigm of knowledge). But this would not prevent one from
inquiring whether these characters are correctly recognizable also within domains
of inquiry other than science (e.g., in metaphysics), although in these domains
they are not accompanied by other features that are peculiar to science alone. It
is worth noting that this way of putting things is fair not only to metaphysics,
but to science as well, for one surely obtains a quite impoverished picture of
science by reducing all scientific problems to a purely epistemological status. In
other words, when people say, as they often do, that philosophy of science is
merely the modern way of doing theory of knowledge, they are actually
oversimplifying the richness of the aspects involved in science, and neglecting a
substantial part of it. And if it is true that some epistemological emphasis has
dominated philosophy of science for a long while, it is not less true, on the
other hand, that the more recent trends in this discipline have recalled attention
to a whole series of problems of science which are not strictly epistemological.
An attempt to develop the second line of thought mentioned above has been made by
the author of the present paper on several previous occasions and it would not be
reasonable to repeat it here.1 Still, the core of those reflections will be
recalled briefly in order to give the general coordinates of the discourse. The
main stress in this paper will be upon some further points, which in turn, have
only been hinted at in the previous papers.
To give an initial idea of the aim of this paper, we could note that the preceding
inquiry aimed at showing that science and metaphysics share the foundational
requirements of their cognitive status, while differing in their cognitive
interest. This was tantamount to claiming that the positive qualities which are
usually credited to science are to be credited to metaphysics as well, and that
these also include some features which are often considered as typical of
metaphysics and alien to science.
The task of the present paper will be, anagolously, that of showing that some of
the negative features that are often alleged to be typical of metaphysics, are
equally well recognizable in the case of science. It will follow that, even from
the point of view of some concrete limitations, science and metaphysics are on the
same footing. Of course, this will not automatically mean a full parallel between
both disciplines, and we shall therefore devote some attention to the problem of
an acceptable differentiation between them.
SOME COMMON QUALITIES OF SCIENCE AND METAPHYSICS
The Mediation of Experience.
Let us now outline briefly some positive characteristics that science and
metaphysics have in common. The positivist tradition has opposed science to
metaphysics by claiming that metaphysics is based on the mediation of experience
while science never oversteps experience. However, the result of the most mature
reflections in the philosophy of science, both in the field of concept formation
and of theory construction, has been that the theoretical components can never be
dispensed with and that they are by no means reducible to empirical ones. This
fact has clarified why it is not possible in science to remain with pure
experience or, to put it differently, how science too resorts to the mediation of
experience as long as the tools for acquiring knowledge in science clearly appear
to be two, i.e., experience and logos (whereby with logos we mean the specific
function of reason).
This ineliminability of the theoretic (i.e., non-empirical) side is by no means in
contrast with the fundamental methodological requirement of every empirical
science, which imposes that even the most abstract theoretical statements be able
to be tested empirically. For this ability to be tested means only that fully
empirical statements must be deducible from the theoretical ones and that they
must turn out to be true or false on the basis of the empirical evidence. But it
is here that one can point out a difference with respect to metaphysics, as this
requirement of empirical testability does not belong to its methodological
imperatives.
This is true, but a little reflection shows that it has to do not with the
cognitive structure of science, but simply with the different domains of
problematization (or field of interest) of the two kinds of inquiry. In the case
of science, the domain of problematization is, if we take science in its broadest
sense, "the whole of experience;" in the case of metaphysics this domain is simply
"the whole" as such. To explain what this way of speaking means we could say that
science circumscribes its objects by selecting, in each of its different
disciplines, a set of predicates directly bound to empirical testing conditions
and goes on attributing these predicates (or predicates that are logically
definable on the basis of these) also to theoretical entities (i.e., to entities
which are not directly observable, but are postulated in order to explain the
empirical data). This can be expressed also by saying that theoretical entities
are supposed to belong to "the same kind of reality" as do empirical things, even
though they are empirically unaccessible; in this sense they are included in "the
whole of experience." Metaphysical predicates, on the contrary, are not intended
to be limited to an empirical reference and are proposed as apt for attribution to
any kind of reality (empirical or not), for the "viewpoint of the whole" cannot
admit, as such, of any predetermined limitation. As a matter of fact, metaphysical
entities which are reached by means of the mediation of experience are usually
conceived of as not belonging to the same "kind of reality" as empirical entities.
It follows from all this that statements which are intended to express the
viewpoint of the whole must surely be compatible with the empirical evidence and
also be able to explain it (like the theoretical statements of every science), but
they cannot be submitted to the additional condition of being also empirically
testable, for this would reduce their intended scope. It is clear therefore how
the requirement of empirical testability is one of those "peculiar" features of
science which do not belong to it as a paradigm of knowledge, but as a particular
kind of knowledge that is, as a knowledge limited to particular thematic horizons.
Analytic and Synthetic use of Reason.
Another way of expressing the substance of the above argument is to claim that
both science and metaphysics cannot be carried on without something more than an
"analytic use" of reason, that is, reason that is not allowed to perform more than
an "analysis" of what is done or given. In the case of the sciences, those which
are classified as empirical should limit the use of reason to a careful analysis
of experience, to a classification, decomposition or recomposition of its parts,
without allowing reason to proceed to any addition or construction of its own. In
the case of formal sciences, the analyticity should be manifested in the current
standard deduction of logical consequences from the postulates or axioms given at
the beginning. It is well known that this way of conceiving the proper task of
reason in science has been typical of the positivist and empiricist tradition; it
is not mere chance that "analytical philosophy" has been deeply inspired by these
schools of thought.
Metaphysics, on the contrary, has always been characterized by a "synthetic use"
of reason, in which the constructive power of man's rationality was put to the
most challenging test. It was invited, so to speak, to complete the picture of
reality by an effort of rigorous and reliable creation that goes far beyond what
is actually "given" in any empirical evidence. It is because of this kind of
creative freedom that metaphysics has been mistrusted so often. But now it clearly
appears that science too needs a "synthetic use" of reason by which it is allowed
to build something on its own forces without being mistrusted as unable to cope
with reality. The impossibility of deriving scientific hypotheses and theories
from a pure analysis of experience and the shortcomings of every inductivist
justification of this process has led to a recognition of this creative or
inventive performance of reason in science and has helped to understand that such
an invention or creativity is by no means synonymous with arbitrariness or
craziness. As a consequence, one is entitled to say that, if this synthetic use of
reason is legitimated as such, it cannot consistently be forbidden when it is
extended or applied outside the "whole of experience" (i.e., outside the domain of
interest of science).
Indeed, metaphysics is the field in which, while experience is certainly taken
into account, the synthetic use of reason finds its most significant application.
The discourse about the synthetic use of reason and the differentiated roles of
experience and logos finds its justification in an analytic distinction, which
seems to have been rather neglected in modern philosophy of science: the
distinction between ascertaining and giving reason. The difference between the two
is prima facie readily admitted, for it is rather clear that the fact of having
ascertained something does not provide us with a comprehension or understanding of
it: for that, the category of explanation is called into play. However, it is by
no means always clear whence these two requirements derive their foundation. As a
matter of fact, the task of reason was illegitimately indicated by Descartes to be
that of ensuring us certainty against doubt, with the additional claim that
experience is not reliable in itself and cannot provide us with any certainty. In
this way, the proper role of experience was totally swept away; it was
misleadingly attributed to reason, while reason itself was deprived of its
specific task. The symmetric mistake was made by the extreme empiricist
philosophies when they pretended that experience is the only source of all
understanding, thereby attributing to experience the typical role of reason.
The actual situation is rather the following: experience is the proper basis of
ascertaining knowledge and, as such, provides us with certainty; logos has as its
proper task that of giving reasons or of explaining what is already certain in
itself, but still lacks intellectual comprehension. This does not imply that
reason cannot also be used to attain some certainties, but simply stresses that
there is a part of our cognitive activity which would not be satisfied even if we
had a sufficient supply of certainties. This part is constituted by the set of
reasons we propose to account for those certainties. The proposal of hypotheses
for explaining empirical facts is, therefore, witness to the indispensable role of
this part of our cognitive activity within science; and it is here that the
synthetic use of reason has its roots.
However, the difference in the problematic horizon which we already mentioned, and
which is expressed in adopting the viewpoint of the "whole of experience" in the
case of science and of "the whole" as such in the case of metaphysics, is
sufficient to prevent pushing existing affinities to a point at which dangerous
confusions might arise. In other words, it should be clear enough from the above
that not every meta-empirical statement is, as such, a metaphysical one.
An obvious, but perhaps not unnecessary, remark as a conclusion of the above
discussion might be the following. Once this methodological affinity between
science and metaphysics has been established, one is not automatically entitled to
claim that metaphysical doctrines have always been constructed according to the
same standards of rigor as exact science. The result of our inquiry has shown only
the possibility of such a metaphysics or, rather, of parts of metaphysics
constructed according to those standards. In concreto, the exigencies which lead
to the construction of metaphysics are quite differentiated and they would not be
satisfied by a discourse obeying only the cognitive standards just sketched.
Still, hints for the construction of some basic parts of metaphysics according to
these standards can be provided and some of them are outlined in the papers cited.
SOME ALLEGED DEFICIENCIES OF METAPHYSICS
After having recalled some positive characteristics of science which can be
extended to metaphysics, and some typical characteristics of metaphysics which can
be found in science--and thereby vindicating a proper cognitive status for
metaphysics--let us proceed now to consider some alleged negative features of
metaphysics, which are claimed not to affect science. The first of them might be
outlined as follows: even if one may admit that a few very basic and extremely
simple metaphysical statements can be established by means of the complementary
efforts of experience and logos in a way which is not too different from the
method of science, still it is undeniable that every full-fledged metaphysical
theory contains a rich display of details which are the expression of a certain
"interpretation" of general reality according to some personal worldview, rather
than an objective description of it. This shows that metaphysics inevitably lacks
the fundamental character of objectivity or intersubjectivity, which is typical of
science. This would indicate that, despite every affinity, science and only
science remains an "objective knowledge"; that in turn would mark a profound
distinction between these two intellectual enterprises.
Is this true? To some extent it is, but not in such a radical sense as is
frequently understood. Let us first explain why metaphysics cannot enjoy in its
fullest measure the requirement of intersubjectivity which is usual for science.
The Requirement of Intersubjectivity.
Every scientific discipline is characterized by its specific "domain of objects,"
to which all its statements are explicitly or tacitly referred or "relativized."
In order to avoid some easy misunderstandings, which could arise from conceiving
of these "objects" as "things" of everyday experience,2 it would be better (and
sufficient for the purposes of this paper) to say that every science is
characterized by its "domain of discourse." This means that only some technical
terms are supposed to be specifically pertinent to this science, while other
linguistic tools are used for the sake of communication only. On the other hand,
the specificity of meaning of these technical terms is bound to the adoption of
some standardized operations for putting to the test sentences containing them.
The technical vocabulary of a science is increased by introducing by means of
theoretical constructs further terms on the basis of those that are operationally
defined. All this may be particularly clear in the case of exact empirical
sciences, but it can be shown that this situation is quite common.
The consequence of these general features of the scientific discourse is that it
is intersubjective, because the appeal to standardized operations for fixing the
meaning of the technical terms provides the basis for a universal understanding
among people who are ready and able to perform those operations and, in such a
way, to become specialists or professionals of that particular science. Of course,
the prerequisite for entering the domain of discourse for a certain science is
constituted not merely by the mastering of material operations. Special chapters
of mathematics, as well as other auxiliary tools may well be required and they all
constitute the basis for the intersubjective understanding of that science. But
why do they constitute such a basis? Simply because they are not put under
discussion in that science, because they are taken for granted in it. Only if
something is unquestioned and unquestionable among some persons it may be used as
a means for getting further agreement among them. Still, it is clear that such
unquestionability does not belong to the standardized operations or to the
mathematical or theoretic presuppositions of a science as such, but simply for the
sake of the discourse of that specific science. They can very well be
problematized, strongly challenged and even openly mistrusted within other
contexts, i.e., inside other disciplines.
What makes these operations or theoretic tools unproblematic and gives them the
strength of becoming the foundations of a certain discipline, is neither an
intrinsic logical necessity, nor a pure and simply arbitrary convention; it is the
complex result of an historical development. Hence, they are characterized by that
special kind of "contingency" which we could more aptly indicate as an "historical
determinateness."
The moral of this story is that every science is intersubjective because its
domain of discourse is historically determined and its institutional criteria are
unproblematic and taken for granted in it. This, of course, is perfectly
compatible with a discourse which is done "from a particular viewpoint" and simply
aims at developing what can be said within that viewpoint, without problematizing
it, without asking questions about its legitimacy, its relevance, etc. But this
cannot on the contrary, be the intellectual attitude of a discourse which is
intended to be "from the viewpoint of the whole" or, if we prefer, to reach a
truth which is not the particular truth expressible under a certain particular
viewpoint, but which aims at being a kind of "absolute truth," in the sense of
being such, under no special preconditions. It follows that metaphysics, as a
discourse which claims the right to treat everything as a problem without taking
anything for granted, must renounce the useful and comfortable status of
intersubjectivity. This does not condemn it to absolute subjectivity; it is only
that intersubjective agreement cannot be taken for granted. It may develop as a
result of a patient analysis and dialogue, but it is not something that can be
promised right from the beginning of the enterprise.
Once this is well understood, it is clear that this lack of warranted
intersubjectivity has nothing to do with the arbitrary, the erratic, or the like.
It is rather the consequence of the extreme severity that metaphysical discourse
imposes upon itself. It is not intersubjective simply because it aims at being
more than intersubjective. If we identify objectivity with intersubjectivity (this
can be done, if one gives to these concepts a suitable interpretation), we can say
that metaphysical discourse is not objective. However this should mean no
cognitive diminution with respect to science, if not in a purely pragmatic sense.
Metaphysics and Worldviews.
Once this general framework of the problem of intersubjectivity is well
understood, it is possible to go a step further and investigate the objection that
metaphysics is doomed to subjectivity, not because it is so rigorous as not to
take anything for granted, but rather because metaphysical constructions are
nothing but uncontrolled general world-pictures, which express personal feelings
or, at best, intellectual intuitions of the individual metaphysician. Again, there
is a good deal of truth in this appreciation of metaphysics, but this still does
not imply uncontrolled arbitrariness or complete freedom for fantastic invention;
moreover, it does not imply that something of this kind does not occur in science
as well.
The reason why the general worldviews which are typical of most metaphysical
systems do not manifest any arbitrariness is that they must, first of all, be in
agreement with empirical evidence. Indeed, if one looks without prejudices at the
history of metaphysics, one can easily see that the characteristic points of every
significant metaphysical system have been either suggested by some features of
reality which particularly impressed the thinker, or by the intention of removing
aspects of reality which appeared to the thinker to be especially undesirable. In
both cases, metaphysical constructions appear to develop as ways of satisfying the
exigencies of logos by explaining empirical evidence, not in some specific or
partial fields, but "as a whole." As a matter of fact, both the justification of
features of reality which are felt to be in agreement with logos and the
elimination of apparent difficulties which seem to be in disagreement with it,
belong to the same pattern of the explanation. Under this viewpoint, no
substantial difference occurs between the general hypotheses by means of which one
explains current facts in a particular scientific domain (or resolves its apparent
puzzles or difficulties) and the general ideas which lie at the foundation of a
metaphysical doctrine.
THE ROLE OF INTERPRETATION
But one might remark at this point that metaphysical systems contain much more
than is strictly necessary for explaining experience; they have a "redundancy"
which is not admitted in science and which opens the way to at least a certain
looseness, if not actually arbitrariness, in the use of reason. This remark is
correct, but it does not indicate anything negative. It simply points to the fact
that pure and simple explanation is not the ultimate goal of intellectual
understanding. What is needed in addition to logical explanation, is what we could
call an interpretation of what is known and explained. As a matter of fact, the
category of interpretation is still quite alien to the current philosophy of
science, but it has moments when it appears to be tacitly understood. Take for
instance the usual prescription not to admit ad hoc hypotheses in a scientific
theory. This prescription is universally made, but no justification of it is
properly proposed: it sounds more or less like a tacit moral imperative. This lack
of logical justification is a good symptom that something is afoot. Indeed, an ad
hoc hypothesis satisfies all the requirements that an explanation could impose; if
we feel dissatisfied with it, this means that there are other requirements to be
fulfilled beside explanation itself. These requirements are not difficult to
identify. We want our hypotheses to fit in harmoniously with a kind of general
perspective. They must keep acceptable and rational relationships, not only with
empirical evidence, but also among themselves, and this harmony is not
sufficiently provided by the pure fact of not being mutually contradictory. We
want more, we want a comprehensive picture which might enable us to believe that
we have got an acceptable "interpretation" of that side of reality we are
investigating in our particular science. In other words, the unity of the
explanation is something which we could call "interpretation" and which is aimed
at in every science by introducing some additional requirements which are
"redundant" with respect to what is strictly necessary for the explanation proper.
Interpretation and Understanding.
But there is still more to be said about this point. The above indicates that we
need an interpretation as a kind of unitary picture that enables us to
"understand" what we have been able to explain. In this sense the interpretation
and the understanding appear as results, as the endpoint of the cognitive process.
This is true, but there is nevertheless a sense according to which this
understanding must occur somehow at the beginning of the cognitive process. In
order to open the way to the appreciation of this fact, one could reflect on the
obviousness of this statement: one cannot explain something which one has not
understood. This statement clearly indicates that there must be a kind of global
appreciation or comprehension of something as a precondition for any program of
explaining its features or behavior. This fact has some definite and detailed
reasons within psychology, which we do not want to discuss here. We simply want to
stress that, on the basis of the preceding considerations, one must admit that
interpretation has a quite significant role also in science: scientific theories
all have a rather important hermeneutic component. Great scientific theories, such
as Ptolemaic astronomy, the Copernican system, Newtonion mechanics, the theory of
evolution and relativity theory all show this hermeneutic character with special
clarity.
Let us come now to the consideration that such hermeneutic efforts are bound, in
the case of metaphysics, to personal intuitions, to private appreciations of
individual philosophers. This is true only partially, because there is an
"historical determinateness" also for philosophical systems and metaphysical
conceptions, although they need the intervention of an exceptional mind to be
created at a certain moment and much freedom and ingenuity are involved in this
creation. The same is true of science as well, both on the small and the large
scale. On the small scale we must admit the hermeneutic nature of the act by which
the individual scientist proposes or invents a conjecture (to use Popper's terms),
even before formulating it clearly in the form of a full-fledged hypothesis to be
put to the test. On the large scale, the hermeneutic nature of the activity that
leads to conceiving some general theory or unifying schema which is able to unite
a lot of scattered facts and formerly separate hypotheses or laws, is even
clearer. From every angle we reach the same conclusion: hermeneutic has become
highly esteemed in recent years within some philosophical trends and also within
some "human sciences," like history, theology, linguistics, and even sociology. It
deserves indeed to be given more serious consideration also in the domain of
natural sciences. If one acknowledges this, one can no longer blame metaphysics
for giving considerable space to an hermeneutic component or consider this to be
evidence of its inferiority with respect to science. As before, the entire
difference lies in the scope of the hermeneutic effort, which envisages the
"whole" in the case of metaphysics and some particular domain of objects in the
case of science.
PROGRESS IN SCIENCE AND IN METAPHYSICS
Another important feature, which is often mentioned as one of the most clear
distinctive marks of science, and actually as the one that more than other
expresses its superiority with respect to metaphysics, had already greatly
impressed Kant. It is the irresistible and cumulative progress of scientific
knowledge, compared with the frustrating destiny of metaphysics, which allegedly
handles the very same problems all the time and starts again and again from the
beginning with every new philosopher. It is not by chance that metaphysical
questions are often called "eternal problems," while scientific problems are such
as to receive a positive or negative solution after a reasonable time spent in
investigating them. Particularly during the time of the early positivism this used
to be the main argument against metaphysics, whose futility was claimed to be
evident from its lack of "results," to use the way of speaking of scientists who
wanted to indicate the positive character of their work. Although still widely
accepted, the stereotyped image of science that lies behind this kind of
evaluation has been shown to be too optimistic and oversimplified. In the last
decades, severe criticism has been made against the idea that science develops by
a linear accumulation of knowledge. Moreover, some authors have reversed this
pattern of cumulative progress and speak of the discontinuous movement of science,
in which the transition from one theory to another is the expression of
"incommensurable" world outlooks.
Recent Views about Progress in Science.
It would be too lengthy to enter into here a detailed discussion of these
positions. In particular, it is certainly possible to justify a reasonable and
undeniable sense in which one must say that there is a certain accumulation of
knowledge in science.3 Nonetheless, one cannot underestimate, on the other hand,
the arguments and historical analyses by which scholars, like Kuhn and Feyerabend,
have shown that much of the alleged continuity in science is simply the result of
an ad hoc retrospective reconstruction, made from the viewpoint of the more recent
stage reached by scientific research. If, on the contrary, one takes history in
its actual development, one sees how sudden and very complicated scientific
"revolutions" often are. The "results" of the preceding science are often
forgotten and disregarded or, at best, are reinterpreted according to a conceptual
frame of reference that is at variance with the one they were related to before,
and as a consequence actually receive quite a different meaning. According to
these more recent views, not only is the old positivist but also the neopositivist
idea wrong, according to which the transition from one theory to another was
simply determined by the discovery of some unexpected fact that did not fit in
with the old theory, and pushed scientists to find another theory which was able
to explain all the old facts and the new ones. They also do not agree with the
Popperian view, which attributes the responsibility of theory-change to the
"falsification" of the old theory through a clash with some empirical evidence,
thereby giving rise to a new theory, "incompatible" with the old one.
Against these interpretations of theory change, which are both "logical" in their
motivation, Kuhn and Feyerabend attribute theory change to a discontinuous and
global variation of a "paradigm," which leads to discarding the entire conceptual
world of the old theory and introducing a new one, even in the presence of many
logical difficulties and/or empirical shortcomings. Without trying to discuss
these views (which contain also some weak points), it is enough for the sake of
our discourse to remark that this new way of conceiving the flux of science not
only shows the character of abstract idealization which was inherent to the schema
of cumulative progress, but interprets the dynamics of this flux in a way which
has much in common with the way different metaphysical systems have actually
superseded each other in the history of philosophy.4
But, it could be said, even if one admits that scientific development is not able
to be correctly represented under the image of the linear cumulative progress that
was held some time ago, it is nevertheless true that nobody can deny "some kind of
authentic progress" in science, while nothing of this kind seems to be the case
with metaphysics. This statement is far from being self-evident or well supported,
if not because we do not dispose of exact criteria for recognizing (let alone
evaluating or measuring) scientific progress or even for universally determining
"what it is." Still, it can be said with confidence that present scientific
knowledge is not only "larger," but also "better" than that of other ages, because
we have been able to retain the successful guesses made in the past about several
special fields of inquiry, and also to learn from their mistakes and shortcomings.
In other words, there are contents of knowledge which we regard as definitely
acquired (although their validity may yet be better understood or interpreted) and
we know that some ways lead to certain pitfalls or that some negative results have
been obtained about certain specific questions.
Progress in Metaphysics.
There is a kind of "global" perception of scientific progress, which is quite
compatible with a non-linear and non-cumulative picture of it. But it can now be
said that a quite analogous perception can be taken as the basis for claiming that
the extreme variety of metaphysical doctrines is fully compatible with an
ascertainable progress in the metaphysical inquiry. In other words, a professional
philosopher cannot ignore that some specific problems have been investigated by
Aristotle or Kant and that such and such are the objective "results" obtained in
those inquiries. When facing one of the so-called "eternal problems," he actually
should know where certain efforts of solution inevitably lead, which paths are
closed, etc. It turns out, therefore, that also in philosophy, and particularly in
metaphysics, one can say that certain things can no longer be maintained, e.g.,
after Kant or Wittgenstein. In this sense we know "more" in philosophy than other
ages--approximately in the same sense in which this can be claimed in the case of
science. We can also say that our philosophical knowledge is "better" than prior
ones, in the sense, e.g., that our notion of "dialectics" is richer and deeper
than that, let us say, of Plato, due to the contributions of Kant, Hegel and Marx.
But even more convincing than this effort at a "global" evaluation of progress
(which, at any rate, shows no less vagueness and questionability in science as in
metaphysics) may be what we might call its "local" evaluation. One of the most
fruitful ideas introduced by Kuhn is his distinction between "normal" and
"extraordinary" science, the second being characterized by the adoption of that
critical and destructive attitude which Popper had imagined to be the constant
habit of the scientist. During the periods of "normal" science, specialists work
in a kind of routine job, trying to develop and to exploit all the intrinsic
possibilities of a paradigm by solving more and more complicated puzzles which
challenge their ingenuity. As a consequence, a real accumulation of "results"
takes place, which constitutes an actual "progress" in the usual sense of this
term, until the vein offered by a certain paradigm is exhausted and another comes
and proposes its puzzles. This schema applies perfectly also to metaphysics: when
a great system of metaphysics is proposed, it is like a fresh paradigm and many
generations of philosophers may work in developing its possibilities by applying
it in a variety of contexts, from ontology, to ethics, to philosophy of nature,
etc. As this gives rise to a series of actual "results," we must say that we "know
more," about the possibilities provided by that metaphysical framework at the end
of a period of such a development than at the beginning of it. It may also happen
that, after a certain time, the paradigm is exhausted--which usually happens when
the fertility of the first application is followed by the routine repetition or
commentaries of scholastic pedantism, as it happened to Aristotelianism in the
Renaissance, to Hegelianism in the past century, and to Marxism in our century. At
that moment, a new metaphysics may be expected to come and propose its challenges
to the speculative intellects.
Knowledge and Belief.
There is a last point that one should mention in this comparison of science and
metaphysics. This is related to the fact that metaphysics seems necessarily to be
bound to some kind of "belief," as it usually implies some personal attitude
towards the world and some personal involvement in one's style of life. The
question is too complicated to be discussed here. We shall limit ourselves to the
remark that, from a certain viewpoint, it may be said that metaphysics is an
effort of knowing "inside a belief." Science too, however, has the same epistemic
structure, only restricted to its own objects. It is the task of the logos to
justify the transition from belief to knowledge; as we saw that logos is
necessarily involved in science too, it follows that such a transition also
concerns science, as long as it is a conjectural inquiry.
I prefer not to insist on this point, about which a few more hints may be found in
one of the above-mentioned papers.5
ELEMENTS OF DISTINCTION
BETWEEN SCIENCE AND METAPHYSICS
In conclusion, in spite of the affinities which have emerged, science and
metaphysics may and have to be distinguished. The main element of distinction is
represented by the different thematic interest of the two, which we had the
opportunity of mentioning several times: the "point of view of the whole" for
metaphysics, several limited points of view for the different sciences, and the
point of view of "the whole of experience" for science as such.
We have already indicated this difference as constituting the distinction of the
respective "cognitive interests" of metaphysics and science, but this difference
leads also to other peculiarities which separate more sharply the intellectual
attitude of the two. As a consequence of assuming a particular viewpoint in its
inquiry about reality, every science is led to assume the nature of an
intrinsically "refutable" knowledge: it appears as tacitly understood that some
neglected aspects of reality might turn out to be relevant enough to impose
revisions of our established theories, even after they have been developed in a
satisfactory and seemingly "complete" form. In contrast, this cannot be the
intellectual attitude of an investigation which intends to put itself from the
point of view of the whole: it follows that this must be inclined towards getting
a structurally non-conjectural and non-refutable knowledge. This is why
metaphysics, though being right in claiming its status of knowledge, cannot be
attributed the additional character of being a science in the modern sense of this
word.
This dissimilarity of intellectual attitude, on the other hand, helps us recognize
that the difference in the "cognitive interests" mentioned above is actually more
than that. Indeed it calls our attention to the different kinds of problems and
questions which stimulate man and introduces a distinction among them based on the
degree of certainty we would want to rely upon in the answers we get. Many of
these questions are such as to be adequately answered when we reach a conjectural
but still reasonably reliable solution: these are most of the "practical
questions" of life. However, there are also other questions, concerning which we
feel we could not be satisfied with less than an irrefutable answer: these are the
questions on which man "engages his own life" or, if one prefers, the radical
existential questions. Their nature is such that no scientific "conjectural"
inquiry is structurally apt to handle them. An ultimate rational inquiry, such as
that of metaphysics, appear to be the only proper tool for trying to treat them
according to the exigencies of logos and not only of faith.
It should be clear from the above that metaphysics presupposes an existential
engagement not involved in science; this is a major distinction between them which
cannot be overlooked. An implicit admission of this fact is to be found in the
general reaction against "scientism" and in the polemics against the so-called
"neutrality of science" that have become common during the last two decades. As a
matter of fact, those polemics were right in stressing that "pure science" cannot
satisfy the most radical human exigencies, that it can bring social and moral
disengagement and "alienation," that doing scientific research cannot avoid being
even unconsciously involved in choices and decisions which imply conflicts of
values and of worldviews. But this was incorrectly interpreted as an obligation to
modify the cognitive status of science, by injecting values, choices, and
worldviews and by making it partisan and "non-neutral." That was a patently wrong
solution to a correct problem: that solution consisted in again confusing science
with metaphysics, ignoring that modern science had found its identity by ridding
itself of the metaphysical mode of thinking within its domain of research. That
proposed solution was therefore objectively "reactionary," even if it was proposed
with the pretension of being "progressist." The truly correct solution consists
rather in recognizing that an harmonious and un-mutilated or integral intellectual
attitude needs both scientific and metaphysical outlooks, that both are equally
legitimate but differently motivated, and that the one cannot substitute for what
can be provided by the other.
There are signs that our time has reached the maturity to recognize this kind of
balanced synthesis after a long period of "dissociation" in western civilization,
which had prevented it from really being a "scientific civilization." In order to
achieve that status, science must find a way of coping with metaphysics, without
either of the two losing its identity.
University of Fribourg
Fribourg, Switzerland
NOTES
1. Among such papers see: "Scienza e metafisica oggi," in Studi di filosofia in
onore di G. Bontadini (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1977), I, 3-22. "Science and
Metaphysics Confronting Nature," Dialectics and Humanism, IV (1977), 127-136.
"Metaphysics in Contemporary Philosophy," Ratio (1977), 162-169. "Considerazioni
epistemologiche su scienza e metafisica," in C. Huber, ed., Teoria e metodo delle
scienze (Roma: Universita Gregoriana, 1981), pp. 311-340.
2. About this distinction see especially the last chapter of the book by the
present author, Temi e problemi di filosofia della fisica (Roma; Abete 1974), or,
in English, "The Concept of Empirical Data," in M. Prezelecki, R. Wojcicli, C.
Szaniawski, eds., Formal Methods in the Methodology of Empirical Science
(Dordrecht-Boston: Reidel, 1976), pp. 143-157.
3. See e.g., by the present author, "Commensurability, Incommensurability, and
Cumulativity in Scientific Knowledge," Erkenntnis, 22 (1985), 51-77. A brief
discussion concerning this topic is presented in the paper "Considerazioni
epistemologiche su scienza e metafisica," see note (1) above.
4. Beside Kuhn and Feyerabend, one could mention at least the book by J. Agassi,
Science in Flux (Dordrecht-Boston: Reidel, 1975) and for a different historicistic
perspective, the book by K. Hu¦ bner, Critique of Scientific Reason (Chicago:
1985).
CHAPTER VIII
SOME TASKS FOR METAPHYSICIANS
MARIO BUNGE
The aim of this paper is to discuss the following:
Thesis: metaphysicians should investigate problems in both the science of
metaphysics and the metaphysics of science.
Why? Because they are there at least in nuce.
What for? Because metaphysical problems are all-important for the whole of
culture, not just for philosophy, and thus deserve being investigated thoroughly,
rigorously, and systematically.
My thesis, though not new, is not popular.1 Indeed, most thinkers reject the claim
that metaphysics can be turned into a rigorous science, and most scientists are
unaware of the metaphysical concepts and hypotheses inherent in their research.
Therefore we must take a look at both the science of metaphysics and the
metaphysics of science.
THE SCIENCE OF METAPHYSICS
Philosophers as diverse as Kant, Bolzano, Peirce, Alexander, Scholz, Woodger, and
Donald Williams have thought that a science of metaphysics is possible--though
each for different reasons. While for some of them metaphysics could be rigorous
because it must be a priori (like logic), for others metaphysics could be
scientific by being thoroughly empirical, and therefore could be forced to be
compatible with science. Unfortunately none of the philosophers mentioned above
produced a system of scientific metaphysics. While some, like Peirce, were
fragmentarians, others, like Alexander, were not acquainted with science. Hence,
none of them was able to prove that a scientific metaphysics is possible in the
only way such proof can be given, i.e., by producing a system of metaphysics
congenial with science.
What are the conditions for a scientific approach to metaphysical problems? I
submit that they are the same as for the scientific approach to any other
conceptual problems, namely, the ones summarized in the following:
Criterion: A set of metaphysical problems is approached in a scientific manner
iff:
(i) the problems are relevant to contemporary scientific knowledge, either because
they arise in the course of scientific or technological research, or because the
latter has some bearing on them;
(ii) the problems and the proposed solutions to them are well formed and well
conceived--i.e., well formulated;
(iii) the problems are investigated with the help of the most suitable formal
(logical or mathematical) tools;
(iv) the investigation is carried out with the help of the available scientific
knowledge;
(v) the solutions to the problems are presented in a systematic fashion--i.e., in
the form of theories, preferably (though not necessarily) axiomatized theories;
and
(vi) the proposed theories are checked for consistency, both internal (logical)
and external (with the bulk of contemporary knowledge).
We defer to the third Section the consideration of an example of the scientific
approach to an ontological problem.
THE METAPHYSICS OF SCIENCE
That science has metaphysical presuppositions is of course a thesis familiar to
philosophers and one accepted by a handful of scientists. However, metaphysicians
seem to have failed to establish their thesis for want of two things. One is a
clear elucidation of the very notion of a metaphysical presupposition; the other
is an extensive search for, and systematization of, the metaphysical
presuppositions of science. Let me give a hint concerning each of these
unfulfilled tasks.
In studying the question whether science has metaphysical presuppositions we
should avail ourselves of Kant's distinction between constitutive and regulative
principles. We can say that a metaphysical statement is constitutive of a body of
knowledge if it is used in proving statements of some theory included in that
body; on the other hand a metaphysical statement is regulative with respect to a
body of knowledge if it guides the search for some constituents of that body. In
other words, we propose the following:
Definition1 Let m be a metaphysical statement (definition or assumption). Then
(i) m is a theoretical metaphysical presupposition of science iff there is a
scientific theory T such that m occurs in T or among the premises employed in
deriving consequences of the postulates and definitions of T;
(ii) m is a heuristic metaphysical presupposition of science iff m occurs in a
scientific research process, either in the selection of problems for research, or
in the building of hypotheses or theories, or in the latter's empirical tests.
For example, it is a theoretical presupposition of every chemical theory that
every chemical compound has some emergent properties, i.e., properties not
possessed by its components. And the hypothesis that thinking has no direct effect
on matter (i.e., that psychokinesis is nonexisting) is a heuristic presupposition
of the design and interpretation of every scientific experiment.
If we now examine contemporary science in the light of the above definition, we
are likely to find hundreds of metaphysical hypotheses at work in either a
constitutive or a regulative capacity. Let the following list suffice: "There is
an external world," "The world is composed of things," "Every thing possesses
properties (to be distinguished from the attributes by which we conceptualize the
former)," "Things are grouped into systems," and "Every system save the universe
interacts with other systems in certain respects and is isolated with yet other
systems in other respects." To expand this list, and to transform it into a well
organized system (i.e., a theory), is an open problem. I.e., the metaphysics of
science is yet to be born.
EXAMPLE: THE CONCEPT OF EMERGENCE
The concept of emergence has been much maligned by positivist philosophers and
looks suspicious to most contemporary scientists. This is probably due not only to
the influence of a mechanistic ontology but also to the fact that most of the
philosophers who harp on emergence fail to analyze the concept and moreover claim
that emergence can be neither explained nor predicted. Be that as it may, the fact
is that science does use the notion of emergence and that this notion is a
typically metaphysical one. So it behooves the metaphysician of science to clarify
this notion. One way of doing so is as follows.
Assume ordinary predicate logic and elementary set theory, as well as my theories
of things, properties, and time (Bunge, 1977). Call px(t) the set of all
properties of thing x at time t (relative to a given reference frame). Then the
following conventions can be introduced:
Definition2 Call the totality of (concrete) things and T the time span relative to
some reference frame. Further, call px(t) the set of properties possessed by thing
x at time t T, and px(t') the set of properties of x at a later time t'>t.
Then
(i) the total qualitative novelty occurring in x during the time interval [t, t']
is the symmetric (or Boolean) difference
nx(t,t')= px(t) px( );
t< ->t'
(ii) the emergent properties acquired by x during the time interval [t, t'] are
those in
ex(t,t') = px( ) - px( );
t< ->t'
(iii) the absolutely emergent properties (or "firsts") appearing in x during [t,
t'] are those in
eax(t,t') = ex(t,t') - py( ), with y x and -<t';
T y
(iv) the absolutely emergent properties acquired by the world during the lapse [t,
t'] (relative to the given reference frame) are those in:
ea(t,t') = eax(t,t').
x
These concepts can be utilized to formulate a number of metaphysical statements
concerning novelty and, in particular, emergence. Perhaps the most interesting of
all such statements are those concerning the emergence and disappearance of
properties in the course of assembly processes, i.e., of processes transforming
aggregates of things into systems. In order to state a few metaphysical hypotheses
of this type we must first clarify quickly the notions of system and of assembly.
A concrete system may be characterized as a complex thing whose parts are held
together by certain bonds. More precisely, a system is a thing with (a)
composition equal to the set of its parts, (b) environment equal to the set of
things that can act on the system's components or that can be acted on by the
latter, and (c) structure equal to the set of relations among the system's
components and between these and the system's environment, and such that it
includes relations of the bonding (or linking or coupling) kind. The subset of the
structure of a system consisting of the bonds among its parts can be called the
bondage of the system. (For an exact elucidation of the above notions see Bunge,
1978). The definition we need is:
Definition3. Let x be a concrete system composed initially of uncoupled parts.
Then
(i) x assembles into y at time t'>t iff y is a system with the same composition as
x but a nonempty bondage;
(ii) the assembly process is one of self-assembly iff the aggregate x turns by
itself into the system y.
We may assume that there is at least one self-assembly process going on in some
complex thing in every time interval:
Postulate 1 For every time interval [t, t'] T relative to any reference system,
there is a self-assembly process occurring in some complex thing x within that
interval.
Our next assumption is that every assembly process is accompanied by the gain of
some properties and the loss of others. That is, we propose:
Postulate 2. Let the parts of a thing x self-assemble into a system during the
time interval [t, t']. Then
(i) the system lacks some of the properties of its components (or precursors),
i.e., px(t) - px(t') 0; and
(ii) the system possesses some properties that its components (or precursors)
lack, i.e., px(t') - px(t) 0.
Postulates 1 and 2 entail the following consequence:
Theorem. During every time interval, relative to any reference system, there is at
least one thing losing some properties and acquiring others.
The above fragment of a theory of novelty is relevant to science, it is formulated
with the help of formal tools, and it is hoped to be consistent with contemporary
science. In short, presumably it satisfies our Criterion in the first Section for
a metaphysical problem to be approached in a scientific manner. And, since many a
scientific problem is motivated by the belief that certain processes result in the
formation of things possessing emergent properties, our microtheory belongs also
to the metaphysics of science.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The metaphysical tradition should be enriched by vigorously pursuing two
intertwining lines of study: the building of systems of scientific metaphysics,
and the analysis and systematization of the metaphysical hypotheses inherent
(either in a constitutive or in a regulative capacity) in science. Because neither
science nor philosophy stand still, there is no reason to believe that a
definitive science of metaphysics or a definitive metaphysics of science will ever
be built. Both fields of metaphysics are likely to keep changing as long as there
remain investigators interested in them.
University of Montreal
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
REFERENCES
Mario Bunge, The Furniture of the World (Dordrecht and Boston: Reidel, 1977).
Mario Bunge, A World of Systems (Dordrecht and Boston: Reidel, 1978).
CHAPTER IX
THE PROBLEM OF
METAPHYSICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS
IN AND OF SCIENCE
KURT HU¦ BNER
Let me begin with a short logical analysis of one of the basic theses in
traditional philosophy, namely the thesis that there are metaphysical
presuppositions in and of science.
1. What is meant by "presupposition" here and what is metaphysical? Obviously
science essentially consists of hypotheses and theories and both consist of
general statements. Take e. g., the gravitational theory, the theory of special
and general relativity, of quantum mechanics, the hypothesis of the expanding
universe, of the ether, of phlogiston, the theories of capitalism, of socialism,
of the Rechtsstaat, of ancient Roman law, of the medieval feudal system, of
classical or modern music, of different styles in literature, etc., etc. In all
these cases hypotheses and theories describe general basic rules by a system of
statements (axioms, theorems, lemma, etc.); these rules determine the objects of
nature or the behavior of men. Indeed we speak sometimes of a theory or a
hypothesis regarding an individual event like, e.g., the theory of the origin of
the moon or the hypothesis of the rather mystical character of Jeanne d'Arc. But
even in these cases we mean nothing else than the explanation of individual events
with the help of general rules. In the first of the given examples we apply
physical laws to a special case and in the second example we presumably will apply
psychological laws or general dispositional predicates.
Nowadays some attempt to represent theories as definitions of set predicates. But
without mentioning that definitions of that kind are possible only in highly
formalized cases I want to stress the fact that at least every theory can be
formulated in statements too. Now, if metaphysicians speak of certain metaphysical
presuppositions in science (I will discuss possible presuppositions of science
later on) they obviously mean in particular that general statements there can be
somehow logically derived from other statements they call metaphysical. And these
metaphysical statements they think to be a priori which are necessarily valid and
can never be falsified.
2. But how can scientific statements which we think to be empirical be derived
from metaphysical statements which are understood as a priori? Let me give a
simple example. Cosmologists today believe in the so called cosmological
principle. According to this principles the universe is homogeneous and isotropic.
Even if there is some empirical evidence in favor of this principle today we can
easily imagine a philosopher who has some reasons to believe in it as a
metaphysical, as e.g., Copernicus thought the universe has to be very simple
because of the clearness and rationality of its creator. Now, from this principle
we can first derive the Walker Robertson line element. Using the metric tensors of
this allegedly aprioristic line element for the empirical field equations of the
theory of general relativity we get an equation with different solutions each
representing a special model of the universe. Consequently it is possible to
regard this equation as the logical result of a priori and of a posteriori
presuppositions. The same is true if we add to this equation some empirical
knowledge regarding its variables like the space curvature and the cosmological
constant. Then in applying the equation we can use special values for these
variables and get a special model of the universe, expressed by a singular
statement. Thus, not only general scientific statements as it seemed at first, but
also singular scientific statements could be a logical result both of a priori and
a posteriori statements.
To summarize: By metaphysical presuppositions in science metaphysicians evidently
understand that part of a group of premises of a deduction of general or singular
scientific statements which contains only a priori and necessarily valid
statements.
After this short analysis and definition it should be asked whether there are
presuppositions of that kind. This question divides into two parts: First: Are
there a priori presuppositions in science and secondly: Are some or all of them
necessarily valid?
3. As to the first question the answer is undoubtedly: Yes. Mainly we can
distinguish five types of a priori presuppositions in science: instrumental,
functional, axiomatic, judicial and normative. Let me explain that briefly. If we
want to test a theory we make measurements with instruments. This presupposes
certain theories about the functioning of these instruments. Of course some of
these instrumental theories can be tested too but for that we again need
measurements with certain instruments and certain theoretical presuppositions,
etc. To avoid a regression ad infinitum we have to stop somewhere and somehow to
stipulate the validity of some of our presuppositions. These are the instrumental
presuppositions a priori in the given context. Now, if with their help we have got
some dispersed measurement results we unavoidably have to make some extrapolations
and some interpolations to get a curve which we can describe by a mathematical
function. Again the principles on which these extrapolations and interpolations
rest cannot be tested, but have to be regarded as a priori. These are what I
called the functional presuppositions. With the help of mathematical functions we
can construct the axioms of a theory.
How can we empirically test those axioms? Adding to them some initial conditions
(e.g., by measurements) we can derive from them special basic statements and these
basic statements can be compared with those basic statements which describe the
outcome of measurements. If both harmonize we say the theory has been
corroborated--at least for the present--and if they do not harmonize we say the
theory has been falsified--at least for the present. But the corroboration never
says that the theory is true because for logical reasons the truth of a
conclusion--here the basic statements--does not imply the truth of the premises--
here the axioms. On the other hand, the falsification does not say that the theory
is false because this falsification depends on basic statements which themselves
are dependent on theories and not all of these theories can--as already
mentioned--be tested (some of them at least have to be stipulated a priori).
Consequently the axioms of a theory are strictly speaking neither empirically true
nor false but they are a priori stipulations (with more or less additional
empirical evidence).
If one does not like this conclusion he should remember that, even if there are
some axioms in a given context which do find additional empirical support, there
will always be some too which do not. The reason is that at least among the axioms
of the instrumental theories used there will be some--as already shown--which have
to be stipulated a priori to avoid a regressus ad infinitum. Consequently in any
case there are axioms and axiomatic presuppositions a priori in science. Now,
because no basic statement strictly verifies or falsifies a theory we always have
to use some criteria and principles according to which we decide whether in a
special case we have to accept or to reject a theory. All the different
propositions of inductivists, falsificationists, etc., according to which we
allegedly have to judge about a theory on the basis of a given empirical evidence
are of that kind. But obviously they are propositions for experience not by
experience, and consequently they too are a priori ones. For that reason I call
them judicial principles a priori. Finally there will be some ideas among
scientist as to how to distinguish a scientific from a non-scientific theory or
hypothesis. In other words they will use some norms in doing so. Norms, however,
as is clear by definition, are a priori because they do not say what is but what
should be.
Again let me summarize: On the one hand we cannot set up a theory--or a
hypothesis--without a priori norms and axioms; on the other hand we cannot test it
without some a priori stipulations regarding the testing instruments or the
constructing of functions and without some judicial rules. All this is the
necessary framework in which scientific experience takes place, and all this is
the necessary condition for doing any scientific work. These a priori
presuppositions of science are like the rules of a game, the game of experience.
Without them we cannot not play at all; with them we can play the game but it is
only empirically that can we find its outcome.
4. Having shown that there are a priori presuppositions in science, are some or
all of them necessarily valid? How could we be sure of this necessity? We know
about strict necessity only in formal logic. Formal logic however, never teaches
us about reality because its character is rather tautological. (Either it will
rain tomorrow or it will not rain tomorrow is certainly logically and necessarily
true, but it does not give us any information about what really will happen.)
Nevertheless, metaphysicians believed in the necessary validity of certain a
priori statements for different reasons. Some of them thought that there is
something like an immediate rational insight into an absolute truth (Rationalism
a- la Descartes); some of them thought that there are necessary conditions for the
experience or the selfconsciousness of the ego (transcendentalism a- la Kant);
some of them thought that reason produces a special dialectic and that reality is
necessarily a mirror of that dialectic (dialectic a- la Hegel), etc. Of course, I
can not name all these different ways of regarding statements as metaphysical
(that is, as absolutely true) and even less can I try to discuss them here. But I
can say this: Obviously none of them was convincing to such a degree that
everybody necessarily accepted the alleged necessity maintained by metaphysicians.
That means that, in any case, they could not compete with the strict necessity
recognized in formal logic and that their conviction lacks exactly that
intersubjectivity to which they seem to pretend.
Consequently it is at least very doubtful if there are any statements which could
be necessarily valid, and therefore metaphysical in the traditional sense. These
doubts are strongly supported by the history of science. Almost all the statements
which have been taken as necessarily valid have been given up sooner or later or
at least one has found out that they present only one of several different
possibilities. (I would like to remind the reader of the belief that the universe
has necessarily an Euclidian structure, that physics has to be necessarily
deterministic, that there has to be necessarily an ether, that there is
necessarily an absolute difference between inertial and gravitational systems,
etc. etc.)
5. Now, if on the one hand there are a priori presuppositions in science and if on
the other hand they are not necessarily valid, another question arises: How can we
avoid regarding these statements as purely arbitrary? How can we justify them?
This is obviously the old Kantian quaestio juris in a new form which does more
justice to the facts of the history of science.
My answer to this question is: Such a justification is only possible regarding the
special conditions of a historical situation. To justify statements a priori will
always mean to deduce them from other statements of that kind. We can deduce more
special statements from more general ones, we can transfer a group of statements
from one special field to another simply by changing their content and keeping
their structure, etc. If, for example, somebody believes in the cosmological
principle mentioned before it could be that he justifies it in a Copernican way.
He could say that this principle must be true because generally the principle of
the uniformity and simplicity of the universe must be true and the last principle
must be true because the divine creation can not be something obscure and confused
but must be something clear and reasonable. We may or may not like such an
argument, but it was very powerful in the history of science and, in any case, it
shows clearly the logical structure of justifications of a priori presuppositions
in science. We see also that the deduction in which those justifications consist
stops somewhere in the historical background; in our special case this background
is a certain theological idea rooted in the 15th century. So, on the one hand,
justifications of a priori statements depend on a special historical situation
which originated in a special epoch and will perish with it again; but, on the
other hand, these justifications are not purely arbitrary because they are a
consequence of the situation scientists live in. Between necessity and
arbitrariness there is a third element: The logic of a situation. More, I think,
cannot be expected by mortal beings.
Let me once more come back to metaphysics. Even if, according to my opinion, we
have to give up the idea that there are presuppositions a priori in science which
are necessarily true, I still think it reasonable to call some of them
metaphysical. Take, for example, the already mentioned postulate of the simplicity
and unity of the world. Isn't it rather an expression of a Weltanschauung? So far
I have only spoken of a priori presuppositions in science. But how about a priori
presuppositions of science? Let us look at the postulate that nature is a system
of causal laws or let us look at the idea that laws have to be at least
conceptually clearly distinguished, both from space and time and from the
individual events which take place in space and time and are coordinated in them
and into them with the help of laws. That this is not a self evident idea but one
of the main presuppositions of science becomes very clear if we compare this
scientific Weltbetrachtung with a mythical one in which the general and the
individual, the law and the event, and again all this and space and time cannot be
separated but are joined in special unities and concrete forms. It is not only the
history of mankind which shows that the bases of the scientific Weltbetrachtung
obviously are not necessarily imposed on the human mind; this is shown also by the
analysis given here. Because this Weltbetrachtung is not the result of experience
but a certain framework in which experience can take place. We never can grasp
reality as such; we always have to start with special and even metaphysical
presuppositions.
Let me conclude in the following way. Unavoidably there are metaphysical
statements in science and there are also metaphysical presuppositions of science
like the one just mentioned of a very general and basic kind. Metaphysics,
however, does not consist of groups or systems of statements which are strictly
necessary; it is rather an expression of and an answer to a special given
historical situation or context in which scientists live. But even if there is not
such a thing as the philosophia perennis, even if the different kinds of
metaphysics, the different metaphysical presuppositions in, and the different
metaphysical presuppositions of, science change in history and are perishable we
should not feel depressed by that fact. Let me give a simile: What we see with our
eyes we reasonably call true even if it depends on the special construction and
conditions of our eyes. Suppose we would know these conditions to have changed as
the result of biological evolution in the past and also that they will change in
the future. Should we then stop enjoying seeing the world and should we then stop
being convinced that we see true things?1
der Universita¦ t Kiel
Kiel, Germany
NOTES
1. For further discussion of the problems discussed in this paper compare: K. Hu¦
bner, Citizens of Scientific Reason, Chicago: 1985 und "Die Wahrheit des Mythos,"
Mu¦ nchen: 1986.
CHAPTER X
COSMOLOGY AND THE PHILOSOPHER
ERNAN McMULLIN
A check through the standard bibliography of articles published in Western
philosophy journals over the past three years shows that only about a dozen,
perhaps, out of more than ten thousand entries qualify under the subject-heading,
"cosmology." Cosmology is assumed nowadays to be part of science, just like
paleontology or pathology. Is there any reason, then, to include a symposium on
"The idea of the universe" at a Congress of Philosophy other than to let
philosophers know what others have made of their estates?
There are several issues in contemporary cosmology which can properly be termed
"philosophical". Two in particular have given rise to lively discussion. Neither
is, in fact, new but both have taken on new and intriguing forms in recent
cosmological debates. One is the problem of creation, the other concerns the
"anthropic principle" favored by some cosmologists who seek to understand why the
universe is the way it is. It may be worth outlining these debates in some detail
in order to illustrate the sorts of question that cosmology continues to pose for
the philosopher, and, conversely, to suggest what his contributions to
cosmological discussion may be.
THE CREATION DEBATE
In the natural philosophies of Aristotle and of Newton, it seemed quite plain that
time could have neither beginning nor end. The stretch of time past must be
infinite. Yet for those who accepted the Biblical account of cosmic origins, it
seemed as though the universe did, in fact, have a beginning. Newton had a
relatively easy way to harmonize the two claims: the material universe was brought
into being by God at a finite time in the past, but the space and time into which
it came to be were alike infinite in extent. Medieval Aristotelians were less
willing to separate matter and time; if matter began to be, then so did time.1
The classical Augustinian account of origins made creation a single timeless act
on God's part, an act through which time itself as well as the changing things of
which time is the measure come to be together.2 By a subtle analysis of the
notions of time, cause, beginning, Aquinas endeavored to show, within a generally
Aristotelian framework, that although natural reason could not of itself
demonstrate that time had a beginning, there was in itself nothing incoherent
about such a claim. Yet the tension between natural philosophy and the Christian
world-view was not really dissipated by the efforts of either Aquinas or Newton,
and there were many, like Bonaventure and Leibniz, who were emphatic in holding
that an Aristotelian (or a Newtonian as the case might be) could not be sincere in
his acceptance of the Genesis story.
It is against this background that one must view the controversy with which the
expanding-universe theories have been surrounded from the beginning. The current
Big Bang model postulates a singularity somewhere between ten and twenty billion
years ago, from which the expansion of the universe began. For the first time,
natural philosophy was led to assert, on its own resources, something that sounds
like a beginning of time. No wonder that scientists and non-scientists spoke of
this horizon-event as "the Creation", and of the time since it occurred as "the
age of the universe".
But these identifications immediately give rise to two sorts of objection. How is
one to know (a point made by Lemaitre in the earliest debates occasioned by his
model) that the Big Bang was not preceded by a Big Squeeze? Why could there not
have been an unending cyclical series, like Vico's Ricorso on a grander scale?
Even though a Big Squeeze would destroy all traces of the history that preceded,
some general features of the prior sequence (the period of the cycle, for example)
might possibly be inferred.3 Though one might prefer to speak of the universe that
preceded the Big Bang as a "different" universe, there could still be a perfectly
legitimate sense in which, because it in some sense provided the "materials" for
the next stage, it could be called the "same" universe as ours. Thus, the Big Bang
cannot automatically be taken to be either the beginning of time or of the
universe, nor can one take for granted that the lapse of time since it occurred is
the "age" of the universe.4 Even if the progress of cosmology leads us to opt for
the "open" rather than the "closed" expanding model,5 one which makes the universe
expand indefinitely instead of endlessly "rebounding", this could hardly be said
to rule out the possibility of a preceding stage of matter to which we simply have
no access through the singularity.
Thus, there is no cogent reason to take the Big Bang to mark the beginning of
time. On the other hand, there is no compelling reason why it might not have
constituted such a beginning. Mario Bunge asserts that science requires a "genetic
principle" which would exclude such "irrational and untestable notions" as that of
an absolute beginning of the universe.6 His argument is that the "known laws of
nature" require that explanation in terms of an antecedent be always available.
E.H. Hutten makes a similar claim: the notion of a first event makes no sense (he
says) because one can always ask: "what happened before?"7 The most determined
opposition comes from Marxist-Leninist writers who claim that the notion of an
absolute beginning has "idealist" implications, and that in any event it
contravenes conservation laws and runs counter to the basic principles of
dialectical materialism.
The notion that absolute beginnings of any kind are excluded by the laws of
physics recalls the Aristotelian arguments for a similar position which were so
warmly debated by medieval critics. The real question is the applicability of
these laws to the sort of singularity the model postulates. Hawking is insistent
that the laws of "normal" physics ought not be expected to apply to a singularity,
especially not a singularity which comprises the entire universe.8 A genetic
principle which tells the scientist he ought always seek for an explanation of a
particular state by looking to an earlier state, or a conservation principle which
directs scientists to try every other alternative before admitting that
conservation of a particular sort fails, are in the first instance methodological
prescriptions of a highly successful kind. Scientists ought not assume that the
Big Bang has no antecedent; they ought to do whatever they can to establish a
lawlike succession. But this is not to say that there must be an antecedent, that
the success of these principles demonstrates that an absolute beginning is
impossible. A metaphysical claim of this sort would require more on its behalf
than an inductive appeal to the success up to this point of the genetic and
conservation principles.
Our conclusion is that the success of the Big Bang model for the first time gives
a way of construing in scientific terms what a "beginning" of the universe might
look like from here. But now a second question arises. Suppose the singularity
was, in fact, an absolute beginning: can it be called "the Creation"? Creation is
the act of a creator. A spontaneous uncaused beginning would not be a "creation";
it would be an absolute coming-to-be, nothing more. The term `creation' is an
explanatory, not merely a descriptive, one.9 To say of the horizon-event that it
was the Creation is to explain it in terms of a cause, a cause which is outside
the time-sequence since its action is what brings time itself to be. Clearly, such
an explanation is not a scientific one; science of itself could not establish a
sufficiently strong principle of causality. Can philosophy do this? Until Hume's
time it was generally supposed that it could, but the critiques of Hume and even
more of Kant have made philosophers wary of what has come to be called the
"cosmological" argument. The matter is still a hotly-disputed one;10 on one point,
however, there is general agreement and that is that the issue is a properly
philosophic one.
Does the Big Bang model have any relevance to the issue? If the universe did
"begin" at a point of time, would this give stronger support to the claim that a
Creator is needed than if the universe always existed? Intuitively, one would be
inclined to answer "yes" to this. An eternally existing universe seems a more
plausible candidate for self-sufficiency than one which begins to be. Yet there
are enough difficulties about the notion of "beginning" to warn one to treat this
inference with caution. What can be said is that if the universe began by an act
of creation, as earlier Western thought always supposed, then from our vantage-
point it could look something like the Big Bang that cosmologists are now talking
about. What cannot be said is that the Big Bang model somehow validates the
"cosmological" argument for the existence of a Creator. The inference does not
work in that direction.
It is interesting to note the extent to which philosophic presuppositions have
affected the recent development of cosmology. The "Copernican principle" of the
non-privileged status of our solar system or of our galaxy quite evidently had the
status of a philosophic claim rather than just a convenient working assumption.
Perhaps the most striking illustration of this is Fred Hoyle's rejection of the
Big Bang model in the 1950's and early 1960's. He was (and still is) convinced
that a theory which implies a past time-singularity beyond which the history of
the universe cannot be traced, cannot be a good scientific theory.11 What bothered
him most was the affinity between the Big Bang model and traditional Western
religious thought. His reluctance to abandon the steady-state model in the early
1960's as evidence continued to mount against it was motivated at least as much by
this "anti-theological" principle as it was by the predictive virtues of his own
steady-state model.
One recalls in this connection the theological principles which so influenced
Newton in the construction of his system. That a cosmological theory should rest
in part on philosophical or theological presuppositions is not necessarily to its
discredit. What would be to its discredit would be to leave these presuppositions
as simple expressions of belief and nothing more,12 or to keep relying on their
guidance in science even when this guidance continued to prove unhelpfu1.13
THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE14
One of the liveliest debates in fourteenth-century philosophy focussed on the
question: are the principles of physics necessary (as the Aristotelians
maintained) or are they contingent (as the nominalists insisted). Might the
universe have been other than it is? The Aristotelian view was that physics is a
demonstrative science based on intrinsically evident principles. Contingency
requires further explanation; if at the cosmological level one finds something
that might have been other than it is, then one has to explain why it has taken
the form it did. In contrast, something that is necessary requires no further
explanation, and can thus be properly regarded as a scientific principle. The
nominalist-voluntarist objection to this was that it limited God's freedom of
choice; if God is free, then the universe might not only not have been, but it
might have been of a quite different kind, operating in a different manner. To the
charge that this left unexplained contingency at the heart of physics, the
nominalists' response was two-fold. First, they argued that a demonstrative
science of nature is an illusory goal; some kind of likelihood is the best one can
achieve. Second, the contingencies of the world can be explained, "explained" in a
different sense admittedly than the Aristotelian would be willing to concede, in
terms of God's will. The world is the way it is, not because it had to be so, but
because God willed that it should be so.
A strikingly similar debate goes on around recent cosmological results. In the
Newtonian universe, contingency abounded. It was plausible to argue, as Kant did,
that the basic laws of Newtonian physics could not be other than they are. But the
infinite universe of stars going in all directions was full of "could have been
otherwise." The unification brought about in recent cosmology has revived the
older question again. In an evolutionary universe each stage is explained by an
earlier one. But when one gets back to the Big Bang, what should one expect? A
state that could not have been otherwise? An entirely structureless entity? To put
it in older terms, how can the Many come from the One, unless there is some
multiplicity latent already in the One? And if there is, how is it to be
explained?
Coming at it from another angle, how is one to decide whether a particular feature
of the universe is necessary or contingent, since we have only one universe, and
thus cannot fall back on the simplest way to test a claim to necessity, i.e. that
it occur in all cases? The argument for necessity will have to be a theoretical
one. But such arguments are difficult to construct and notoriously open to self-
deception, as we have already seen in Eddington's case. The scientist is caught at
this point. The case for necessity makes him uneasy; yet settling for contingency
leaves him dissatisfied. If so far as one can see, something could have been
otherwise, it seems fair to expect an answer to the question: well, then, why is
it this way? Is there a limit to structural explanation, a point at which any
further question (like: why is the proton/electron mass-ratio what it is?) is
illegitimate? And is there a similar point beyond which genetic explanation cannot
be carried, when we get back to a first state that just was that way?
In 1973, Collins and Hawking constructed a particularly teasing variant of the old
question.15 The universe is known now to have a very high degree of isotropy; this
is no longer, as we have seen, merely a simplification assumed for the sake of a
first calculation as it had been in the past. What initial conditions would have
allowed such isotropy to develop? It turns out that hardly any of the (so far as
is known) possible initial conditions would have done so. It appears to be
extremely difficult to construct a plausible genesis for the observed isotropy. It
is not only contingent; worse, it is extremely improbable--"improbable", that is,
in the sense that isotropy is produced only by an extremely small fraction of all
the permitted ways in which a universe obeying the equations of general relativity
might develop.16
How, then, explain such an apparently improbable occurrence? Collins and Hawking
argue that galaxies can form only in an isotropic universe, and then go on to note
that only where there are galaxies (and hence stars and planets) can there be
life, and a fortiori rational life. If the universe were not isotropic, we could
not be here to observe it. Since we are here, the universe must be isotropic. This
is what Carter has called the "anthropic principle".17
The `must' here is, however, a hypothetical one. If there are to be cosmologists,
then if the argument is correct, the universe will have to be isotropic (and also
very old, and thus very large).18 The necessity is the necessity of consequence.
But why should there be cosmologists? So far as we can tell, there very well might
not have been. Our presence does not, then, explain isotropy, though isotropy
might help to explain our presence. The fact (if it is one) that a non-isotropic
universe could not be observed, so that we could expect the universe to be
isotropic if we did not already know it to be so, makes no difference. The
presence of observers in a universe may allow one to predict isotropy. But when
isotropy is said to be a very "improbable" state, and we seek an explanation for
why it should be the case, we cannot invoke the presumably at least equally
improbable presence of observers. Why should the joint state: observers plus
isotropy have occurred in the first place?
One may simply say: the explanation ends; this just is the way it is, and there is
no more to be said. The anthropic principle might, however, be construed as an
explanation if one or other of two further specifications were to be permitted. If
the universe is the work of a Creator who wills that conscious life develop in it,
if in other words, the traditional Judaeo-Christian view should be correct that
the purpose of the universe is in part, at least, man, then the presence of man in
the world would explain the isotropy, the size, the age, and all the rest. Note
that this is a stronger form of explanation than the medieval one which would
explain, say, the presence of elephants or snow in the world by simply invoking
God's will. Reasons can be given in the traditional Judaeo-Christian perspective
for why God would want man in the world. Thus, the explanation is not merely by
the presumed fact of choice, but by some presumptive reasons for the choice. The
anthropic principle, if fortified by the traditional doctrine of creation, does
therefore give an explanation, though it is no longer, of course, a scientific
explanation.
The second way in which the anthropic principle might be strengthened is to
suppose that all or most of the possible universes do, in fact, come to be either
in entire isolation from one another or, for example, in a temporal sequence
punctuated by successive expansions and contractions.19 One would no longer ask:
but why this (improbable) universe rather than another with a more likely type of
configuration? They are all "there"; that we should find ourselves in the galactic
one (rather than in one of the others) can then readily be explained. If all cars
bore the same inscription: `HUMAN-1', one would want to know why this significant-
sounding phrase had been chosen rather than others. But if all six-symbol
combinations of letters and numbers are in fact realized on different cars, seeing
`HUMAN-1' on one car will no longer seem so significant (though it will still draw
our attention). The analogy is not exact but it may serve to suggest why if all
possibilities in some domain are realized, the realization of some particular one
ceases to be a special issue. Of course, one would still ask how, in the
cosmological case, one could know that all the possibilities are realized. And one
might ask, further, why any of them should be realized.
The anthropic principle derives, therefore, from the claim (1) that the most basic
structures of the universe might have been different from what they are; and (2)
that the presence of man depends on their being what they, in fact, are. The first
premiss is clearly a vulnerable one. It is difficult to exclude the possibility
that at some later time cosmologists may be able to show that the cosmical
parameters governing the sort of universe in which we find ourselves could not be
other than they are.20 That the efforts of Eddington, Dirac, and many others in
this direction have failed does not mean that success is impossible, only perhaps
that their efforts were premature. It must, however, be said that for the moment
at least, contingency seems well entrenched.
REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES FOR COSMOLOGY?
Is this all there is to be said? Until recently, philosophers were wont to make a
far more robust claim. It was widely agreed that the philosopher could formulate
some general principles which are prior to science and regulative of it. This
would attribute a far more dominant role to philosophy than the contemporary
cosmologist would be likely to concede, as we have seen.
How plausible does this claim now seem? Three broadly different types of warrant
have in the past been advanced for it; they might be called Aristotelian,
Cartesian and Kantian, as long as one keeps in mind that the historical figures
from which these familiar labels are drawn were much too complex to be comprised
under a single well-defined account.21 Can any one of these sorts of argument for
a philosophical a priori carry weight in today's cosmology?
The Aristotelian, or broadly empiricist, approach is to assume that the knower can
formulate on the basis of his everyday experience some very general principles in
regard to motion, cause, space and the like. Because the categories employed are
understood in a non-problematic way and are validated by even the simplest
experiences of the world, the principles take on the character of very general
truths about the world. The Cartesian, or broadly rationalist, approach is to
suppose that an attentive inspection of certain of our ideas will disclose
necessary connections between them; the ideas themselves are assumed not to depend
on the specificities of experience. The Kantian, or broadly idealist, strategy is
to take the most general categories of the understanding and forms of the
intuition to be prior to experience and yet constitutive (or regulative) of it. In
this way, synthetic a priori principles of a necessary sort can be derived from
the possibility of experience. In each of the three cases, cosmological principles
would rest on a different basis: in the first, on the natures of physical things,
assumed to be directly known; in the second, on the interconnections between clear
and distinct ideas; in the third, on the uniform structures of the human
understanding.
Since science takes its origin in observation, its validity must depend on the
integrity of that observation. Scientific theory cannot, therefore, call into
question the general framework within which claims to "observe" the world are
made, a reminder which Bohr felt called on to deliver to quantum theorists in the
1930's. But this of itself does not commit one to a philosophic a priori. How
specific is the commitment to the epistemic structures implicit in everyday
observation? Can these structures remain unaffected by changes in science? Just
how prescriptive is the commitment to these structures in the scientist's regard?
Those who defend a philosophically-elucidated a priori which is supposed to be
normative for the cosmologist tend to be committed to a sort of linguistic
foundationalism, an assumption that the concepts, categories, forms, in terms of
which the general principles governing the physical world (or our conception of,
or our experience of, the physical world) are to be formulated, are somehow
themselves given to us.22 They are assumed to be unproblematic, fixed, not in need
of validation. Though he tried to be very careful about what he could assume, Kant
never adequately clarified the manner in which the content of the terms through
which his a priori principles are expressed (terms like `time', `matter', `cause')
is itself to be determined prior to all experience. It was not as clear in his day
as it is in ours that the content of such terms can be altered by the progress of
science (as the content of the terms `force' had already been in Newton's time),
and that this alteration is itself a complex affair, depending a posteriori upon
the success of the explanatory theories in which these terms occur. In the more
developed parts of science, the constructive power latent within the hypothetical
procedure allows older concepts to be reshaped or new ones to be formulated.
It is, therefore, difficult nowadays to defend a Kantian distinction between a
"pure physics" enunciating principles of the understanding given a priori and an
"empirical physics" based on induction and thus merely contingent. Science
suggests something closer to a continuous spectrum. Philosophers can still propose
principles (the determinism of natural process or the impossibility of time-
reversal, for example) from one or other of the classical viewpoints. But they
have to be willing to allow a certain dialectic with science. The principle may
have to be modified or weakened in the light of a challenge from long-term
successful scientific theory. Though it is not impossible that the philosopher
should validly derive regulative principles "from the essential nature of the
thinking faculty itself",23 or from the epistemic situation of the observer, it
becomes more and more difficult to maintain that a necessary claim of potential
significance to the cosmologist could be arrived at in this way.
The choice between making science entirely independent of philosophy, making
philosophy prior to and absolutely normative of science, and making the two
interactive with one another, is one that has bedevilled Soviet science from the
beginning. Indeed, the struggle between protagonists of these three approaches was
one of the central intellectual preoccupations in the Soviet Union in the 1920's,
until it was pre-empted by Stalin's imposition of the "normative" position in
1931.24 Reverberations of the struggle can be found in Soviet cosmology. It is
asserted over and over by Soviet scientists that fidelity to the principles of
dialectical materialism accounts for the successful development of theoretical
cosmology in the Soviet Union. The principles most often invoked are those of
quantitative difference leading to qualitative leaps (so that, for example, the
universe as a whole might be expected to have properties not predictable from
those of its parts), and of struggle between opposites (suggesting, it is said,
the importance of unstable stellar states and the fundamentally evolutionary
character of stellar and galactic formation).25
Some Soviet writers have made cosmology entirely subordinate to philosophy on
matters of general principle. Sviderskii, for example, argued that finite
universe-models are incompatible with dialectical materialism; only an infinite
universe is admissible. Others (e.g., G.L. Naan) asserted that philosophy is not
prior to, but is in fact derived from science, so that although it is normative in
regard to science, it derives its warrant from science itself. It is hard to
decide just what influence dialectical materialism has had on science; for
ideological reasons it has been important to stress its superiority as a
philosophy of science.
But either of the options leads to trouble. If it is attributed some sort of a
priori status, the question insistently puts itself: how can pre-scientific
experience warrant principles sufficiently general and sufficiently precise to
serve as norms for a science of the universe? If it is made dependent on science,
it can easily reduce to science itself, at its most general. More troubling still
from the Marxist-Leninist viewpoint, this may make dialectical materialism
vulnerable to challenge from science.
The most renowned Soviet cosmologist, A. Ambartsumian, has always insisted on the
directive force of dialectical materialism in cosmology. Consistently with this,
he has argued that his own reliance on it in the formulation of successful
theories, serves to confirm its value. But this is a dangerous move. One of these
theories had to do with the evolution of stars, for example; Ambartsumian opposed
the view defended by Jeans and Eddington that stars are relatively unchanging even
across vast intervals of time. But now suppose the latter had been right? Would
this count against dialectical materialism? Should the widespread opposition to
the Big Bang model among Soviet cosmologists count against the philosophy that
inspired it? One need not be a Popperian to believe that an outcome cannot
confirm, unless its opposite would count against. To say that Jeans and Eddington
could not possibly have been right, or that the universe as a whole must have
properties that differ from those discoverable in its parts, would imply that
dialectical materialism includes a metaphysics whose warrant is prior to science
and is not dependent upon it.
Outside the Soviet Union, there are few today who would attribute to philosophy a
directive role of this sort in regard to cosmology. Philosophers like Whitehead
and Broad constructed powerful metaphysical systems of "mixed" warrant, that is,
by relying on both epistemological and more specifically scientific grounds. The
problem in the end is one of meta-philosophy, of deciding on the sort of warrant
that is appropriate to philosophic and to scientific claims, seen not as two
entirely distinct sorts of intellectual pursuit, but as a continuum. What has made
the issue more intractable is the pace of development of theoretical cosmology, a
pace too rapid of late to allow meta-philosophy the time it needs to take stock.
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana
NOTES
*An enlarged version of this paper, delivered at the World Congress in Dusseldorf
in 1978, appeared under the title: "Is philosophy relevant to cosmology?" American
Philosophical Quarterly, 18 (1981), 177-189.
1. It is ironic to find P.C.W. Davies (Space and Time in the Modern Universe
[Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1977]) claiming that the view of space and
time as "concrete properties of the material world" is the product of modern
science. The "biblical account of creation" (he asserts) assumed that God built
"form into a pre-existing but uninteresting space and time," imagining God
"reigning in an earlier phase of the cosmos and being motivated to cause the
cosmos" (op. cit., pp. 216-217). But this is precisely the (Newtonian) view of
creation that Augustine, the first Christian theorist of creation, and the legions
of medieval philosophers who were influenced by him, were concerned to reject!
2. De Civitate Dei, Book XI, Chapter 6.
3. In her very useful review, "Cosmology: Man's place in the Universe" [American
Scientist, 65 (1977), pp. 76-86], Virginia Trimble assumes that the successive
cycles would each constitute a separate universe, and remarks that "the question:
What happened before the Big Bang? belongs to the realm of pure speculation
(philosophy?) rather than that of physics. It is rather like putting a car into a
steel blast furnace and asking [of] the trickle of molten metal that comes out
whether it was a Pinto or VW before" (p. 78). Of course, one could ask whether it
was a Pinto or a Cadillac; a mass measurement might well suffice to answer this.
Cosmologists who postulate a contraction preceding the Big Bang are not just
indulging in "pure speculation," but are assuming that some parameters either
remain invariant (total mass?) or are continuously traceable (radius?) throughout.
Hawking has, however, raised some doubts whether even this sort of "information"
could come through the singularity ("Breakdown of predictability in gravitational
collapse," Physical Review D, 14 [1977], pp. 2460-2473).
4. One further complication about the notion of "age" in this context is (as Milne
first pointed out in his Kinematic Relativity [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1947])
that it may come out either as finite or infinite, depending on the choice of
physical process to serve as basis for the time scale. Thus, even if one takes the
Big Bang to be the event from which the age of the universe is to be counted, that
"age" could still come out as infinite. To decide, therefore, whether the Big-Bang
universe should be said to have had a beginning requires further precisions about
the notion of beginning and of time-measurement. See C. Misner, "Absolute zero of
time," Physical Review, 186 (1969), pp. 1328-1333.
5. Gott et. al. argue in a recent paper that the evidence already favors the
"open" model. See "Will the universe expand forever?", Scientific American, 234
(1976), pp. 62-79.
6. Causality (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1959), pp. 24, 240.
7. "Methodological remarks concerning cosmology", Monist, 47 (1962), pp. 104-115.
8. "Black holes and thermodynamics", Physical Review D, 13 (1976), pp. 191-197;
"The quantum mechanics of black holes," Scientific American, 236 (1977), pp. 34-
40.
9. Bondi has argued that the steady-state model brought the "problem of creation"
into "the scope of physical inquiry," by proposing a statistical law which the new
appearances of matter in that model would follow (Cosmology, [Cambridge:
University Press, 1960], p. 140). Whether such a law explains the events depends
in part on what one thinks of the D-N model of explanation. But even if it does,
it certainly does not entitle one to assume that the problem solved is "the
problem of creation."
10. See, for example, W.L. Rowe, The Cosmological Argument (Princeton: Princeton
Univ. Press, 1975); D. Burrill (ed.), Cosmological Arguments, (Garden City, N.Y.:
Anchor, 1967).
11. Astronomy and Cosmology (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975), p. 684. Note
that this goes much further than the rejection of absolute cosmic beginning; it
would exclude a Big-Bang type of singularity even if it were not an absolute
beginning. See also Chapter 1 of his Ten Faces of the Universe (San Francisco:
W.H. Freeman, 1977), with its highly emotional attack on religion generally, and
on belief in "beginnings" specifically.
12. In Ten Faces of the Universe, Hoyle continually uses such phrases as `I
believe' or `I prefer'. There is, at the very least, something premature about
Davies' assurance to his readers that the new cosmology (unlike older world-views)
"does not deal in beliefs but in facts. A model of the universe does not require
faith but a telescope", op. cit., p. 201.
13. Hoyle has recently proposed a new and ingenious model which explains galactic
red-shifts by a steady increase in the masses of elementary particles over time,
galactic distances remaining constant. The model does have a singularity in the
past when all particle masses were zero. But Hoyle argues that one can plausibly
postulate a prior cosmic state of negative masses, as well as a far larger
universe, homogeneous over time on a scale much larger than even clusters of
galaxies (thus escaping refutation from the growing evidence for local
inhomogeneity over time). The theory is ad hoc to an altogether alarming extent --
alarming, that is, to anyone who is not more alarmed by an absolute time-
beginning.
14. I am indebted to my fellow-panelists at the Dusseldorf World Congress of
Philosophy (1978), Professors V. Weidemann and R. Sexl, for their clear
delineation of the problem treated in this section.
15. "Why is the universe isotropic?", Astrophysical Journal, 180 (1973), pp. 317-
334. For further references, see V. Weidemann, "Cosmology: science or
speculation?"
16. It should be emphasized that this is not generally agreed. Trimble, though she
agrees that the universe is a "delicately balanced" one in regard to the
possibility of the development of life, supports the earlier view that galactic
formation is an expected development: "The matter at this [early] stage was not
perfectly smooth but was concentrated in lumps. . . . The cause of the clumps is
not well understood, though they are not unexpected, since, when the universe was
very young, there had not yet been time for interactions and smoothing to have
occurred across large distances. But they must have been there, because we see
galaxies and clusters now" (op. cit., p. 78). It is the explanatory force of this
"must have been" that is at issue.
17. B. Carter, "Large number coincidences and the anthropic principle in
cosmology", in Confrontation of Cosmological Theory with Astronomical Data, ed.
M.S. Longair (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1974) pp. 291-298. Carter uses a similar argument
to "explain" why gravity is so weak, by noting that stable stars (and hence
planetary life) could not develop were gravity to be a stronger force.
18. Davies, op. cit., Section 7.3.
19. Trimble speculates that they might be "imbedded in five (or higher)
dimensional space, existing simultaneously, from the point of view of a five (or
higher) dimensional observer" (op. cit., p. 85).
20. Trimble, op. cit., pp. 85-86.
21. For a more detailed account see E. McMullin, "Philosophies of nature," New
Scholasticism, 43 (1969), pp. 29-74.
22. This "myth of the given" has been very much the center of critical discussion
in recent philosophy of science. See, for example, W. Sellars, Science, Perception
and Reality (New York: Humanities Press, 1963).
23. Kant, Preface to the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. It is in
this work, perhaps, even more than in the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique
that the difficulties of the Kantian "pure physics" become evident.
24. David Joravsky, Soviet Marxism and Natural Science (London, 1961), and review
article, E. McMullin, Natural Law Forum, 8 (1963), pp. 149-159.
25. See L. Graham, Science and Philosophy in the Soviet Union (New York, 1972),
pp. 156-188, for the material on which this and the following paragraph mainly
depend. See also N. Lobkowicz, "Materialism and matter in Marxism-Leninism," The
Concept of Matter in Modern Philosophy, E. McMullin, ed. (Notre Dame: University
of Notre Dame Press, 1978), pp. 154-188.
CHAPTER XI
METAPHYSICS AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF
ETHICAL AND SOCIAL VALUES
JOHANNES LOTZ
The theme of this paper is that metaphysics can provide a foundation for ethical
and social values (positive aspect) and that without metaphysics no justification
can be given to these values (negative aspect).
MAN AS PERSON
To treat this theme it might be noted that the human being is the bearer of these
values, and therefore, one should ask first: what is the relationship of the human
being (Mensch) to metaphysics? It must be made clear that he is rooted in that
which is investigated by metaphysics. Is he still the `animal metaphysicum', as in
former times? To put the question more exactly we must look to that dimension of
the human being which plays the deciding part in ethical-social life and which
makes the human being a person. We have to discuss therefore whether and how the
human being, specifically as person, is distinguished by his openness to
metaphysics, and whether and how, according to this openness of the person, the
human being has the necessary ethical and social values.
We shall begin with men or women (Menschen) as persons with two commonly accepted
characteristics. First the person is, as Kant puts it: an end in himself (Zweck an
sich selbst). Therefore, it is against his or her being to be used as a mere means
to an end; his independence (Eigensta¦ ndigkeit) is such that he exists never
merely for someone else, but for himself. Secondly, the person is an individual, a
single being; as such one stands out inasmuch as he exhibits a characteristic
singularity. Accordingly, the person is not a homogeneous indifferent atom of man
within the multitude or the mass, able arbitrarily to be replaced by some other
atom. Rather the person appears as non-interchangeable and irreplaceable at any
given time as this particular person; the person is always a singular that cannot
be repeated. To the extent the person loses his singularity (Einmaligkeit) and
with it his individuality, it is possible to take the person as a means for an
end, and accordingly to use or consume a person. Of course, the person's
singularity must not be overemphasized to the extent that the commonness of human
nature (Menschennatur) disappears.
Independence and singularity manifest the individual life of the person, which
displays itself in two characteristic features which show more exactly what the
person is. The first characteristic is the self-consciousness (Ich-Bewusstsein) of
the person. One does not lose himself in the other or others, nor does one have a
diffused or fuzzy consciousness as does the ego-less animal; instead one lives in
a clear consciousness of himself. He has always seized his own self and can
therefore say to himself, "I." This agrees with the complete return upon oneself
(reditio completa) which Thomas Aquinas assigns to the human being; he observes in
the animal merely the beginning of a return to one's self (redire incipit).
Accordingly, man comes to himself as a person, or is coming to himself, by
himself. He is a person, insofar as he still becomes a person; and he becomes a
person insofar as he already is a person.
The second characteristic of the person is his freedom (freie Selbstverfu¦ gung)
to dispose or apply himself. By this characteristic one is not irresistibly handed
over to the forces which arise from one's own inner being, or those to one's
surroundings. Rather, a person of himself stands back, as it were, from these
powers so that he can respond with a yes or a no, can accept or discard. The
person is not made to live by powers which overcome him, but lives on the basis of
his own decision. In other words, he is not determined as a mere member of the
whole of nature, but determines himself within the totality of nature; and on top
of that, the person subjects this totality to his own determination in the
creation of culture. A person's self-disposing capacity completes the self-
consciousness, inasmuch as it distinctly expresses his independence and also his
singularity. The former is without doubt apparent, the latter can be inferred from
the fact that freedom develops its own and new initiatives, and does not accept
the same fixed pattern.
PERSON AND METAPHYSICS
Our description of a person leads us to the question of whether and how the person
is rooted in the metaphysical. The answer can be found through the transcendental
method by looking for the reason which makes possible the two characteristic
features by which a person can be recognized. In the self-consciousness the person
reaches himself and therefore what he truly is; whereas, as long as the person
remains in the realm of what he appears to be, or in the mere appearance of
himself, and does not reach what he is, he does not truly come to himself and is
not with himself or in his self-consciousness.
C.G. Jung, with this in mind, developed the difference between the persona or the
role someone plays, and the person someone is. What a person really is, or what he
himself seems to be, cannot be clear for the person while he remains locked in
himself as this limited being. Every limited being discloses itself according to
its own relative viewpoints. From this point everything shows itself according to
the person's limited perspective, but not in the way it really is. This is the
case with an animal which, therefore, can never reach itself or its own "I."
Consequently, a person is capable of breaking through to his own being only when
he steps beyond himself as this limited, confined being, and breaks through to the
unlimited, unconfined Being-itself (Sein-selbst) which embraces and establishes
all that is being and discloses the absolute viewpoint. Only from that viewpoint
can a being show itself as it is in truth. Because the self-consciousness
essentially includes a grasp of one's own being (das Ergreifen), it presupposes
reaching out (den Aus-griff) to the all inclusive Being-itself and with it the
foundation of the metaphysical.
The same thing holds for the person's freedom to dispose of himself (freieu¦
Selbstverfu¦ gung). The person is subject to the ever-present limiting impulses
from within and without. But these are not irresistible as long as the attractive
goods are unable to satisfy one's striving, i.e., when such goods, as the material
object, a personal striving whose formal object is transcendent. On principle
(though not factually in every case) the person confronts all limited goods
freely, for fore, the formal object, which constitutes his striving and willing is
necessarily unlimited. On the other hand, while all being is limited, the willing
(das Wollen) stretches out to the all-inclusive or unlimited Being-itself (Sein
selbst) which here appears as the good, while in the case of the self-
consciousness it becomes effective as the true. Inasmuch as the person himself is
a limited being, not only can he freely exercise control over such impulses, but
he can also control himself as he accepts and rejects himself, completes or
destroys himself which again is possible only by looking to Being-itself.
According to this, man's free self-disposition is similar to his self-
consciousness insofar as it presupposes reaching out to being-itself, by which the
person, according to his two characteristic features or fundamental accomplishment
(Grundvollzu¦ ge) is grounded metaphysically. Without this metaphysical grounding
the person would dissolve. One who explicitly rejects the metaphysical dimension
of the person is continuously implicitly refuted through the very accomplishment
(Vollzug) of his personal life.
METAPHYSICAL AND ETHICAL VALUE
Now that we have shown the foundational metaphysical structure of the person,
through its help we can develop the connection between metaphysics and ethical
values. In the person, the order of morality is set off from the order of nature.
In the sub-human order of nature (untermenschliche Naturordnung) all proceedings
play themselves out according to the unavoidability of a "must" (Muss). This does
not change because of the indetermined relationships in the microphysical realm
(Heisenberg), whence comes even the least statistical necessity in the
macrophysical realm. In contrast to that order the ethical order is distinguished
by the "ought" (Soll) which contains and manifests freedom. Certainly, the "ought"
has a certain binding force; this however does not exclude, but opens toward
freedom because when a certain action is demanded one is capable of doing the
opposite. The action does not happen by itself or with the necessity of nature,
but only through freedom. Since only the person possesses freedom, the moral order
has an essentially personal stamp, while the order of nature is one of the
impersonal or of "things."
On closer inspection, the natural and the ethical orders in man compenetrate: his
personal life is imbedded in pre-personal happenings. In the child, the latter is
first preponderant; while the former emerges from it gradually. In the mature man,
at the high point of his life, the personal reaches its fullness. Not all human
beings reach the same level of maturity, for freedom is the possibility of either
taking freedom up to use and develop it, or withdrawing from it, not using it and
so letting it spoil. With regard to the last alternative, however, and except for
psychological disorders, no one can completely suffocate his freedom, although he
can continue to let himself be driven by impersonal or unfree forces. In this
regard, also, although ethical action is not so manifest, one who is ethically
undeveloped falls behind the fullness of his humanness and becomes compulsive for
lack self-identity and personal independence.
For the person freedom is that capacity for self-determination which essentially
imparts a certain directedness (Gerichtetheit) along with human obligation or
"ought" (Soll). Against this, Sartre sees freedom as the complete absence of
determinateness (Bestimmungslosigkeit) so that man has no preimpressed essence or
pre-given value order. He is only what he makes himself to be through his freedom.
As this would lead to chaotic arbitrariness Sartre adds that everyone has his own
freedom to work out an agreement with the freedom of all others. This contradicts
his initial statement on freedom as the absence of determinateness by introducing
determinateness (Bestimmtheit) or directedness (Gerichtetheit) into human freedom.
Indeed, a certain essence (Wesen) has been stamped into man by his freedom, which
singles him out from all sub-human beings, namely, the quality of standing out
from, or of standing in Being-itself. Heidegger points to this when he says: The
essence of "being-there" (Da-sein) is "ex-istence" (Ek-sistenz). This essence does
not destroy freedom, as Sartre thinks, but stands at its very root. From this same
essence springs the directedness (Gerichtetheit) which is essentially interwoven
with freedom, or the binding "ought" (Soll) which demands that freedom shape one's
life inasmuch as the person's freedom is not forced to do this. The different
aspects of this essence and work of life-formation have their manifold values
which attract our freedom and which, in turn, freedom has to realize. Since the
person as free is founded in the metaphysical and requires fixed ethical values,
these values also have their roots in the metaphysical, without which the ethical
would not exist.
MOTIVATION AND CONSCIENCE
It should be noted that ethical action is related not to what is determined
(Determination) but to motivation. While what is determined denotes an influence
which excludes freedom, motivation weighs the reasons (Gru¦ nde) which speak for
or a- gainst a certain action, and which go back to the values that always are
considered. This weighing of reasons does not lessen freedom, but leads to its
completion, because it does not replace one's decision, but prepares for it and
makes a pertinent decision possible. Only from such weighing or pondering could
there emerge a truly personal action which depicts the individuality of a free
person, usually known as a human act (actus humanus). The unconsidered deed,
however, which shoots forth without the participation of freedom, is similar to
impersonal happenings and is called an act of man (actus hominis) because, though
it comes from man, it does not do so in a way that is proper to man. The preceding
paragraph shows clearly how motivation attaches itself to the directedness
dwelling in freedom, and how it concretizes this directedness for the here and
now. Accordingly, ethical action develops itself from motivation: through weighing
reasons or values it becomes truly free or personal and enables the metaphysical
dimensions of the person to pervade every day life.
It is by conscience that we grasp the ought (Soll) dwelling within freedom and
concretize it in individual behavior. It has its origin neither exclusively in the
super-ego (¦(U¦ ber-Ich), nor in one's environment, as one often hears today. Its
word (Spruch) comes from the depths of the person, where one becomes aware of what
he is and what he, therefore, ought to be. In other words, in our conscience we
meet our own being as our task or mission (Auftrag), both as it spans our whole
lifetime and as it stamps us for the present hour. Because of this root, the
conscience is imperturbable and capable of recalling itself to itself when it
strays from its own track.
In specific cases, the conscience can be immature or mature, and consequently hazy
or clear, mal-formed or well-formed and therefore false or true. One lives without
a conscience when one has silenced it or goes against its unmistakable warnings.
One acts according to one's conscience to the degree one faithfully follows its
lead and so reaches one's true goal or life-truth. In this he avoids and overcomes
his life-lie, into which the conscience-less person throws himself. Both the
person with and the person without a conscience remain in the ethical realm, for
the person can never leave that. But only the one with a conscience realizes the
ethical dimension according to his own proper character (Eigentlichkeit), while
the one without a conscience cannot get out of his peculiar perversion. Inasmuch
as conscience continuously accompanies the person and derives from the very depths
of man, at its roots it reaches the metaphysical or has a deeply metaphysical
imprint, without which it would evaporate.
UNCONDITIONED OBLIGATION
Let us examine more in detail that by which the ethical bond surpasses other bonds
or the nature of the "ought" (Soll) which, through one's conscience, makes demands
upon us. Briefly, this "ought" distinguishes itself through its unconditionality
(Unbedingtheit). Only one conditional bond can be expressed in the entire length
of the if-then statement: if you want to reach this goal, you will have to use the
means necessary for it, just as the vocation of the physician requires a special
education. In this and in similar cases, the bond is merely conditional, because
one has to make use of the means only if one wishes to reach one's goal, and no
other means will bring this about.
In contrast, the ethical "ought" imposes upon man an unconditional bond
independent of every other bond, that is, it has value under any condition and the
bond cannot be lifted. This unconditionality shows itself in the case of one's
faithfulness to conscience, in the case of one's respect for human dignity, and in
the case of the objectionableness of slander or of the misuse of the person as a
mere means to an end. The person who in such cases goes back to an if-then
connection, covers up all that is conditional or all the previously considered
givens (Gegebenheiten). Certainly one could formulate the proposition that man
must follow his "ought" only if he wishes to act ethically or to lead an
unobjectionable life. However, that formulation differs essentially from the one
mentioned above insofar as the ethically good action is precisely not left up to
the discretion of man (as in the case of the physician's vocation). Rather, man is
bound by the "ought" itself and is called unconditionally. In this lies the
foundation of all other demands of the ethical order.
Today, one often hears it objected against the unconditionality of the ethical
ought that it contradicts the historicity (Geschichtlichkeit) of all human
actions. According to this, all these regulative norms have only a time-
conditioned and, therefore, a conditional value: unconditional norms valid for all
times would be excluded. The same would be said about ethical values, since the
norms formulate the binding force given with the values. This objection is
overcome by the fact that historicity would abolish itself if everything were
subjected to the comings and goings of things in time or if nothing endured
through change. If there is to be historicity then the foundation which makes it
possible must endure. This foundation corresponds to the human foundation or
structure, as was developed above, but it cannot be proven here in detail. In the
same foundation or structure is rooted both the unconditionality of the ethical
ought and the ethical values themselves, as will be made clearer in the following
paragraphs. The given, trans-temporal, unconditional kernel of the ethical appears
to us solely, but also truly, in completely timed-conditioned realities. Therefore
we can speak of the historical (geschichtlichen) unconditionality of the ethical
in which neither of the two elements replaces or disappears into the other.
The ground or basis of possibility (ermo¦ glichenden Grund) of the unconditioned
in the ethical obviously cannot be found in the conditional, because the former
essentially and incalculably supercedes the latter. Insofar that man is a being
that is becoming (als Seiendes) one is only somewhat conditioned, insofar as Being
(Sein) comes to him only with boundaries inasmuch as it is conditioned by one's
essence. Whereas he is a relative being which is becoming (relativ seiend) or
alone in a view peculiar to himself, the unconditioned is characteristic of the
absolute standing free from any mere viewpoint. Thus man can be considered the
bearer of unconditionality only if his imbeddedness (das Hineinragen) in the all-
encompassing Being-itself belongs to his constitution. This imbeddedness attests
to the Being in every point of view or beyond all boundaries, and thus to the
absolute. This openness (Offenbarkeit) of Being-itself is expressed in the
essential character of man's particularity and actions, so that the latter (his
essential character) would not be what it is without the former (the openness of
Being-itself).
Therefore, the unconditionality of the ethical leads to the same foundation-
structure as that for man, which structure has shown itself to be the root of
man's personal life. He is the being-which-becomes (das Seiende) constituted
through the openness of Being, or he is the relative being which is constituted
through the lighting up (Aufleuchten) of the Absolute. In other words, ethical
values are grounded in man only insofar as, even in the physical order, he has
already reached, and lived on the basis of, the metaphysical.
COMPARISON TO OTHER VIEWS
What has just been said can be made clearer through some comparisons. Because
Heidegger stops at the respective and therefore relative participations of Being
(Seins) and does not take into consideration the clarifications (Aufhellung) of
the one Being-itself, he does not penetrate to the absolute and therefore finds no
foundation for the unconditionality of the ethical. Because Scheler sees only the
becoming or changing character of being (das Seiende) and remains in forgetfulness
of Being, he can preserve the unconditionality of ethical values only by asserting
that these latter are independent of changing beings (Seienden) and by raising
these ethical values to his own peculiar region of an emotional a priori. This is
not sufficient, although a particular explanation of why this is so cannot be gone
into here.
With regard to Hegel, it is important to develop the difference that has already
been shown, the one which Heidegger calls the ontological difference (ontologische
Differenz). In man this distinction manifests itself insofar as he is a changing
or relative being reaching out to Being or the Absolute. As a being which is in
the process of becoming he participates in Being or the Absolute, but he is not,
however, the Being-itself or the Absolute. Genuine participation in the Absolute
provides the foundation of the unconditionality of the ethical in man. Mere
participation (Teil-nehmen) in the Absolute brings with it the historically
conditioned forms of the ethical which mark man in his finiteness. While bound to
the becoming or relative being, Being or the Absolute is not entirely itself in
man. Thus the Being or Absolute dwelling within (immanente) man points beyond
itself and man to its own form, in which it is totally itself.
Thomas calls this being beyond (transzendente) man, the subsisting (das
subsistierende), standing in its own right as being itself, and Being itself. It
is the absolute simply; separated from man and all becoming-beings, it is fully
independent Being. It is, finally, the divine Being and the personal God, since
the subsistence of Being is synonymous with complete openness, with self-
consciousness and with the quality of freely disposing of oneself. God is the
unconditioned one, the highest completion and, therefore, beyond every
conditionality.
Thus, he shows himself to be the ultimate foundation for the unconditionality of
the ethical ought or for ethical values, while man is merely, but also truly, the
next foundation. Only insofar as man, by means of Being-itself, participates in
the unconditionality of the divine Being or ultimate foundation can he, as the
next foundation, bear the unconditionality of ethical values. He who denies such
participation loses, with the ultimate foundation for the unconditionality of the
ethical, the more immediate foundation, and consequently ethics itself. With the
ascent to subsisting Being, we have reached the innermost kernel of the
metaphysical, without which Being-itself, the unconditionality of ethical values,
and even the person himself fall. For all of these, therefore, this foundation in
the metaphysical is absolutely decisive and indispensable.
In the light of these findings, we can examine Hegel for whom the ontological
difference takes on a dialectical character. Man, as a relative and changing
being, is a dialectical moment in the unfolding of absolute Being; consequently he
is identical with this dialectic. The uniquely unconditioned unfolds itself in the
course of the conditioned (Durchlaufen des Bedingten): without the conditioned the
unconditioned is a falsehood or not itself. Only in the conditioned can it attain
to its truth and be totally itself. Finally, the dialectic is characteristically
an exchange, according to which not only does the conditioned reach its truth in
the unconditioned, but also the unconditioned in the conditioned. As this
whirlwind (Wirbel) does not permit a merely unconditioned, the unconditionality of
ethical values is dissolved by this dialectic. For this reason, a dialectical
metaphysics is not sufficient, although it surpasses the denial of any
metaphysics.
The metaphysical foundation developed for the ethical "ought" as well as for the
separation of ethical values can be made clearer in relation to further ethical
data and individual ethical values. With the "ought" comes first of all the bond
of duty; it carries with it responsibility and it is cause for guilt. In all this
there is an unconditionality at work, from which alone stem the unqualified
ethical character of such experiences, and such unconditionality necessarily shows
the presence of the metaphysical.
THE BASIS OF SOCIAL VALUES
Closely connected with the ethical values are the social ones. Because many
ethical values touch upon the social area, and contrariwise, one's social life has
many ethical aspects. The statement goes even deeper: ethical and social values
grow from the same root. Aristotle had been clear that man is not a simple or
isolated entity, but needs to live together (Zusammenleben) with his peers. Man
completes himself only in community and in his association with others, not in
separation from them. In the animal kingdom we already find an anticipation of
such living together, specifically in what one calls by analogy ant and bee
colonies. The social life of man essentially exceeds such structures in openness
and depth, as can be seen from what was said above about the person, for the
person is grounded in the openness of Being-itself, which on account of its
fullness embraces everything. This shows boundless openness to be the ultimate
ground for all things, reaching a depth that cannot be equaled. In virtue of this
same openness of Being the person is as much with himself as he is with others:
both poles of this encounter come to the same depth as two communicating tubes.
More precisely, the possibilities of communication exceed all boundaries in extent
and depth, while from both points of view actually completed communication remains
subject to boundaries. As this boundlessness originates because it concerns the
openness of Being, so the boundaries arise because man, as a being who is
becoming, only participates in this openness.
In the communication established for social life both partners are humans and
persons. In this process the openness of Being shows itself in both parties as
they bring to each other openness which in extent and depth may transcend all
boundaries. However, the possibilities thus given are never totally exhausted
because both partners cannot exceed the boundaries which exist for all changing
beings, even though the partners can push these boundaries further and further
away. Their communication becomes progressively richer the more the openness of
Being unfolds itself in them and rules their reciprocal exchanges.
This points out two complimentary aspects. Each one goes to the other in such a
way that he goes over to the other. There is no contradiction here; but for each
of the two sides the other is fixed by Being-itself. This opens each partner to
the other and at the same time strengthens him in himself so that he does not lose
himself in the other. As the same Being both strengthens each of the partners in
themselves and opens them to the other person they do not suffocate in their own
narrowness.
In the measure Being is dissolved, the two sides fail in their meeting with one
another, or a contradiction forms between being secure in oneself and going over
to the other. Without Being, one either goes to the other in such a way that he is
not secure in himself and thus has to lose himself in the other, or he secures
himself in such a way that he does not go over to the other and therefore becomes
locked up in himself. Since Being-itself is precisely the root of all that is
metaphysical, it alone makes possible this communication or meeting between men
which is social life.
SOCIAL LIFE
The different ways in which human beings have contacts with each other can be
explained through the openness of Being. One can meet the other as an it, as a he,
or as a you. Someone treats another as an it, or a thing, and not as a person,
when he takes him or her simply as a thing, and forgets the openness of Being
which takes place in him; on this level the person is apt to be misused as a mere
means to an end. Someone treats another as a he or she when one in fact respects
the person in him and does not degrade him to a thing or to a mere means to an
end. However, one may be interested only in the accomplishments of the other and
not in the person himself; therefore this person can be replaced by another who
can achieve the same thing. Here the openness of Being remains in the background
and does not extend past the mainly material accomplishments to the one who
realizes them.
Someone treats the other as a you or thou, however, when the person himself, and
not his accomplishments, is the focus of attention. This other cannot be replaced
and is respected as a person in the fullest sense. Since the openness of Being
belongs to the constitution of the person, it becomes the characteristic basis of
the relationship, which is thus lifted to its proper I-Thou level. As our
presentation shows, if the kind and depth of social relationships cut themselves
off from the empowering force of Being and thereby from the metaphysical, then in
the measure that these relationships degenerate into the quantifiable the
metaphysical dimension is lost.
We can come to better understand the significance of this, if we consider certain
value-systems which play a decisive role in I-Thou relationships. First we should
consider love which unfolds itself in two ways: a self-referral (ich-bezogenen)
and a self-freeing (ich-freien) love. With the former I meet the other for my
sake; in the latter I love him or her their sake. Only through this latter love
can I proceed to the partner-love relationship in which I go beyond my own horizon
and enter that of the other or wish the other well. As Augustine has beautifully
formulated it, I will that the other be (amo: volo, ut sis). I say yes to the
being of the other and contribute to it, so that he or she becomes more and more
the person he is and ought to be. According to our earlier discussion, this occurs
only when I remain in the horizon of Being-itself, that is, the openness of Being;
the metaphysical is the ground that makes true love possible. Accordingly, in the
measure love turns itself into self-seeking or hate, the metaphysical is lost or
Being is forgotten.
Similar things can be said about the confidence which comes out of love. The more
deeply human beings love each other, the more they place themselves and their
affairs in the hands and heart of the other, confident that nothing will be
misused. Herein lies trust in the partner, which presupposes his or her
trustworthiness. This is possible only insofar as one is unshakable, but because
of their limitations all beings are at all times subject to shock. Only Being-
itself alone is unshakable, due to its unlimitedness. Therefore man is unshakable
only to the degree he goes beyond himself as a changing being and makes himself
one with Being-itself. Consequently, trustworthiness--and, with it confidence--are
rooted in the metaphysical.
It is similar with faithfulness, by which a person gives himself to another or is
at his disposal. He will not leave him even in bad times, but is willing to bear
difficulties with him. Often he will be faithful to the other for a whole
lifetime, even if the other disappoints him. Again, as a limited being one is
fickle and inconsistent, but can gain strength and constistency to the degree that
one takes root in the unlimited being or is grounded in the metaphysical.
COMMUNITY AND SOCIETY
Let us turn now from "I-Thou" relationships to "We relationships" in which
community and society realize themselves. For community we will use the example of
a nation (Volk) and for society that of the state. In the state tensions exist
between the single person and the all-encompassing totality. Extreme solutions
submit one of these two poles totally to the other and result in either
liberalism, on the one hand, or totalitarianism, on the other. These can be
overcome through a middle way in which the person serves the whole and the whole
serves the person. The person serves the whole in order that it be capable of
giving to the person the prerequisites for the full-development of the person.
Hence, the person is subordinated to the whole only conditionally. This is proven
from the previously developed idea of the independence of the person, who as his
own self can never be a mere means to an end. The priority of the person is clear
here. This could not be said of the person as a limited and changing being,
because in these terms the state would be the greater being surpassing the person.
On this account, precedence must come to the state.
Correspondingly, priority belongs essentially to the person from the fact that the
person is rooted in Being and participates in its absoluteness. The person is thus
subordinate to the state only insofar as it is a being which is becoming. It
follows that the state can place obligations upon the person and as such be
superior to the person only if the state is founded in or participates in the
absoluteness of Being. Any absolute character on the part of the state is derived
from that of the person, because the state is built on persons. Accordingly, the
cooperation or the working together of persons and society is possible through the
metaphysical; should this disappear everything would fall apart.
Authority in the state has the obligation to direct individuals to the common
good, so that each one contributes his own share. This power of authority to bind
persons together in duty is due to authority's participation in the absolutism of
Being. Therefore, those who bear authority, whether in a monarchy, an aristocracy
or a democracy, are capable of administering their office suitably only when they
do not drown in power but bring themselves through to Being; this requires a
penetrating purification of all who participate. In this administration, as Plato
showed in his Republic, the most important thing is uncorrupted justice which
distributes and assigns duties and rights according to objective data, without
letting itself be confused through selfish interests. Only they can do such deeds
who add to precise and expert knowledge a high degree of personal maturity.
According to what has been said above, as this always and essentially depends upon
being founded (Grunden) in the all-embracing Being, authority and justice also
rise out of the metaphysical. Once again this proves to be the root of social
values, just as above it was seen to be the foundation of ethical values and the
source of personal life.1
Munich, W. Germany
FOOTNOTE
1. See Johannes Lotz, Ich-Du-Wir: Fragen um den Menschen (Frankfurt, 1968); Die
Drei-Einheit der Liebe: Eros, Philia, Agape (Frankfurt, 1979); Person und
Freiheit: Eine philosophische Untersuchung mit theologischen Ausblichen (Freiburg,
1979).
CHAPTER XII
METAPHYSICS AND HISTORY
T.A. ROBERTS
The aim of this paper is to discuss some philosophical problems relating to
history, both in the sense of what happened in the past and, more significantly,
in the sense of producing an account of what happened in the past. Discussion of
these selected problems will reflect trends in philosophical thinking over the
past twenty years or so in the Anglo-Saxon speaking world. The main general trend
which seems to be discernable is a shift away from a predominantly empiricist
approach to the problem of historical knowledge which was prevalent in the
immediate postwar period--an empiricist approach well reflected in Patrick
Gardiner's The Nature of Historical Explanation (1952). As is well established,
this empiricist approach was an off-shoot of certain aspects of linguistic
philosophy, if not of logical positivism, which found classical expression in A.J.
Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic (1936). In that book Ayer castigated all
metaphysical propositions as pseudo-propositions and therefore meaningless. In
recent years metaphysics has been rehabilitated, and contemporary discussions of
problems in the philosophy of history clearly recognize that important
philosophical arguments in this area involve crucial and unavoidable metaphysical
issues.
Nothing will be said in this paper about the details of historical methodology or
historiography, that is to say, the methods or techniques used by historians in
their task of reconstructing the past. Some philosophers believe that one of the
tasks of the philosophy of history is to examine and analyze the presuppositions
underlying historical methodology. This is, in my view, a mistaken approach.
Historical methodology reflects the empirical practice of historians. Philosophers
on the other hand discuss those peculiarly philosophical problems that arise,
irrespective of the nature of historical methodology, when we reflect on the very
possibility of being able to obtain knowledge of the past. Historical methodology
assumes, unquestionably, that knowledge of the past is possible, and has always
been possible. It seeks to analyze and systemize the methods used most effectively
by historians to establish this knowledge of the past. But if philosophers examine
the very possibility of knowing the past, this task is clearly logically prior to
the task of formulating a historiography. It is therefore no part of the
philosopher's task to worry about historical methodology: indeed the boot is on
the other foot. It is for historians to pay heed to what the philosophers are
about despite their scarcely disguised impatience with, if not downright contempt
for, philosophical speculation. As parts of this paper will, I hope, make clear,
historical methodology sometimes reflects a confused apprehension of the way thing
are, and this very often because the confusion stems from a failure to recognize
metaphysical issues which must be resolved one way or another, if the kinks, so to
speak, are to be straightened out in historical methodology.
No account is taken here of philosophical problems about time, which, since
history clearly involves the past, are obviously relevant to any comprehensive
reflection about history. Is time linear, continuous, unending and without
beginning? If so, we will tend to represent the structure of time by a horizontal
straight line, the points of that line representing the moments of time.
Any point on that line can be chosen to represent the present, so that all points
to the left of it represent the past, and all to the right represent the future.
Granted such a structure of time, it is tempting to think of the history as a
movement or process in time, a movement of progress or decline. A rival theory of
time claims that time is closed and its structure is best represented, not by a
line, but by a circle. On this view, the historical process is neither one of
progress nor of decline but one of returning again and again to a point through
which it has already passed. Yet a third possibility, canvassed by McTaggart, is
that time is unreal. How do we decide between these rival theories of time? I
mention these possibilities in order to distinguish between philosophical problems
about time and philosophical problems about history, which presupposes time. My
concern in this paper is exclusively, if narrowly, with philosophical problems
about history.
What kind of philosophical problems about history does one have in mind. Consider
the following propositions.
1.There are no `bare' historical facts. All historical facts are an inextricable
blend of fact and interpretation.
2. All history is contemporary history.
3. The Christ-event (the death and resurrection of Jesus) is the meaning of all
history.
These three propositions share at least one feature in common. They are of a high
order of generality. The first makes a claim about all the members of a sub-class
of the class of facts i.e. about the class of historical facts. The second arises
from a well known dictum of R. G. Collingwood, a distinguished historian who
became an equally distinguished philosopher, about the nature of all historical
methodology. And the third claims that one particular event is the key to the
meaning, not of parts of history e.g. the history of western civilization, or
types of history, e.g., religious history, but of all history.
Another feature these three propositions share in common is the fact that
acceptance or rejection of them is not to be decided by appeal to particular
states of affairs in the world. If this is true then these propositions possess
something of a metaphysical flavour. That is, if we accept them, we accept them
not because they are in some straightforward sense true or false, but because they
encapsulate (in very abbreviated form) some insight or emphasize some feature,
considered important, of the way we think we must structure reality, in order to
make it intelligible.
FACTS AND INTERPRETATION
Some historians who have recently discussed historiography have made great play of
the claim that there are no bare historical facts, only facts plus interpretation.
They have advanced this claim to counter views advanced by J. B. Bury in his
inaugural address at Cambridge in 1903 that history is a science no more, no less,
and that the task of the historian is to chronicle simply and impartiality what
happened in the past to narrate the bare facts. Another Cambridge historian,
Norman Sykes,1 writing in 1949, challenged and rejected Bury's thesis; a thesis
which implied according to Sykes that the documents on which the historian worked
were impartial, and the use made of them by the historian was impartial. According
to Sykes, the theory that a historian can be impartial seems to us today manifest
nonsense. Impartiality is impossible since the writer of the historical document
has selected what to relate about events and the historian's use of this document
is based on selection and interpretation of the material and this selection
presupposes a point of view. Hence neither the documents which survive from the
past nor the use made of them by the contemporary historian can be impartial.
Bury's ideal for the historian, presenting the facts as they happened, without the
refactory element of interpretation, is impossible.
This claim that all historical facts are interpreted facts is often held up as an
unique feature of historical methodology. It is also used to defend as legitimate
the historian who adopts an explicitly avowed ideological, political or religious
standpoint in his historical writing be it Marxist, Protestant, or that of the
Whig historian. Since all historical facts are interpreted facts it is impossible
to eliminate the element of interpretation which is constitutive of historical
fact: and if an interpretative element seems inescapable, one interpretation seems
as valid as another.
The appeal by historians discussing historical methodology to the claim that all
historical facts are facts plus interpretation seems to me to be a clear example
of how historians have seized upon a valid philosophical insight but without
recognizing its metaphysical nature or import. Being unaware of its nature, they
have distorted its importance for historical methodology in at least two ways: (a)
by claiming this dictum represents something which is an unique feature of
historical methodology, and (b) by using it to buttress a defence of what is in
effect the adoption of a particular bias (ideological, religious or political) in
historical interpretation. The valid philosophical proposition which lies hidden
and unrecognized in the discussions of historical methodology to which I have
alluded is the claim that all facts are interpreted facts. If this is valid, it
applies to all facts, and not merely to historical facts. If it does apply to all
facts, then it follows that it applies to historical facts. But if it is valid of
historical facts in virtue of being valid of all facts, then it is illegitimate to
use it to defend or buttress the Whig view of history or the Marxist view of
history. The reason for that is very simple. When we say that all facts are
interpreted facts, the sense of `interpretation' we have in mind is very different
from the sense of `interpretation' which is used when historians debate the merits
or otherwise of the Whig interpretation of history or the Marxist interpretation
of history.
What is it that someone may have in mind when he or she intends that all facts are
interpreted facts and why are we inclined to categorize such a claim as a
philosophical claim? It is justly a claim of extremely wide generality, whose
truth does not rest on particular empirical facts about the world, on how the
world is. The claim implies that however the world is, it will consist of facts
which are all interpreted facts. The status of the proposition is what Kant would
have termed synthetic a priori--it is universal yet applies to experience. To
understand its import is in effect to reject a rival metaphysical claim. A rival
claim, to take an example at the very opposite metaphysical pole, is the claim
that all facts are reducible ultimately to simple facts, and simple facts are
descriptions of pure simple acts of awareness by the intellect of simple sense
experiences. All knowledge can in principle be reduced to the awareness by the
mind of simple sense impressions--patches of color and bits of sound--to cite
Russell's examples in his Logical Atomism. This kind of claim stems via Hume from
Locke who regarded the mind as a blank and virgin piece of wax upon which objects
in the world made impressions--the mind passively receiving them. Thereafter the
mind might be active, creative and spontaneous in its manipulation of these
impressions, but the very basis of all knowledge is the bedrock of the passive
assimilation of pure sense experiences.
In sharp contrast to this Russellian, Humean, and in part Lockean empiricist
metaphysic, there is a Kantian view according to which even in the act of
awareness of the most basic sense impression there is more than a passive
assimilation of a sense datum. The mind is active in the assimilation, and in the
transformation of what is assimilated into its own representation--something which
owes its origin to sense, but equally to mind. To rephrase this in more modern
language, the Kantian claim is that the description of the most simple fact--e.g.,
there is a red patch on that wall--is not a mere description of a simple sense
awareness. Any such description presupposes an already existing conceptual scheme.
Such a scheme will contain empirical concepts e.g. `red', but it will also
presuppose non-empirical concepts--what Kant termed categories--fundamental
concepts, not derived or based on sense experience as empirical concepts, are yet
essential if we are to be aware of any experience whatsoever.
We have now placed the claim `all facts are interpreted facts' in a distinctly
philosophical context, implying a Kantian type metaphysic in contrast to an
extreme empiricist metaphysic which asserts the existence of simple facts as acts
of simple assimilation of sense awareness. It is interesting to note in passing
that the historian's use of the dictum "all historical facts are interpreted
facts" arguably owes much to Collingwood, whose philosophical sympathies lie
distinctly with the Kantian rather than with the empiricist metaphysic.
The adoption of one metaphysic in preference to another carries with it its own
implications, and this is no less true of the Kantian type metaphysic to which our
historian methodologists are, probably unconsciously, committed. Considerations of
space allow only a brief mention of two of these implications.
If our representations of states of affairs--of facts--are an inevitable amalgam
of elements of sense and of mind, then the resulting representation cannot be an
exact mirror of the states of affairs which are non-mental in the sense that
whatever their ontological status, they must be differentiated from mind. On a
Kantian type metaphysic, we cannot have a simple realist view of the world: our
representations do not represent directly how the world is. A representation of
the past is then in some sense and to some degree a reconstruction which does not
exactly correspond with what happened--if we mean by that past events as
apprehended by a non-human intelligence. I do not know whether historians are
aware of this implication, or whether they would be at all worried by it were they
aware of it.
The core of the Kantian "all facts are interpreted facts" type metaphysic is the
claim that all awareness of experience--and historical experience is part of
experience--presupposes a non-empirical categorial scheme by means of which we
represent our experience. Now we may adopt the Kantian claim for the necessity of
some categorial scheme without committing ourselves to accepting Kant's own
analysis of the necessary categorial scheme. Once we adopt the Kantian--as
contrasted to Kant's--position regarding the necessity of some categorial scheme,
much fruitful philosophical discussion can be generated concerning the minimum
content of such a categorial scheme. Clearly this is not the place to embark upon
such a discussion but I wish to make one observation about this notion of the
minimum requirements for a necessary conceptual scheme which is of relevance to
historical enquiry. The observation is this. Whatever conception we finally
entertain of the minimum categorial requirements, I think it is possible to state
that such a minimum set of categorial conditions will rule out that it will be
possible to give an intelligible account of being aware of an experience,
description of which predicates opposite or contrary predicates of the same thing,
e.g., it will rule out the notion that propositions of the form `p and ~ p' are
true. Now some anthropologists have appealed to the notion of a pre-logical mind
which some primitive peoples allegedly possess, and their conception of the pre-
logical mind implies the possibility of asserting contradictory propositions, in
at least the sense of predicating contrary predicates of the same thing at the
same time. Some historical theologians in interpreting what they consider the
primitive stages of early Hebrew history have borrowed this notion of a pre-
logical mind as a valid explanatory tool. On the Kantian metaphysic, the notion of
a pre-logical mind is incoherent. If it exists, we could not make sense of it:
indeed we could not establish that it exists.
This is a good example of how a sound knowledge of conceptual issues is essential
to spot the kinks in historical methodology. The mistaken appeal to the notion of
a pre-logical mind as a valid explanatory concept in historical explanation is
after all only of limited application in historical writing. I now turn to an area
where awareness of conceptual puzzles will uncover deeper, more prevalent and
therefore more difficult to eradicate, kinks in contemporary notions of historical
methodology. In uncovering these kinks, I will be seriously questioning the
theoretical possibility of historical knowledge.
HISTORY AND CONTEMPORARY HISTORY
As will be readily granted, the main concern of the historian is the
reconstruction of past human actions. Now as R.G. Collingwood correctly observed
in his Idea of History (1946), human actions possess a dual nature: they possess
external and internal features. By external we mean the observable physical
feature of the action--the movement of the arm. By internal we mean the beliefs,
the desires, the intentions, and the motives which necessarily accompany an
action, for without these mental features an action is not strictly speaking an
action. An action is voluntary, or willed; and if willed, someone intends to
achieve something by it, for which he may have his motives. To allow for
intentions and motives, we must necessarily have reference to a person's beliefs
and desires: otherwise a physical movement of the arm without intention is not an
action. It is certainly an event, a change in the state of affairs in the world,
but a random or chance happening in the world. To sum up, an action possesses a
physical aspect and a thought aspect. And as Collingwood correctly implies, we do
not correctly understand an action unless, in addition to achieving an awareness
of the physical aspect, we also understand the thought aspect; and of these two,
the latter is a more difficult achievement. So far as past human actions are
concerned, the historian must re-think the thoughts of the agents who acted in the
past. Since this rethinking occurs in the present, Collingwood summarized his
metaphysical insight in the highly original dictum: all history is contemporary
history.
Original as his dictum undoubtedly is, Collingwood is not to be accepted
uncritically. By confining the subject matter of history to the thoughts, beliefs,
desires and decisions of agents in the past, Collingwood is being unduly
restrictive, for the historian must take into account natural influences on a
person's environment--economic, geographical and cultural factors. Nor,
interpreted strictly, can Collingwood's dictum overcome the difficulty posed by
the notion of identity--by what criteria do we know that our rethinking of past
thoughts correspond exactly to those thoughts. Nevertheless, despite these and
other objections, Collingwood places the emphasis where it should belong--namely
that historians are primarily interested in past human actions, and the thought
side of these actions is by far the most difficult to reconstruct as it is the
most important.
It is in connection with recovering and explaining the thought side of past human
actions that the philosopher discerns theoretical problems of some considerable
difficulty. I propose to review three of these briefly.
Can the Motives of Past Actions be Established?
The first problem raises the question what exactly is involved in interpreting
past actions. Straightforwardly this involves deciding what was the meaning of the
action, and what its explanation. Notice that in these problems I am concerned
with the action of individuals. Group actions pose much the same problems, only
more acutely.
Working from texts or traces of the past, the historian must establish what the
agent did. This is the overt act, the observable side of the action. He or she
then must establish what the agent meant to do by this behavior--i.e., what was
his or her intention. In explaining the action, the historian asks whether it was
apt in the circumstances--in the historical context in which the agent found
himself. Then we can ask what was the agent's motive in doing what he did. This is
to offer an explanation of the action.
The point I wish to emphasize here is that there is disagreement amongst
philosophers as to whether historians should be or indeed can be concerned to
discover the motives for human actions. Some philosophers of history argue that
discovering a man's intentions, and asking whether these intentions were
appropriate in terms of the historical circumstances is as far as the historian
can go. It is no part of the historian's task to tackle, still less to prejudge,
the question of motive. When we have penetrated an agent's intention, we cannot
and need not do more. Once we have discovered that an agent had sufficient reason
to do what he or she did, we can penetrate no further. We have done enough. The
major assumption underlying this view is that men act rationally. If men do not
act rationally, there is no possibility of explaining their actions. A rational
agent, in recognizing good reasons for acting, makes those reasons his or her own.
The historian reconstructs his or her actions and discovers he or she had good
reason for acting as he or she did. We need not be concerned with motives, for an
agent may act from different motives, whereas an action is explained when we can
cite sufficient reason to account for it.
The opposite contention is to claim that citation of motive is important for a
full explanation of an agent's action. Just because two possible motives could
yield the same action in the context, it does not follow that explanation can
proceed without deciding possible motives. To know why a man acted as he did
involves knowing how he could have acted in other circumstances, in other
conditions, for instance, those where the two motives would have moved him along
different paths.
This question as to whether historical explanation should take account of motives
of human action is a fundamental theoretical issue, a
philosophical issue involving our analysis of what constitutes a human action.
Until this issue is resolved, the standard model of historical methodology used by
historians--namely that they attempt to discover the meaning of actions and their
motives--is out on a limb.
If it is decided to include motives as part of any full or reasonably
comprehensive explanation of human actions, it is important to recognize that
deciding in any particular case what was the motive normally requires far more
concrete information or evidence than the historian usually has at his disposal.
This points to a fundamental weakness in historical methodology. To decide
questions of motive, we need to investigate fully the agent's situation, his or
her state of knowledge, the nature of the evidence available to him or her, the
rules and conventions prevailing in his or her time with regard to social action,
how he or she would have acted in quite different circumstances. Ascribing motives
for an action involves knowing (or believing) that the agent knew (or believed)
what the meaning of his or her action was, and the way in which he or she thought
the reasons for his/her action justified his/her action. It is only necessary to
set out these requirements for one to realize that, so far as most past human
actions are concerned, the historian lacks the abundance of evidence which would
enable him to give a reasonably certain and reasonably full answer to such
questions.
Historical Understanding
I turn now to another philosophical problem posed by reflection on historical
methodology. An agent does something--performs a piece of behavior--and in order
to understand his action, which is essentially more than just the observable
behavior, it is necessary to ask what did he mean by doing what he did. What was
his intention? The point here is that what an agent intends by a piece of behavior
is governed by rules or conventions in his or her society, or by the rules and
conventions of a group or sect to which he or she belongs.
Consider the following simple, biblical example: "And John baptized Jesus in the
river Jordan." The actual piece of behavior performed by John is not stated. We
infer that he dipped Jesus bodily into the waters of the river. We infer this from
our knowledge of Jewish baptism, of Jewish practices of ritual washing. The writer
in using the concept of baptism presupposes that we understand the meaning of what
was done, the dipping in water for the washing away of sins. This is what is meant
by saying that John, in doing what he did, obeyed the rules or conventions of
Jewish baptism, although in obeying them he also changed them slightly, for there
is reason to believe that there was something distinctive about John's baptism.
Had John merely dipped Jesus in the river, such behavior would not in itself count
either as Jewish baptism or John's baptism. Had he dipped Jesus into the water
accidentally or by chance, that would not count as baptism, any more than the
sprinkling of water on an infant's head counts as Christian baptism. John's
behavior takes its meaning from a certain context which gives the action--which
includes the behavior (what was observable) but is more than the behavior--a
specific religious meaning.
Let us now ask the question--did John believe that the dipping in water literally
washed away sins? If so, how do we conceive of it? Do we understand it in terms of
causal efficacy? Or did John think of it as a symbolic washing away of sins? One
thing is clear: until we answer this question, we do not fully understand how
John's behavior was meant to have meaning. And can we ever fully understand John's
action if we examine his behavior from the standpoint of a scientific culture
which believes that dipping in water could, by itself, not wash away sins, and
that to think so is to be governed by some magical thought form, which is unreal.
Could a culture which rejects the notion of sin, or did not possess a notion of
sin, ever understand the meaning of what John did?
The problem posed here is the problem of understanding cross-culturally the rules
and conventions which give meaning and point to men's actions. So far as I am
aware the problem is first posed by F. H. Bradley in his Presuppositions of
Critical History (1874). Bradley in that book is perplexed by the question, how
can a 19th century citizen of western civilization understand a society such as
that of lst century Palestine which apparently believed in the efficacy of devils
and miracles. Interestingly enough Bradley was led to ponder this question by
reflecting on a historical work on the early Christian community which had been
published by a distinguished historical theologian, F.C. Bauer's Epochs of Church
History. Bradley's concern has been revived in our own day, but from a
Wittgensteinian standpoint, by Professor Peter Winch.2 There is an important
difference between them. Whereas Bradley raises the specifically historical
problem of understanding a past culture from the standpoint of another quite
different culture, Winch raises the problem of understanding cross-culturally: how
can the contemporary westerner enter into the thought world of primitive African
tribes? Whereas Bradley addressed his discussion to historian, Winch addresses
himself to anthropologists. Philosophically, the issue appears to be the same, in
principle.
I do not propose, nor does space allow, to follow the ramifications of the
Winchian or Bradleian discussions. I wish only to draw attention to the following
observation. The Winch discussion gives rise to a strong and a weak thesis. The
strong thesis is that it is impossible for us to understand the meaning of men's
actions cross-culturally, that is on the basis of anthropological evidence. It is
impossible to get under the skin of a primitive society and understand the point
or meaning of what the primitive man does. The weak thesis allows that this is
possible though extremely difficult in practice.
If we apply the strong thesis to history, it rules out the possibility of
understanding across the centuries, just as much as it rules out understanding
cross-culturally. The weak thesis, although it admits the viability of
anthropological studies, is of little comfort to the historian. For whereas the
weak thesis allows that an anthropologist can, by long sojourn in a primitive
society and by constant questioning of his or her hosts, eventually get under the
skin of that society, the historian is by comparison much less favorably placed.
He or she lacks the wealth of vital information which the anthropologist can gain,
and therefore the historian is not in practice in a position to be able to
understand a past culture very different from his or her own.
Before leaving the topic of the role of motives and intentions in understanding
human actions, past or otherwise, it should be emphasized that we have taken no
account of possible unconscious motives or intentions--motives and intentions in
so far as a man is aware, or thinks he is aware, of them have alone been taken
into account. There exists the phenomena of unconscious motivation. For example a
person is hypnotised and commanded under hypnotism to pass over the ace of spades
as she goes through the pack of cards. She does as she was bidden. Although
unaware that in so acting she obeyed the hypnotist's command she is nevertheless
aware which card is the ace of spades, for she does pull it out of the pack. How
are we to describe what goes on here in terms of motives and intentions?
But there is an even more difficult problem. If individuals can manifestly act
from unconscious motives, is it possible that groups or societies can be in the
grip of unconscious forces? How would we recognize such unconscious forces, and
behavior which is determined by them? Questions about possible unconscious
motivation pose very difficult problems, but so far as one can make out,
historians do not seem to give them much consideration when they construct their
historical accounts of the past.
Finally I wish to mention briefly one other philosophical problem which must be
resolved before a satisfactory historiography can be developed. As we mentioned
earlier, an agent's actions are explained by locating his or her actions in a
context and showing how he or she had good reasons for acting as he or she did.
His action was an appropriate--or one of several possible appropriate--response to
a particular set of circumstances.
The problem which arises here, which has been extensively discussed in recent
philosophy is quite simply--can reasons for action be causes? Some prominent
philosophers e.g., Melden, Hampshire, Kenny, Winch, Peters3 have argued that
reasons cannot be causes.
Allied to this question is the problem whether it is possible to formulate
scientific type laws about human actions. Impressed by the success of the natural
sciences, philosophers such as Comte (the father of sociology) believed it was
possible in principle to fashion causal laws about human actions, and to base
predictions about future human actions on these laws. This enterprise has hardly
been very successful, and some philosophers argue that the attempt is impossible
in principle. They concede that we can certainly appeal to known or possible
scientific laws to explain behavior in the behavioral parts of actions. But they
argue that the intentional component of actions cannot be the subject of law in
the scientific sense, and therefore human actions will forever remain beyond the
scope of the scientific type of law. Giving reasons for actions is explaining them
and this is a form of causal explanation. Often the explanation is a singular
causal statement but singular causal statements do not necessarily and always
imply general causal laws. Here is an example of a radical theoretical
disagreement amongst philosophers which ideally needs to be resolved before a
satisfactory historical methodology can be constructed.
The other philosophical problem is not unconnected with the alleged impossibility
of subsuming intentions under scientific law. It arises from Quine's radical
translation thesis.4 So far as I understand it, the application of Quine's thesis
to the area under discussion is something like this. If we allow that what an
action means to a man is what he intends by it, Quine contends that owing to
certain logical difficulties connected with the notion of exact synonymity, we can
never be certain that we understand what a man's intention is.
Consider the example already cited: "And John baptized Jesus in the Jordan." The
meaning of what John did is closely related to what he intended to do. And what he
intended to do was closely governed by John's understanding of the concept of
`baptism'. But since this concept is, in a sense, a theoretical concept one which
does not possess an exact or precise extensional reference, then what John
previously understood by `baptism' may be one of several possibilities. But we can
never be sure we know which one of these John had in mind: indeed the meaning of
baptism for him cannot be translated exactly in terms of my (i.e. the
interpreter's) understanding of baptism. Clearly, to the extent that Quine's
thesis is correct, to that extent it undermines at a stroke the theoretical
possibility of recovering another's intention, and hence of recovering the
intentions of past actions.
The Christ Event and the Meaning of All History
This discussion would be incomplete if no reference was made to the third of the
propositions instanced at the outset, namely: The Christ event is the meaning of
all history.
The first comment is to draw attention to the ambiguity of the expression, "the
meaning of all history". This can refer to history in the sense of "all that
happened," i.e., what is known by an omniscient being such as God. In that sense,
the philosophical difficulties of constructing satisfactory historical accounts,
to which most of this paper has been devoted, would be irrelevant to the validity
of the claim that the Christ event is the meaning of all history. On the other
hand, if the proposition refers to history as recorded or reconstructed by
historians, i.e. to accounts of the past, then the philosophical problems to which
attention has been drawn in this paper are indeed relevant. For if consideration
of these philosophical problems serves to cast doubt about the very possibility of
our being able to reconstruct the past on the basis of evidence or traces
bequeathed by the past, then this is directly relevant to any claim that
presupposes we can successfully know the past. That is the claim that X is the
meaning of all recorded history logically presupposes that we can reconstruct
recorded history before we can claim that X is its meaning.
My second comment concerns the question of how one is to understand the expression
"the Christ event is the meaning of. . . ." Now it seems that at least one
theological interpretation of this expression which is advanced does invoke the
concept of intention, and may therefore generate philosophical difficulties of the
kind discussed in this paper.
The theological interpretation one has in mind is Bultmann's.5 For him, correctly
interpreting the Christ event is connected with true understanding of the notion
of the self's authentic existence. A correct understanding of the authentic
existence of the self is the meaning of all history. That is, we fail to
understand history if we fail to understand what is the self's authentic
existence. Bultmann connects the notion of authentic existence with Christ's death
on the cross in this way. Christ accepted the humiliation of the Cross in perfect
obedience to God. Authentic existence of the self can only be realised in perfect
obedience to God. The supreme perfect example of this obedience--the death of
Jesus on the cross--is the meaning of all history.
Apart from any other problems generated by Bultmann's version, it does presuppose
that qua historical event, as historical action, we can recover the intention of
Jesus in accepting the death of the cross. It must at least be possible to
establish that it was a historical fact that Jesus intended to be perfectly
obedient to God. This discussion will I hope serve to register a word of caution.
Apart from the practical difficulties arising from the nature of the surviving
evidence, or lack of it, the problem of recovering Jesus' intention poses severe
philosophical problems.
University College of Wales
Aberyswyth, Wales
NOTES
1. Norman Sykes, "Some Recent Conceptions of Historography and Their Significance
for Christian Apologetie." Journal of Theological Studies, Jan-Apr, 1949, fn. 24-
37.
2. Peter Winch, "Understanding a Primitive Society," American Philosophical
Quarterly, I (1964); reprinted in D.Z. Phillips, ed., Religion and Understanding
(Oxford: Blackwell, l967), pp. 9-42.
3. A.I. Melden, Free Action, London, 1961. Stuart Hampshire, Thought and Action,
London, 1959. A. Kenny, Action, Emotion and Will, London, 1963. P. Winch, The Idea
of a Social Science, London, 1958. R.S. Peters, The Concept of Motivation, London,
1958. Donald Davidson, "Actions, Reasons and Causes" reprinted in Davidson, Essays
on Actions and Events, OUP, 1980.
4. W.V.O. Quine, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" in From a Logical Point of View
(Cambridge, Mass., l953).
5. R. Bultmann, History and Eschatology, Edinburgh University Press, 1957.
****
http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-20/prologue.htm
PROLOGUE
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RESEARCH IN
EAST ASIAN CULTURE
YU XINTIAN
THE SOURCES OF HUMAN SPIRITUAL REJUVENATION
In inspecting international issues, there are at least three layers of thinking:
state, region and world. A region generally is referred to as a continuous area of
the world having definable characteristics, but not always fixed boundaries like a
state. A region often has a large enough space to become an important component of
a continent. Moreover, a region is not only a simple matter of space, but also a
culture with a psychological identity born in a complicated and interrelated
historical process. East Asian culture is just such a region.
The triumphal progress of modernization in East Asia (including Southeast Asia) is
one of the most exciting phenomena following WWII. If Japan’s prosperity is a
special case of development of non-Western countries and the relatively small
scale of the achievements of Asian “four dragons” limits their universal
significance, the tide of China, ASEAN and Indo-Chinese countries doing their
utmost to catch up has compelled people to recognize afresh the East Asian
miracle. The emergence of East Asia since 1990 has broadened people’s field of
vision and provided a foundation for looking forward to the prospect of a newly
industrialized East Asian economic-cultural circle.
Traced to its source, there existed a broad Chinese civilized circle in history.
One of its outstanding characteristics was the learning and identification of
Chinese culture. The Chinese cultural circle covered China, Japan, Vietnam and
Korea. Buddhism, remade with Chinese culture, spread to Japan, Korea, Vietnam and
Southeast Asia. The painting, medicine, architecture, music and persons influenced
by the religion bore the strong imprint of Chinese culture. Confucianism took root
in the lifestyle, ethics and political system of Japan, Korea and Vietnam, which
were very close to the core of China’s “cultural circle”.
“The Silk Road in the Sea” from China to Southeast Asia took shape as early as the
4th and 5th centuries. During the Tang and Song dynasties, the ancestors of the
Persians and Arabs also made use of these sea routs to go to Guangzhou Prefecture,
Quanzhou and Hangzhou for missionary work and business. The first emperor of the
Yuan Dynasty was regarded as the originator of China’s “marine policy”. Beyond two
expeditions to Japan (in 1274 and 1281), he sent his “navy” on an punitive
expedition to ancient Vietnam and sent 10,000 naval troops to Java (in 1292).
However, as these wanton military ventures did not achieve far-reaching political,
economic and cultural results, the first and third emperors of the Ming Dynasty
drew the historical lessons and developed trade and friendly relations with
Southeast Asia and the West on a large scale. The seeds of capitalism in China
then grew sturdily. China’s foreign trade was booming on an unprecedented scale
after Zheng who went to the West seven times. His tracks were left in the present
Cambodia, Thailand, Sumatera, Brunei, Java, Malaya, Kalimantan, the Philippines,
Sri Lanka, India and the eastern seacoast of Africa.
In the conditions of the times, contacts with Southeast Asia were very frequent,
while those with remote countries were occasional. China set up trade strongholds
and residential areas in Malaya, Indonesia and the Philippines. In fact, Zheng
He’s records described the people of Chinese origin settling down in Southeast
Asia as constituting the local high society because of their higher cultural level
and good management. Though the Ming Dynasty failed to spread “the system of rule
by ceremony and propriety” to Southeast Asia, where Indian and Arab cultures were
always influential, long-term coexistence and exchanges promoted cultural fusion.
Comparing typically Islamized Indonesian culture with Chinese culture, one finds
many parallels. Indonesians believe that Allah created humankind through parents,
so to believe in Allah one must respect and love parents and esteem teachers: one
must “have a respect as great as a mountain and have a mind as open as a valley”
for elders and betters. The Indonesian parliament advocates adopting resolutions
through consultation; finding common ground as stressed in political institutions
in East Asia. Indonesia promotes three principles: first, we are masters of
society; second, we are duty-bound to protect our homes and defend our country;
and third, frequent introspection into one’s faults will lead to knowing one’s
deficiencies. In Chinese culture these have different approaches, but equally
satisfactory results: “every ordinary person has responsibility for the rise and
fall of China,” and “I daily examine myself on three points.” The Indonesian
Government stipulates that during the period of construction, people are allowed
the freedom of responsible speech. Though people have different interests,
everyone must bear responsibility for the extensive state and social interests,
and cannot impose their personal will on others. In foreign relations, Indonesia
advocates “winning without fighting and overcoming the hard with the soft.” This
is in harmony with high Chinese strategy.
Though Indonesia is an Islamic country, the principles it follows differ to a
certain extent from those of the Arab countries in West Asia -- the core region of
Islam -- but are similar to its neighboring Chinese cultural circle. Of course,
not a few Southeast Asian nations devoutly believe in religion, while the
religious element is relatively weak in Chinese culture; this is an obvious
cultural difference. However, in Thailand where Buddhism occupies the leading
position and in Malaysia and Indonesia dominated by Islam, the spiritual religious
pursuit does not hinder people’s striving for improving the material conditions of
this life. People cannot help calling to mind the Chinese cultural approach: “the
planning lies with man, the outcome with heaven”.
East Asian culture is a gem of human thinking. According to the German
philosopher, Karl Jaspers, in the axial period, that is between 800 BC and about
200 AD, Egypt, the two river valleys of the Tygris and the Euphrates, the West
(Greece and Roman), and India and China all made the first spiritual leap on their
own. Our various philosophies have originated since from that brilliant era. This
proves humankind’s common origin and identity, not in the sense of biology, but
rather of spirituality.
Western culture has made significant contributions to the world’s historical
process, leading to drastic social changes with the scientific and technological
revolution as the centerpiece. However, the technological era has caused difficult
problems such as environmental pollution and cultural crisis, while bringing
happiness to humankind. We must draw the tools for a response to new needs from
our own ideological treasure house. Chinese and Indian cultures both will be
beneficial in overcoming global threats.
From a longer historical perspective humankind after all will transcend the
“animal circles” of war and be creative in a peaceful and unified environment,
thus taking a second spiritual leap. Arnold Toynbee, a master in research on
historical cultures, pointed out that “peace and unification . . . must center on
the main shaft of geography and culture, and be constantly crystallized. I have a
premonition of this main shaft in East Asia rather than in the U.S., Europe and
the Soviet Union”.1 East Asian culture with deep connotations and rich diversity
is bound to play a catalytic role in reviving and renewing the spirit of
humankind.
THE DRIVING FORCE FOR SUCCESS IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Researchers all over the world have tried to find the clue to the sustained and
rapid economic development of East Asian countries and regions. One of the
important reasons is their culture which is a time-honored and continuing topic of
debate. During the period when Japan devoted major efforts to pushing forward its
industrialization an Australian expert was disappointed after his investigation in
Japan. He said that the Japanese were content with things as they were, had no
concept of time and found it difficult to grasp Western modern technology and
management. Since then the facts have contradicted his predictions. In the 1960s,
most social scientists asserted that Confucianism was incompatible with
modernization, so it was hard for East Asia to take off economically. Confucianism
lays stress on harmony and coordination, thinks highly of the collective and
stability, does not seek change, attaches importance to humanism rather than to
science and technology, and thus cannot be counted on to guide modernization. But
after the 1970s, important changes took place. The economic success of “Asian four
dragons” was looked upon with increased respect. The Confucian values, which had
been criticized in the past, were universally recognized as the inherent driving
force for this new growth.
Weber saw the spirit of Western capitalism embodied in individualism, market
competition and laissez-faire policies, which helped to bring about the uniquely
successful modernization in the human history. But the East Asian work ethic and
enterprise spirit are quite different. Only in the network of interpersonal
relations can individuals have their significance, so everyone must scrupulously
abide by his/her duties and obligations in organizations and pay attention to
mutual cooperation. East Asian cultural features can be analyzed qualitatively and
quantitatively. American scholar Michael Bonfd investigated the values of people
of Chinese origin in 22 Eastern and Western countries. He devised 40 basic value
items and asked every interviewee to rank each item. The 40 items were grouped
into four categories: “integration”, “Confucian motivation for work”,
“kindheartedness” and “ethics and discipline”. With regard to the “Confucian
motivation for work” (superior and inferior, thrift, willpower, sense of shame,
mutual courtesy, steadiness, face and tradition) Bonfd noted that Japan and the
“Asian four dragons” ranked ahead of the other countries. Yu Shaohua with
Singaporean National University investigated values of middle-level managerial
personnel in 51 medium-sized enterprises in Singapore and Malaysia. Though he
questioned Bonfd’s four categories, generally speaking, he agreed with the
relationship between cultural background and economic development. Confucianism
has important influence on economic development, but this, of course, does not
diminish the importance of a sound political system and economic structure.
Chinese culture has existed for thousands of years while the East Asian takeoff is
a matter of only recent decades. It should be noted that in the process of
industrialization, East Asian countries have not consciously created a new ethics
and spirit, but rather have learned from, imitated and introduced Western
capitalist technology, management and systems. But just as colorless light is
refracted into an entire spectrum through a prism, Western culture is bound to be
filtered through Eastern culture, resulting in quite different styles and
features. The converse may also be true, namely, that Eastern culture is
transformed and renewed in conformity with the evolving situation, leading to new
developments.
In sum, Western cultural nativization and native cultural transformation are
important experiences of East Asian economic and social development, and can be
used as points of references for other developing countries. In most developing
countries, there still exist the phenomenon of a dual economy, causing the
phenomenon of a dual culture. In vast rural areas, native culture sticks to the
tradition, while in a few cities it copies Western culture. Undoubtedly, this kind
of conflict and split in economy and culture is absolutely harmful to mobilizing
the whole people to realize modernization. East Asian countries have removed the
basis of a dual culture by eliminating the dual economy; that has promoted
economic growth while solving the problem of a dual culture. It proves that
conflict between Eastern and Western cultures may be eliminated through the
practice of self-determined choice by independent states. This is a breakthrough
for modernization theory and the practice of developing countries.
As for the debates over relations between culture and modernization, the views can
be classified into two schools: “culture theory” and “system theory”. The “culture
theory” holds that nations have different cultures and social systems which play a
great and even decisive role in economic development. If so, it is very difficult
to learn from and disseminate their experiences, since any nation obviously finds
it hard to transplant another nations’ culture. The “system theory” considers that
the cultural role is very small and economic development depends on special
economic policies and conditions. Proceeding from this view, the expansion of
modernization is easier. The famous expert on modernization, Peter Berger, wavers
between the two views, and holds that the correct answer seems somewhere between
the two. In fact, it is very hard completely to separate them.
Firstly, this is because the cultural factor cannot play a role on its own without
the support of other political and economic conditions. For example, while all are
located in East Asia, Cambodia, Myanmar and North Korea have not yet entered the
road of rapid growth. So, in doing research on culture, we cannot seek the
“causes” of economic development exclusively in culture, but must look for the
“juncture” with economic development. That is to say, we must identify the
cultural factors which can vitalize the economy, not the cultural feature by
itself.
Secondly, the role of culture is not illusory. Correct policy and rational system
will, of course, encourage enterprises and the people who work for them; but how
to work out correct policy and how to make entrepreneurs and people willing to
follow the government’s strategy cannot avoid issues of the cultural background.
The ratio of saving by East Asian people is high, while that of Americans is low.
This cannot be attributed to the difference in the system or wages or bank policy.
Thirdly, recognizing the impact of culture, in a broad field of vision, culture is
one of the variables. Culture not only determines the scope of policy, but also is
related to features of social outlook. As almost everything is filtered through
culture, the same economic policies may produce different results in different
countries.
Lastly, the process of East Asian countries shows that in the initial stage of
modernization more emphasis often is put on the introduction and building of
systems and policy. With development, various nations may give more consideration
to the realization of spiritual values on the basis of the fusion of Eastern and
Western cultures so that the impact of the native culture on society may gradually
be intensified. System and culture move forward in interaction and coordination.
East Asian experiences not only inspire other developing countries, but also are
of international significance in theory. For example, the range and intensity of
government intervention in the economy in East Asian countries are more than in
other regions of the world. However, their market mechanism is flexible and
vigorous and is capable of responding to changes. In discussion with US
development economist Bhagwati, he held that the mechanism is still a mystery and
that after in-depth research the Western theory may be rewritten. Culture cannot
be simply transplanted, but it can be studied. The ability of humankind to realize
and control the surrounding environment cannot be completed by a single nation on
its own. Much of the culture of every society comes from other societies. Tools,
organization, belief, art and other cultural factors keep moving from one society
to another. A culture which has accepted the incentive of new information may
respond and gradually change. Therefore, East Asian culture has both its own
particularity in history, but also potentiality for universalization.
A MEANS FOR ENTERING THE WORLD POLITICAL ARENA
In the early 21st century, East Asia may become one leg of the tripod, together
with North America and Europe. Reality determines consciousness, which is
manifested in action. Asians have realized their own strength and are proud of it.
They want to voice their own views and seek their own development norms and paths.
In the past centuries by means of arms Europe and the U.S. destroyed most of the
original civilizations and cultures of the world with Christianity, law and trade,
and they denied or changed local ethics standards. Westerners were over confident
that European ethical standards were superior and could effectively set up new
standards all over the world; they bragged that they are teachers of other
national spirits and ethics. According to their own standards arbitrarily they
decided other nations’ destiny on the premise of being beneficial to them. Power
politics is swollen with cultural arrogance.
Economic vitality and interdependence have enhanced the self-confidence of
developing countries. In the past they could only submit to insufferable Western
arrogance, but now they define themselves and regain their justice and self-
respect. The West spares no efforts to preach democracy and human rights. Without
mentioning the problems and malpractice in their implementation in the West, even
if they were absolutely perfect could they be applied in the different situations
of the countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America? The West once sharply
criticized the “autocracy” and “centralization” of South Korea, Singapore and
China’s Taiwan, but these countries and regions ensured economic prosperity and
promoted market development. On the contrary, the economy of the Philippines whose
political system was most similar to the U.S. long was stagnant.
Asians began to make it clear that Western values do not conform to Asia. In
December 1993, this author took part in the “Asian Economic Development and
Political Democracy” International Symposium sponsored by The Asia Foundation.
Experts and scholars of Asian countries and regions unanimously held that
democracy itself is not bound to lead to economic development, but economic
development will after all promote democracy. What is most important is to seek a
balance between economic growth and political democracy and to build a form of
democracy suitable to a particular economic phase. The tide of democratization in
Japan, South Korea and China’s Taiwan has proven that only after the economy
arises to a certain level can democracy achieve a higher stage. In the terms of
the Governor of Bank of Korea: South Korean democracy is sure to be South Korean
with both Eastern and Western strong points.
Asians are undergoing psychological changes from “everything being the best in the
West” to finding again the values of their cultural heritage and achieving a
modernization unequal to Westernization. Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysian Deputy Prime
Minister, recognized that Asia indeed has its deficiencies on the issue of human
rights, but allowing others to lecture us and threaten us on issues of freedom and
human rights is equal to accepting insult. In an article in the International
Herald Tribune, a former Singaporean ambassador enumerated several policies
effective in East Asia. They included social contracts between the state and the
people, building a clean ethical environment and a free and responsible public
opinion, and casting away Western extreme individualism. While Asians have learned
from the West generation after generation and will continue to do so, he hoped
that the West should also learn from the East willingly and gladly. It is now
time.
This change of attitude by Asians has shocked the West. The noted
American political analyst, Samuel Huntington, wrote the article “The Clash of
Civilizations” with specially keen insight when he held:
- that the dominant source of conflict will be cultural;
- that increasing interaction will intensify awareness of the differences
between civilizations;
- that Western efforts to spread its values have aroused a
confrontational response from other civilizations;
- that Confucianism and Islam are uniting to challenge the West; and
- that the next world war, if there is one, will be a war between
civilizations.
Huntington’s views are incorrect in theory. Differences in culture and religion
may often be the fuse for conflict, but the scramble for interests in terms of
territory, wealth, resources and power is the main reason. Furthermore, between
different cultures there are not only conflict and confrontation, but also
exchange and fusion. The Islamic culture he regards as a great scourge hung like a
bright moon in the dark sky in the Middle Ages before the rising of the sun of the
Renaissance. Chinese culture spread to the West and became the engine of the
Enlightenment. Moreover, religions such as Christianity, Islam and Hinduism have
similar views on humankind, the environment, the importance of society and family,
the significance of spiritual guidance and the objectives of life. Cultures can
share values and different cultures can temper intersecting interests and
aspirations.
All this has disappeared in Huntington’s vision. If in theory his views are
incomplete and incorrect, politically they are indeed sensitive and insightful.
Western countries took the lead in soft power while dominating the world with hard
power. The rise of East Asian countries made the West feel severely the challenge
of different cultures for the first time. Western superiority in soft power is
declining as East Asian ideologies, cultures, religious beliefs and value systems
pour onto the international arena. They pay no attention to Western centralism,
but rather affirm their own presence with a particular political culture. This is
the real reason for Huntington’s heavyheartedness.
The people in the original colonies and semi-colonies experienced painful cultural
impact. Native cultures under strong attack by Western culture manifested features
unsuitable to modern society. People could not but cut their braids and abandon
tattoos, and were forced to learn foreign cultures. The compulsion resulted in two
deviations: One was fiercely to boycott all Western culture while resisting the
exploitation and oppression of colonialism and imperialism; the other was to feel
keenly their own backwardness, worship the West, copy its indiscriminately, and
dream of golden hair and blue eyeballs. Only after national independence could
people eliminate the two deviations and learn to choose on their own and with
balance. Western countries have not had such an experience, which is their good
fortune. However, for this reason it is more difficult for them to understand the
excellence and greatness of many cultures in the world. This is their future
misfortune. Western centralism will be spurned in time and become the shackles of
Western progress. Huntington represents exactly the habits of Western conservative
forces.
East Asian nations, while enhancing their strength, can demand their due in the
international political arena. Culture is one of their weapons. As early as 1980,
the famous British politician Roderick MacFarquhar noted that in the next century
the challenge of the Russians will be military, and that of Middle East will be
economic. Only East Asia will constitute an all-round challenge to the West from
the style of economic development to basic values. However, East Asian nations
will not conquer the West and dominate the world, since the times are completely
changed. East Asian cultures are still opening the way for East Asian countries to
obtain due rights. Reaching this objective, having undergone colonial oppression
and enslavement, these countries will be absolutely unwilling to bully and
humiliate others. East Asian cultures will embrace the quintessence of the various
ideologies and cultures of humankind in terms of their culture of the golden mean
and contribute their wisdom to creating a fairer political and economic order and
a more brilliant world culture.
NOTE
1. Prospects for the 21st Century---Dialogue between Toynbee and Ikeda Daisaku
(International Cultural Publishing Company, 1993), p. 294.
***
http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-13/chapter_i.htm
CHAPTER I
TWO ASPECTS OF MODERNIZATION
MO WEIMIN
History concerns human civilization whose progress lies in the transformation of
humankind from a slash-burn culture to the utilization of modern science and
technology. Modernization is important in the this history for it indicates rapid
progress in the ability to control nature and improve one’s material and spiritual
conditions. It is a linear concept resulting from a harmonic relation-ship between
subjective human activity and external nature. More importantly, it is also an
open-ended concept for it requires every country not only to develop its
traditional rational factors, but to tolerate and even adopt progressive foreign
ideas.
In a narrow sense, modernization refers to attaining "modern and advanced levels
of science and technology" in, for example, agriculture, industry, national
defence, science and technology. But as a product of human progress it should
include also moderni-zation of thoughts and ideas. These two aspects cannot be se-
parated, let alone be arbitrarily isolated. How to grasp properly the relation
between these two aspects and their respective degrees is the key to the
realization of modernization. This chapter will con-sider this problem by
combining a review of history with reflection upon the present situation.
AN HISTORICAL REVIEW
In ancient times, especially in the Song dynasty, China once had an outstanding
history of leading the world in science and te-chnology typified by the "Four
Inventions": printing, gun powder, paper-making and the compass. However, good
times do not last long. At the end of the 18th century, the ruling class of the
last feudal dynasty (Qing) in Chinese history, on the one hand, closed the country
to international interchange, blindly opposed every-thing foreign, was arrogant in
its parochialism and discriminated against any who held different views. On the
other hand, it was on the decline and had serious social crises, of which the more
obvious were: corruption and incompetence on the part of officialdom, decline in
armaments, annexation of its territory, increasing finan-cial deficits, and a
serious distance between the poor and the rich so that a large number of its
working people lived in an abyss of misery. Moreover, a massive importation of
foreign opium at the cost of great wealth not only poisoned the working people,
but aggravated the Qing dynasty’s financial difficulties. At the same time, the
Western great powers had long coveted this old and my-sterious territory.
With difficulties both at home and abroad, a few landlords and intellectuals
voiced dissatisfaction and even indignant resent-ment. Currents of social thoughts
then underwent a radical change, and there emerged "Jing Shi Zhi Yong", whose main
repre-sentatives were Gong Zizhen, Wei Yuan, Lin Zexu and Bao Shichen. Their
thought included the following important points: (a) to reveal the dark and
decayed phenomena in feudal society; (b) to criticize the Han learnings’ stress
upon the past rather than the present and its attempt to escape rather than
confront reality, as well as the hollow vagueness of Song learning; (c) to propose
poli-tical and economic reform; (d) to advocate guarding against and resisting the
economic and military invasion by Western great powers.
When defeat in the Opium War shocked the Chinese in inte-llectuals, the clearest
response was insistence upon studying the Western capitalist world. The first
person to raise the question of how to study this was not Lin Zexu, but Wei Yuan
who discovered that the reason the great Western powers won the Opium War was
their possession of powerful armaments and advanced technology. Hence, he
advocated learning from advanced foreign technology in order to resist or even
control the West. This recognized the dis-parities between China and the West and
that China’s progress in modernization must be through the study advanced Western
science and technology.
Moreover, after the second Opium War, Feng Guifen realized not only that Chinese
technology was inferior to the West’s, but more importantly that China could not
be compared to the West in the following things: the employment of human resources
and terri-tory, the close relationship between the ruler and the people, and the
correspondence between speech and reality. Feng Guifen advo-cated that Chinese
modernization should retain the Chinese feudal ranking or seniority in human
relationships as a matter of sub-stance, with the great Western powers’s methods
of wealth and power playing a subsidiary or functional role.
As the invasion by the Western powers intensified and people’s rebelliousness rose
like a raging fire, the ruling class of the Qing Dynasty was greatly shocked and
split internally into die-hards and a Westernization movement which introduced
techni-ques of capitalist production initiated by such bureaucrats as Zeng Guofan,
Li Hongzhang and Zhang Zhidong in the latter half of the 19th century. The
diehards obstinately clung to the creed of "Tian (Heaven) does not change, nor
does Tao" in order to preserve the feudal rule of the Qing government, while the
Westernization Movement attempted to learn from Western technology and "Zhi Qi Zhi
Qi" under the motto that "what changes is Qi, but not Tao." Thinking Chinese
cultural heritage and institutions to be vastly superior to the West, so that
there was no need to resort to the West, they refused to accept Western democracy
and civilization. The major guide of the Westernization movement was Feng Guifen’s
emphasis upon modernization in science and technology, but not in thoughts and
ideas. This was the first stage of China’s moderni-zation, insisting that "the
Chinese factors remain fundamental, while Western factors play a subsidiary role."
However, after the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, repre-sentatives of the
Constitutional Reform and Modernization move-ment, such as Tan Sedong, Liang
Qicao, and Kang Youwei repre-senting the interests of the liberal bourgeois and
the enlightened landlords, sharply criticized the weakness due to the failure of
the Westernization Movement. the Modernization’s Reform Movement of 1898 marked
modern China’s second step toward moder-nization. This insisted that the West was
fundamental or the matter of substance while China was subsidiary or functional.
Because of lack of agreement on the part of the ruling class and obstruction by
the diehards the Movement met with failure. However, the political reform decreed
by the Qing government on January 9, 1901 reflected that some agreement had been
reached among the ruling class. Although the reform repeated the old themes of the
un-changeableness of "the three cardinal guides: ruler guides subjects, father
guides son, and husband guides wife, and of the five constant virtues:
benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and fidelity," it also manifested a
pressing historical sense of "over-hauling and consolidating government practice"
and "moderation in wealth and power". The reform indicated that the only solution
to the problem of destitution and weakness was to learn from the strong points of
foreign countries in order to offset China’s weak-ness. What had been learned in
the past of Western learning was merely superficial, not its essentials without
which China could not become prosperous and strong.
In fact, neither the idea that "China was the fundamental and the West
subsidiary", nor the alternative that "the West was the fundamental and China
subsidiary" were decisive because, as Yan Fu pointed out, "Chines Learning had its
own fundamental and sub-sidiaries, as did Western Learning." In the Westernization
Move-ment, Guo Songtao and Zheng Guanying began to revise the doc-trine that
"China was the fundamental"; especially Zheng Guan-ying thought that the
prosperity and strength of the West lay in its political and economic
institutions, and advocated the establishment of a House of Representatives and an
introduction of cons-titutionalism. In the course of learning from Western
modernization, the Qing government gradually underwent a painful change from
refusal to acceptance.
The May 4th Movement of 1919 was an anti-imperialist, anti-feudal, political and
cultural movement; it was influenced by the October Revolution and led by
intellectuals having the rudiments of Communist ideology. From then till the
foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, there were three views on
the problems of modernization: (a) modern neo-Confucianism eva-luated Western
civilization and preached Chinese traditional civili-zation; (b) some advocated an
overall Westernization, of whom Chen Xujing and Hu Shi were representative; and
(c) the Com-munist Party suggested making "the past serve the present and foreign
things serve China." The third view would appear correct and logic suggests that
Chinese modernization should have ad-vanced this way; however, the facts are quite
the opposite.
There are striking similarities in history and the thirty years after liberation.
China followed the way of the Qing government in once again closing the country to
international intercourse and an overall rejection of Western civilization. From
the Anti-rightist Struggle (the counterattack in 1957 against the bourgeois
rightists) and Anti-Rightist Trend at the Lu Shan meeting to the Communist Party’s
Third Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee’s stress upon the absolutes
of class struggle, all leftist thought led to such feudal survivals as absolutism
and royalism in their modern forms. What had already been extinguished in the West
began to spread in China and thoroughly engulfed the kindhearted, but in-sensitive
and meek, working people. Especially, "the Cultural Revolution" so wantonly
trampled on Chinese democracy and legal institutions that the basic human rights
of citizens could not be guaranteed. In order to preserve its own absolutism and
obscu-rantism, modern absolutism could not tolerate the splendid Wes-tern
civilization permeating China, which was old and obstinate.
Things take an opposite direction when they become ex-treme. In 1978 the Communist
Party’s Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee advocated and
carried out a policy of reform and openness, signaling thereby that Chinese
modernization had taken a turn for the better. Practice shows that the reform
provided thriving vitality, for example, in importing advanced te-chnology and
equipment, establishing special economic zones, im-porting foreign capital, and
advocating in the countryside a con-tract system by which the family has access to
its products. All these reforms led to rapid progress in the national economy and
greatly raised people’s living standard. Although at the same time Western
spiritual civilization was imported, modernization was confined mainly to the
material field and concerned science and technology. Western thoughts and ideas
were guarded against overcautiously and twice campaigns against bourgeois
liberalization were initiated. This was no coincidence, but a positive re-flection
of the long-accumulated conservative psychology of the whole Chinese ruling class.
It came from the particular political role played by China on the international
political scene. This con-tributed to the traditional and deep-rooted bad habits
of being satisfied with destitution, being overcautious and meekly sub-mitting to
the oppression and maltreatment of fellow countrymen. However, just as there is
interaction between material and spiritual civilizations, there is interaction as
well between Western moder-nization in science and technology and in thought and
ideas. Mo-dernization of science and technology provided the material basis for
modernization of thoughts and ideas, while the latter in turn prompted and guided
the former. Hence, if there is emphasis merely on Western modernization of science
and technology with-out at the same time emphasizing and adopting that of thoughts
and ideas, then even if the economy advances and people’s living standard are
raised, this will be temporary and limited, or may stop or even go backwards,
because this kind of modernization of science and technology does not receive the
help and support of thoughts and ideas.
THE PRESENT SITUATION
Although the Chinese government emphasizes importing Western science and
technology and its approach to management, it does not at the same time import
Western thoughts and ideas; this results in a separation of content from forms of
modernization. Just as Westerners cannot import Chinese Confucianism to guide
their modernized science and technology (the Asian "Four Small Dra-gons"
originally were nurtured in the spirit of Confucianism), China cannot merely
import Western science and technology in order to engage in modernization in a
context in which Chinese tra-ditional culture is dominant. For example, almost
every state enter-prise spends much foreign currency in importing advanced West-
ern technology and equipment each year, but it does not import their mechanism of
management or if it exists it is greatly limited. To say the least, the Western
countries’ economic development is due mainly to their sound method of management
and perfect system of legal institutions.
Herbert Spencer applied Darwin’s doctrine of "struggle for existence" to human
society and thought that, like the process of the evolution of living things,
society evolved through a natural rule that "the superior exists, the inferior is
eliminated" or survival of the fittest. Moveover, the competitive ability of
enterprises is based on that of the individual. Only if the individual, who is a
combination of intelligence, physical power and morality, brings his potential to
full force can his enterprise win in competition with others. As Yan Fu pointed
out, people’s moral intelligence and physical powers reach maturity in
environments made up of the struggle for existence within liberal institutions and
a free eco-nomic field. Meanwhile, all these liberated abilities are organized,
combined and enable the state to prosper and be strong.
In order not to harm others and to benefit oneself, there must be concepts and
institutions which guarantee putting the indivi-dual’s constructive abilities into
operation. Thus all agreed that advanced weapons and technology and effective
political-econo-mic institutions were the main cause of the prosperity of the
great Western powers’ and their winning of the Opium War. Yet Yang Fu thought the
reason lay rather in its different understanding and grasp of reality, that is, in
its advanced thought and values, whereas the cause of China’s destitution and
weakness lay in its lagging with regard to ideas and values.
Over the years, China has advocated reform of the economic system in cities.
Although this has had some success, if one con-siders Chinese enterprises
carefully, one notes that they are not strictly like Western enterprises. This
amounts to saying that the essential characters of the modern Western factory or
enterprise are not the equipment employed, but the sites, the labor and the power
resources. This means that production is completely independent and the economic
accounting is very thorough. As this is lacking in the existing Chinese state
enterprises, strange as it may sound, Western scholars think China in fact has no
enterprise.
Some researchers think that the use of the term "unit" is not only characteristic,
but directly reveals the internal link between cultural traits of the enterprise
and the national cultural environ-ment as a whole. Upon closer consideration one
can find the fo-llowing points involved in this link: (a) if the realization of
profits and the growth of capital is the aim of an enterprise, then the various
behaviors and norms in and out of the process of production of Chinese state
enterprises bear little relevance to attaining this aim. Indeed, quite a few forms
of behavior directly disturb the realization of this aim. (b) A large number of
the behaviors and activities of state enterprises, which take place outside the
process of production, are very similar to those of non-enterprises, for example,
office, school, hospital, the press and mass organization. (c) Even the
organization, choice of aims, transmission of infor-mation, human relationships,
criteria of value and therefore the environment as a whole of state enterprises
have very few dis-tinctive features of an enterprise, but are similar to non-
enterprises.
Under these conditions, the people in state enterprises are endowed mainly not
with an enterprising personality, but with a unit-personality. This has the
following manifestations: (a) great attention is paid to the treatment of human
relationships, (b) its set of values gives priority to politics; (c) there is
little expression of independent thinking and action, but one relies on others;
(d) there is sudden enthusiasm, but no constant sense of efficiency or self-
conscious spirit of creativity; and (e) there is scrupulous adhesion to ethical
principles in small closed circles where one is on intimate terms with the other
persons, but no social morality. How can a sense of competition be generated and
productive efficiency raised among "unit-individuals" working in this kind of
"unit," which is not an enterprise, for who is the bearer of unit-personality?
Another important characteristic of the Chinese reform is to develop a contract
system of responsibility of the family for pro-ducts in countryside. Although this
arouses a productive attitude among peasants, the inherent character of Chinese
traditional agri-cultural society itself constitutes the deeper and wider cultural
environments of the organizational system of the unit. First, due to the non-
independence of the individual person, it is only through the community that one
can exist. Second, social functions are concentrated on a closed village, which
was organized in terms of blood relationships, was self-sufficient and had no
mutual inter-change. Even the present community and village is essentially of this
nature, rather than the earlier "People’s Commune". Third, the natural village is
strictly controlled by a highly-concentrated cen-tral political power to which it
pays various tributes. Lastly, al-though distribution of farmland among families
can make for in-tensive and meticulous farming and combine the peasants’s in-
terests with their responsibilities, it seriously impedes the mechani-zation of
agriculture, reduces labor efficiency and unnecessarily binds a large number of
peasants to sparse and small farmland.
Economic reforms both in cities and in the countryside show that it is not
sufficient merely to make use of advanced Western science and technology; there is
need also to draw lessons from Western ideas and institutions. Modernization
requires reform, but the problem is: reform to what degree and how to reform? It
can be seen from the above analysis that in the course of construction of
modernization during the past century China has not been able to escape the
vicious circle of merely emphasizing Western science and technology, but not its
thoughts and ideas. The reason lies in the Chinese traditional culture of
absolutism and obscurantism leaving an accumulation of power in the ruling
government and fellow countrymen. The only way to escape this circle is to esta-
blish a sound democracy and legal institutions for the construction of Chinese
modernization. A consensus must be reached among the ruling class: whatever the
Western things may be (whether science and technology or ideas and thoughts),
provided that they are advantageous to the China’s realization of modernization,
they should be fully employed strategic decisions regarding modernization must be
based on this agreement.
Other elements which need to be considered include the following.
- First, there must be long-term planning. This means avoiding by all means the
issuance of an order in the morning and rescinding it in the evening. It is no
accident that at present some people think Chinese policy always will change in
three to five years. But it also means that those who make strategic decisions
cannot be eager for success and instant benefit and have a narrow vision.
- Second, the reform must be proactive; several reforms in Chinese history were
carried out under the circumstances of domestic trouble and foreign invasion, and
therefore were largely passive. It is impossible for this kind of passive reform
to remove or even touch the previously organized systems which hindered the
development of productive forces or radically to reform old thoughts and ideas.
However, if the ruling government can repair the house before it rains and put
reform into force before expe-riencing difficulties, then surely the medicine can
be suited to the illness, cure the sickness and save the patient. But the
activities of reform must first be based on the modernization of thoughts and
ideas.
- Third, it must be feasible, that is, it is necessary to assess and weigh the
advantages and disadvantages without taking any hasty action or making an
administrative intervention before the strategic decisions are made.
- Fourth, it must be pluralistic. Truth comes from the co-llision between several
penetrating insights. Different thoughts and ideas can learn from each other’s
strong points and offset their own weakness. If one thought is artificially given
priority over others, then it will certainly hinder the quality of the overall
thought and the renewal of internal thought mechanism. Likewise, in making
strategic decisions, pluralistic thinking should be permitted and encouraged. The
authorities might well establish two or more groups to study and analyze important
problems relating to the na-tional economy and people’s livelihood and to design
counter-measures. Their decisions would be handed over to the National People’s
Congress, and finally put into force as scientific policy and law. However, at the
present time, the representatives of the National People’s Congress consider only
one draft resolution, without an alternative with which to compared it. So the
Con-gress’s name does not fit its own reality, for there is no draft resolution
which is not voted through by the Congress. A depen-dant and meek psychology
exists not only in ordinary people, but also in the representatives and leaders at
all levels. This is de-monstrated by the historical fact of the initiation of the
disastrous "Cultural Revolution".
From the state enterprises’ nature as a "unit", to the agri-cultural economy’s
mode of production, to the one-dimensional mode of making strategic decisions
regarding modernization, all these show how lagging thoughts and ideas seriously
fetter the country’s productive forces and the realization of modernization. The
slogan that "science and technology are the first productive forces" should be
revised and its ambiguous influence removed. In fact, science and technology do
not play the same role under different circumstances. Research and the application
of science and technology are restrained not only by economic conditions and the
conditions of science and technology, but more by policy and law, thoughts and
ideas and the researchers’ abilities and quali-fications. In the past years, the
development of China’s basic theoretical research has not been slower than the
West, nor have their achievements been, but the application of their achievements,
that is, their transformation into productive forces falls far behind the West.
If modernization cannot be improved and realized, and people’s living standard
cannot be raised, then the ruling party is not qualified. All depends on it having
or not having the ability to deal with the relationship between he two aspects of
moderni-zation.
In sum, from historical retrospection and reflection on rea-lity, it appears that
the realization of modernization in China, both in the past and at present, is
confined mainly to the material field and neglects the side of though and ideas;
for this reason it has been onesided.
***
http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-2/chapter_ii_human_nature_and_huma.htm
CHAPTER II
HUMAN NATURE AND HUMAN EDUCATION
ON HUMAN NATURE AS TENDING TOWARD
GOODNESS IN CLASSICAL CONFUCIANISM
PEI-JUNG FU
By "Classical Confucianism" I mean a trend of thought initiated by Confucius (551-
479 B.C.), developed by Mencius (c. 371-289 B.C.) and Hsün-tzu (c. 313-238 B.C.),
and finally culminating in the I-chuan and the Chung-yung. To appreciate the
world-view, moral ideals, and religious beliefs of the Chinese people, Classical
Confucianism is the first school to be understood. In the hope of advancing this
understanding, the present chapter will focus on the theory of human nature as
expounded by this school. It will argue that early Confucians maintained a theory
of "human nature as tending toward goodness." The discussion will contain three
parts: (1) the presentation of this theory by Confucius, (2) the demonstration of
this theory by Mencius and the Chung-yung in a direct and explicit way, and by
Hsün-tzu and the I-chuan in an indirect and implicit way, and (3) the consequence
of this theory, that is, the fact that the above Confucians all emphasized the
obligation to perfect oneself and to bring others to attain their perfect state.
THE THEORY OF CONFUCIUS ON HUMAN NATURE
Confucius' view on human nature was not clearly and distinctly supplied in the
Analects. It is no surprise that one of his disciples complained that "one cannot
get to hear his view on human nature" (A, 5:13).1 In two passages of the Analects,
Confucius classified men as belonging to three groups: "upper, middle and lower,"
but as this classification was made according to man's "learning ability" it had
nothing to do with the common nature of man.2 Another two passages expressed more
directly Confucius' opinion in this respect.
(a) The Master said, `That a man lives is because he is straight. That a man who
dupes others survives is because he has been fortunate enough to be spared' (A,
6:19).
(b) The Master said, `Men are close to one another by nature. They diverge as a
result of repeated practice' (A, 17:2).
In passage (a), the meaning of "straight" (chih) is uncertain. Granted that it has
moral implications, it shows only that one should follow the right way, but does
not reveal what human nature is. Passage (b) informs us only that Confucius
recognized that there exists a common human nature. Whereas many scholars readily
connect it with goodness,3 the present essay will establish that Confucius had in
mind human nature as tending toward goodness. It will argue that otherwise some
key passages of the Analects concerning politics and morality become
incomprehensible.
First, Confucius described the marvelous effect of the virtuous man in the field
of politics as follows:
(a) The rule of virtue can be compared to the Pole Star which commands the homage
of the multitude of stars without leaving its place (A, 2:1).
(b) If there was a ruler who achieved order without taking any action, it was,
perhaps, Shun. There was nothing for him to do but to hold himself in a respectful
posture and to face the south (15:5).
(c) Just desire the good yourself and the common people will be good. The virtue
of the gentleman is like wind; the virtue of the small man is like grass. Let the
wind blow over the grass and it is sure to bend (12:19).
The above three passages would be pointless and meaningless if there were no
common human nature and if this were not tending toward goodness. In other words,
for Confucius the highest political ideal was the traditional ethiocracy which
required that the most virtuous be the ruler because virtue was believed to be in
line with human nature.4
On the other hand, Confucius narrowed down the issue by emphasizing the inner
relation of man's self with virtue. He said,
(a) Is jen really far away? No sooner do I desire it than it is here (A, 7:30).
(b) The practice of jen depends on oneself alone, and not on others (12:1).
(c) Is there anyone who has tried to practice jen for a single day? I have not
come across such a man whose strength proves insufficient for the task (4:6).
A discussion of Confucius' concept of jen would require a more extended treatment
than is possible here, but for present purposes it suffices to say that jen means
both "the way of man" and "goodness." The above passages state that jen is man's
inner tendency and that it is within man's ability to practice jen. Thus, there is
solid foundation for claiming that Confucius regarded human nature as tending
toward goodness.
DEMONSTRATION OF THE THEORY
On the basis of Confucius' teachings, Mencius and Hsün-tzu developed philosophies
which sometimes were considered mutually complementary. As regards the theory of
human nature, however, Mencius and Hsün-tzu obviously held incompatible views. The
following discussion will try to show that Mencius' theory of "human nature as
good" is in fact a theory of "human heart as good," and Hsün-tzu's theory of
"human nature as evil" is actually a theory of "human desire as evil." These two
theories are not necessarily contradictory, since they share the same underlying
idea that human nature tends toward goodness. To clarify this point, we will lay
more stress on the works of Mencius and the Chung-yung which directly elaborated
on this idea than on those of Hsün-tzu and the I-chuan which accepted this idea in
an implicit way.
Mencius
Etymologically, human "nature" (hsing) comes from "birth" or "to be born with"
(sheng). The common understanding of this word in ancient China can be formulated
as follows: "The inborn is what is meant by nature" (M, VI, A, 3).5 However, this
consideration of the origin of nature exhibits only what a thing has rather than
what a thing is: it expresses at most the sameness rather than the difference of
all things. In order to determine what a thing is, it is necessary to know its
essence: the genus plus the difference of species. This rule, made familiar by
Aristotle, was true also for Mencius.
First, Mencius was quite aware that in dealing with anything of the same kind, we
must determine what this "same kind" means, and this is even more true when
applied to man. Mencius said, "Now, things of the same kind are all alike. Why
should we have doubts when it comes to man? The sage and I are of the same kind"
(M, VI, A, 7). The wicked, however, also belong to the same kind. Thus, in
determining the essence of human beings, we should find the difference of species.
Mencius said,
Slight is the difference between man and the brutes. The common man loses this
distinguishing feature, while the gentleman retains it. Shun understood the way of
things and had a keen insight into human relations. He followed the path of
benevolence and righteousness. He did not need to pursue benevolence and
righteousness (M, IV, B,19).
Clearly, the essence or the distinguishing feature of man must be understood
through the "slight difference" between man and the brutes. The statement about
Shun is an example that benevolence and righteousness are the interior path of
man, following which will have a great effect. The implication of this whole
sentence is probably that benevolence and righteousness belong to the "slight
difference."6 Another paragraph will also help clarify the distinguishing feature
of man. "A gentleman differs from other men in what he retains in his heart--
namely, benevolence and propriety" (M, IV, B, 28).
Granted that the human essence of man can be described as benevolence,
righteousness, propriety, etc., how can common people lose it? Can something be
defined by a feature which can be lost? The key to the answer lies in the idea of
"heart," which is to be understood here as neither bodily heart, nor soul, but
mind with sensitivity. Concerning human nature, Mencius presents his famous theory
of "the four germs of the heart," concluding as follows:
From this it can be seen that whoever is devoid of the heart of compassion is not
human, whoever is devoid of the heart of shame is not human, whoever is devoid of
the heart of courtesy and modesty is not human, and whoever is devoid of the heart
of right and wrong is not human (M, II, A, 6).
These four states of heart are named, in turn, the germs of "benevolence,
righteousness, propriety, and wisdom" (M, II, A, 6) within man's heart, which
forms the difference of human beings. Human nature must be defined through this
heart: Mencius said, "That which a gentleman follows as his nature, that is to
say, benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom, is rooted in his heart"
(M, VII, A, 21). Therefore the goodness of human nature resides in the goodness of
the heart. A reservation, however, must be added, namely, that goodness exists
only in the state of germ and needs to be retained, nourished, and developed. In
this way Mencius demonstrated that human nature is tending toward goodness.
He did not stop at this point, but continued to examine the nature and origin of
the heart. Mencius affirmed that there is a propensity for development within the
heart which makes it an "evaluating heart." If this means an ability to be moral
and human beings are moral agents,8 does not its propensity for development imply
in some sense a "commanding heart"?9
It must be the case, then, that the evaluating heart is at the same time the
commanding heart, for otherwise how could Mencius honor as gentleman those who
"retain" it? Only with this understanding does it become meaningful to say that
"there is nothing better for the nurturing of the heart than to reduce the number
of one's desires" (M, VII, B, 35). Only if the heart does more than evaluate can
Mencius say, "The sole concern of learning is to go after this strayed heart. That
is all" (M, VI, A, 11).
On the basis of this double character of the heart, we can look further at the
heart in itself. Mencius used one word "thinking" to sum up the function of the
heart. He said, "The organ of the heart can think. But it will find the answer
only if it does think: otherwise, it will not find the answer. This is what Heaven
has given me" (M, VI, A, 15). By thus explaining the source of the heart,
especially its function of commanding, he bridges the gap between Heaven and man.
Therefore, instead of stating that Mencius substitutes "self-legislation" for
"external divine command," we prefer to say that man's self-legislation is
bestowed on him by Heaven.10 The relation between Heaven and man is another
interesting topic in Mencius' thought, but is beyond the scope of the present
essay. What we have established thus far is that the reason why human nature tends
toward goodness consists in its relation with Heaven.
Hsün-tzu
Hsün-tzu regarded human nature as that with which man is born (H, 4:39; 16:274).11
He further claimed that "the nature is that which is given by Heaven; you cannot
learn it, you cannot acquire it by effort" (23:290). This concept of human nature,
based upon empirical observations, is of three kinds: the desire of sense organs,
the ability of sense organs, and the plasticity of man's character.12 Hsün-tzu
seems to take man's instinct as his nature and that this in itself is neutral. How
then could Hsün-tzu also affirm definitely that "man's nature is evil" (H,
23:289)?
The reason is that if everyone follows his instinctive tendency without
restriction, the result inevitably will be "strife and rapacity, combined with
rebellion and disorder, ending in violence" (H, 23:289). Undoubtedly this result
can be defined as evil if compared with an harmonious society. Though Hsün-tzu's
theory of human nature as evil cannot be understood without its background of
moral and cultural idealism,13 nonetheless, to define human nature through that
which follows as a result is not the way it is usually defined or understood. Did
not Hsün-tzu find a difference between man and the brutes, and if so why did he
not use it to define the human essence?
According to Hsün-tzu, what makes the person truly human is the ability to make
distinctions (H, 5:50), what makes the human person the highest being on earth is
the sense of righteousness (H, 9:104). Thus, the ability to make distinctions and
a sense of righteousness must belong to human nature. If well developed, there
will result propriety (li) and righteousness (i), which are regarded as good. Had
Hsün-tzu defined human nature through this approach, he would not have found any
argument with Mencius.14 Far from doing this, however, Hsün-tzu considered
propriety and righteousness to be the result of artificial activity, a virtue
acquired by human effort. The question then becomes: How did Hsün-tzu bridge man's
evil nature and his artificial activities? To answer this question, we must take
account of Hsün-tzu's concept of "heart."
Hsün-tzu's use of the concept of "heart" is not always consistent. First, the
heart constitutes one element of man's emotional nature. In this sense, the heart
always tends toward profit, just as ears to sound and eyes to color (H, 11:137,
141; 23:291): "If a man has no teacher or law, his heart is just like his mouth or
belly" (H, 4:40). Second, the heart is higher than other senses: "The heart
occupies the cavity in the center to control the five organs. This is called the
natural ruler" (H, 17:206). This sense of heart is quite similar to that of
Mencius. "The heart is the ruler of the body and the master of its god-like
intelligence. It gives commands, but it is not subject to them" (H, 21: 265).
Thus, the heart appears to have the function of distinguishing and commanding.
Since the heart also belongs to human nature, why did Hsün-tzu still insist on the
evil of human nature? Further examination will show that Hsün-tzu did not consider
the heart itself to be the independent criterion of all things. He argued that in
order to function, the heart must keep itself in a state of "emptiness, unity, and
quiescence"; and that the condition for this is that the heart perceive the Way
(tao) (H, 21:264). This third sense of the heart is central to Hsün-tzu's theory,
whose key idea is that "the heart is the craftsman of the Way, and the Way is the
foundation of good government" (H, 22:281).15 Thus, there must be a close relation
between the heart, representing human nature, and the Way, representing goodness.
It is not inconceivable to say that Hsün-tzu also had in mind a view of human
nature as tending toward goodness.
The I-chuan
The I-chuan was designed to manifest how the sages exhibited the way of man by
meditating on the way of Heaven. It focused upon clarifying the relation between
Heaven and man and did not articulate any clear theory of human nature. What we
may figure out in this regard is very limited. Under the 24th hexagram we read,
"Do we not see in fu the mind of Heaven and Earth"? (T'uan, Fu, p. 233).16 To
clarify this hexagram, the Master (who in this context must be Confucius) said of
his favorite disciple Yen Hui that "If anything he did was not good, he was sure
to become conscious of that; when he knew it, he did not do the thing again" (Hsi-
tz'u, II, p. 393). Thus, the mind (or better, the will) of Heaven and Earth is
manifested in one's returning (fu) to one's original state, by which one discovers
what one should and should not do. Consequently, the I-chuan affirms that
"returning" presents "the root of virtue" (Hsi-tz'u, II, 397) and we may easily
perceive that human nature is in line with goodness.
What is called the way operates incessantly with the rhythmic modulation of
dynamic change and the static repose, thus continuing the creative process for the
attainment of the Good and completing the creative process for the fulfillment of
Nature which is Life (Hsi-tz'u, I, p. 355).17
This statement is especially meaningful for human beings. Again the I-chuan
emphasized, "The perpetual continuance of fulfilled nature in life is the gate of
the Way and Righteousness."18 Therefore, it is understandable that the sages
"exhibited the way of man under the names of benevolence and righteousness" (Shuo-
kua, p. 423).
The Chung-yung
The Chung-yung dealt incisively with the nature of man. First, it did not regard
human nature as good in itself. "Hui made choice of the Mean, and whenever he got
hold of what was good, he clasped it firmly, as if wearing it on his breast, and
did not lose it" (C, 8:1).19 If what is good can be held and lost, then it does
not pertain to the nature of man.
Instead, human nature as seen by Chung-yung is always "tending toward" what is
good, as is manifested in "knowing and practicing" the good. This includes the
five duties and three virtues. The Chung-yung takes them as universal objectives
of knowledge and action and relates them to the universal obligation of man:
Some (people) are born with the knowledge (of those duties); some know them by
study; and some acquire the knowledge after a painful feeling of their ignorance.
But the knowledge being possessed, it comes to the same thing. Some practice them
with a natural ease; some from a desire for their advantages; and some by
strenuous effort. But the achievement being, it comes to the same thing (C, 20:9).
This "same thing" at which human knowledge and action are aimed is goodness, which
the sage "hits without an effort and apprehends without the exercise of thought"
(C, 20:28). Thus, we may conclude that human nature is tending toward goodness.
The next question, whence does this kind of human nature come? The Chung-yung
believes that human nature is conferred by Heaven (C, 1:1). The point of contact
between human nature and Heaven is "sincerity" (C, 20:18): being sincere is the
way of Heaven; becoming sincere is the way of man. To understand the implication
of "becoming sincere," we need to ascertain what the Chung-yung thinks about the
ordinary people. In dealing with the way of the gentleman, the Chung-yung notes
that
Common men and women, however ignorant, may intermeddle with the knowledge of it
(the way of the gentleman); . . . common men and women, however worthless, may
carry it into practice. (C, 12:2)
In this passage two things are worth noting. First, to describe ordinary people as
"ignorant" and "worthless" shows indirectly the dissatisfaction of the Chung-yung
regarding the natural state of man. To be human, it is not sufficient simply to
maintain one's natural life; one must follow the way of the gentleman by
cultivating virtue (C, 13, 14, 15). Second, the undoubted capacity of ordinary
people to know and practice the right way has something to do with our previous
statement that human nature tends toward goodness.
Furthermore, if by "sincerity" is meant to be true to oneself, then the Chung-yung
holds that when one is true to oneself one will find in one's nature "the tendency
toward goodness." Instead of supplying any logical argument, the Chung-yung
invites one to reflect upon oneself. Two passages are significant:
(a) There is nothing more visible than what is secret, and nothing more manifest
than what is minute. Therefore the gentleman is watchful over himself, when he is
alone (C, 1:3).
(b) He cultivates to the utmost the shoots (of goodness) in him. From those he can
attain to the possession of sincerity (C, 23:1).
An inkling of mysticism can be perceived here. It seems that one is endowed with a
"spark of light" in one's nature. Being true to oneself, one will naturally
magnify this spark of light; thus, one carries out moral cultivation in order to
be truly human.
Finally, it is impossible to repress "the expressions of sincerity" (C, 16:15).
One is born with moral discrimination which distinguishes what is good from what
is evil. This entails responsibility for ceaselessly "choosing what is good and
firmly holding it fast." (C, 20:28) Once one possesses sincerity, one will not
merely strive to complete oneself, but will extend this to other men and things
(C, 25:3). This is the reason why the Chung-yung claims that when one attains the
state of equilibrium and harmony, "a happy order will prevail throughout Heaven
and Earth, and all things will be nourished and flourish" (C, 1:5).
CONSEQUENCE OF THE THEORY
Three consequences of this theory were acceptable to all early Confucians:
1. All are capable of becoming gentlemen (chün-tzu, the ideal personality set by
Confucius). Confucius said that he never came across anyone whose strength was
insufficient for practicing jen. Mencius expressly insisted that all can become a
Yao or a Shun. Even Hsün-tzu, though without giving a satisfactory explanation,
maintained that the person on the street can become a Yü. The I-chuan emphasized
gradual cultivation which presupposes the possibility of perfecting oneself. The
Chung-yung believed that if one chooses what is good and holds it fast, then
"though dull, he will surely become intelligent; though weak, he will surely
become strong" (C, 20:21).
2. All are obliged to become a gentleman. We perceive in Classical Confucianism an
obligation which can be understood in terms of a "categorial imperative." To be
human is to become virtuous; there is no other choice. The purpose of one's
natural life is to realize one's moral ideal. Early Confucians all emphasized this
categorical imperative. Both Confucius and Mencius held that man should sacrifice
his life for the sake of jen or i (roughly, benevolence or righteousness). To our
surprise, Hsün-tzu also declared, "A gentleman, though worrying about danger and
misery, will face death for the sake of i" (H, 3:24). The I-chuan stated that a
gentleman "will sacrifice his life in order to carry out his purpose (i.e., to
follow the way of the sage)" (Hsiang, K'un, p. 325). The Chung-yung also claimed,
"When bad principles prevail in the country, he (the gentleman) maintains his
course to death without changing" (C, 10:5).
3. While becoming a gentleman, all are responsible for aiding others to attain
their perfect state. A famous saying of Confucius reads, "A benevolent man helps
others to take their stand insofar as he himself wishes to take his stand, and
gets others there insofar as he himself wishes to get there" (A, 6:30). Mencius
traced this responsibility back to Heaven, and announced,
Heaven, in producing the people, has given to those who first attain understanding
the duty of awakening those who are slow to understand; and to those who are the
first to awaken the duty of awakening those who are slow to awaken (MR, V, A, 7;
V, B, 1).
Leaving the concept of Heaven aside, Hsün-tzu found no disagreement with Mencius's
position that, "All creatures of the universe, all who belong to the species of
man, must await the sage before they can attain their proper places" (H, 19:243).
The I-chuan emphasized the status of the sages who "would give their proper course
to the aims of all under the sky, would give stability to their undertakings, and
determine their doubts" (Hsi-tz'u, I, p. 371). Finally, Chung-yung best expressed
the highest ideal set for man by Classical Confucianism:
It is only he, being most truthful and sincere in all the world, who can
completely fulfill his nature in the course of life. Being able to completely
fulfill his own nature in the perfect way, he can, also, completely fulfill the
nature of other men. Being able to completely fulfill the nature of other men, he
can, furthermore, completely fulfill the nature of all creatures and things. Being
able to completely fulfill the nature of all creatures and things, he can
participate in the cosmic creation and procreation in the process of temporal
transformation. Being able to participate in the transformation process of cosmic
creation and procreation, he is a co-creator with Heaven and Earth (C, 22:1).20
National University
Taipei, Taiwan, ROC
NOTES
1. For English translations, I will follow D.C. Lau, Confucius, The Analects
(London: Penguin Classics, 1979).
2. These two passages are: (a) The Master said, "It is only the most intelligent
and the most stupid who are not susceptible to change" (A, 7:3). (b) The Master
said, "You can tell those who are above average about the best, but not those who
are below average" (A, 6:21).
3. For example, see Takada Shinji, Shina shiso no kenkyu (Tokyo: Shunjyusha,
1942), p. 104; Hsü Fu-kuan, Chung-kuo jen-hsing-lun shih (Taipei: Commercial,
1977), p. 89.
4. Cf. Fu Pei-jung, "Shih-ching shu-ching chung ti t'ien-ti-kuan yen-chiu," Che-
hsüeh yu wen-hua, Vol. 11, No. 7 (July, 1984), pp. 36-37.
5. For English translation, I will follow D.C. Lau, Mencius (London: Penguin
Classics, 1970).
6. See Hsü Fu-kuan, p. 165.
7. Cf. Donald Munro, The Concept of Man in Early China (Stanford: Stanford Univ.,
1969), p. 48.
8. Cf. D.C. Lau, "Theories of Human Nature in Mencius and Shyuntzyy," Bulletin of
the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 15, Pt. 3 (1953), p. 550.
9. I.A. Richards indicates that "the mind, for Mencius, is its own law-giver." See
Richards, Mencius on the Mind (London: Kegan Paul, 1932), p. 79. This point is
fully elaborated in Munro, p. 58f.
10. Lau, "Theories of Human Nature," p. 551. Furthermore, Julia Ching maintains
that the heart represents both the symbol and reality of man's oneness with
Heaven. See Ching, Confuciansim and Christianity (Tokyo: Kodansha International,
1977), p. 91.
11. Here (4:39), the first number means the 4th chapter of the Works of Hsün-tzu,
and the number of the page (39) is according to the edition of Wang Hsien-ch'ien's
Hsün-tzu chi-chieh (Taipei: Shih-chieh, 1967). The English translation follows
roughly Holmer Dubs, The Works of Hsuntze (London: Arthur Probsthain, 1928) and
Burton Matson, Hsün-tzi, Basic Writings (New York: Columbia Univ., 1963).
12. Hsü Fu-kuan, pp. 230-32.
13. T'ang Chün-i, Chung-kuo che-hsüeh yüan-lun: yüan hsing pien (Hong Kong: Jen-
sheng, 1966), p. 49. However, Ch'ien Mu suggests that Hsün-tzu's theory remains on
a utilitarian level. See Ch'ien, Chuang-lao t'ung pien (Hong Kong: Hsin-ya yen-
chiu-so, 1957), p. 263.
14. Munro, p. 81, analyzes Hsün-tzu's concept of mind from several points of view
and concludes that "none of these points conflicts basically with the view of
hsing in the Mencius."
15. I translate the term "kung-tsai" as "craftsman" according to its context;
Dubs's "master-workman" is also acceptable, but Watson's "supervisor" goes too
far.
16. For English translation, I will follow James Legge, The I Ching (New York:
Dover, 1963).
17. This is Thomé Fang's translation. See Fang, Chinese Philosophy: Its Spirit and
Its Development (Taipei: Linking, 1981), p. 110.
18. Cf. Fang, p. 111.
19. For the English translation, see James Legge, The Doctrine of the Mean, in The
Chinese Classics, Vol. I (Hong Kong: Hongkong Univ., 1960).
20. This is Fang's translation, p. 113.
****
http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-20/chapter_iii.htm
CHAPTER III
CULTURAL POWER AND CULTURAL CONFLICT
GUO JIEMIN
Cultural power, also called cultural hegemony, cultural imperialism and cultural
colonialism, is generally referred to as imposed cultural values between states
and between ethnic groups. This concept first put forward by Gramsci in the 1930s
revealed the “super-political veil” of the traditional concept of culture. He held
that cultural hegemony was an indispensable ruling form. To rule civil society,
the ruling class must draw support from intellectuals and cultural institutions to
make its ethics, politics and cultural values a universally accepted code of
conduct and make the broad masses of the people freely agree with the social
lifestyle of the basic ruling group.1 In fact, before that, Western colonialists
used cultural power as their powerful weapon in the international arena. Wherever
they went, they recklessly destroyed local civilizations, denied or changed local
moral norms and forcibly judged the destiny of other countries and ethnic groups
by their own cultural values. History is developing, the times are forging ahead
and peace and development have become the themes of the current age. But cultural
power as a phenomenon contrary to the times has not yet disappeared from the
scene. Though it has come by the barbarous and bloody means the colonialists had
adopted, its essence remains as before.
THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF CULTURAL POWER
Cultural power has not emerged and developed accidentally, but has a certain
background in the times.
An Age of the Emergence of Culture
The end of the Cold War has entailed a softening of fierce military threats in
international relations and a relaxation of ideological confrontation between
blocs. Many countries have begun economic reforms and contacts between countries
and between ethnic groups have increasingly been strengthened, thus enhancing
awareness of civilization. Whether a country is strong or weak is measured no
longer only from the political and military perspective, but in terms of its
comprehensive national strength. This includes not only such factors as economy
and military affairs, science and technology, and natural resources, but also the
essential spiritual factors of national culture, will, character and spirit. It
includes also the integration and balance of those essential factors.
This clearly enhances the importance of culture, which now becomes one of the main
factors determining a country’s strength, along with politics, economy, military
affairs, science and technology. Because of changes in world political and
military situations, countries with a strong “hegemonic awareness” have turned
their attention to the cultural field and attempted to unify the world with their
cultural values in order to achieve results they cannot reach through political
struggles and military force. The modernized media have facilitated this enabling
cultural power to emerge at this historical moment and become a very prominent
post-Cold War cultural phenomenon between countries and ethnic groups.
The New World Pattern Demands New Cultural Values
At present, the world pattern is moving towards multi-polarization. First, the
position of the U.S. as the sole superpower is declining. Although it has tried to
move from leadership of the West to that of the world, its internal and external
contradictions are numerous and its abilities fall short of its wishes. Second,
Western Europe has formed a community to save the central position of the West; it
has moved from being a follower to being a competitor of the U.S. Third, Japan has
continued to say “no” to the U.S.; it has competed fiercely with the U.S.
economically and displayed remarkable politically ability. Fourth, Russia has
inherited most of the assets of the former Soviet Union, especially its military
force; it remains strong, though its vitality has been sapped due to the
disintegration of the former Soviet Union. Fifth, China has developed rapidly
since the beginning of its reform and opening and is gradually manifesting its
strength. In the world, from the perspective of comprehensive national strength,
the U.S. ranks first; militarily, the U.S. and Russia predominate; in economy, the
U.S., Japan and Europe form a tripod; politically, there are five power centers,
the U.S., Russia, Europe, Japan and China. The above pattern has appeared in
embryonic form; it is difficult to determine how many poles the world will be
divided into in the future.
Under the situation of a multi-polar world pattern, mutual respect and tolerance
between countries appear especially important. As early as 1988, when meeting
Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Deng Xiaoping pointed out, “Two things have to
be done at the same time. One is to establish a new international political order;
the other is to establish a new international economic order.” As for establishing
a new international order, we should take the Five Principles of Peaceful
Coexistence as norms for international relations.2 However, the U.S. has not
abandoned the effort to establish a “uni-polar” world dominated by itself. It
assumes the responsibility of leading the world, promoting U.S. values and
safeguarding U.S. interests all over the world. The essence of the so-called U.S.
responsibility for leadership3is to continue to establish U.S. hegemonic position
in the world. Maintaining this position and advancing U.S. values, including
cultural values, are twin aims. Maintaining the former is beneficial to promoting
the latter, while promoting the latter maintains the former. At the moment when a
new world pattern is in the shaping, the U.S. is stepping up pursuit of cultural
power as part of its plan for acting as a “world leader”.
HISTORICAL SOURCE OF CULTURAL POWER
Deep-rooted Western Centralism
In research on world civilizations, many Western philosophers and historians have
elaborated the following view: In the world, there is only one real civilization,
that is, Western civilization. Other civilizations either lack vitality or have
converged into Western civilization, which is a “universal civilization suiting
everyone” just as Western values are global values. For instance, the great
philosopher, Hegel once stood on the “holy” world philosophic rostrum in Europe
and solemnly foretold with European pride that the development of the heart of the
history of humankind like the route of the sun, rises in the East and falls in the
West. But after falling in the West, it will no longer rise in the East, for the
West occupies the center of the world.4 British writer Rudyard Kipling nakedly
declared that the burden of the whites lies in subjecting the East to the high
British civilization either by belief or by violence.5
The dissemination of modern Western civilization accompanied the imperialist
aggression and expansion. Western centralists deny that the development of any
cultural type is the result of choice according to its own distinct cultural
background, conditions and needs. They hold stubbornly that only their approach to
the world, value standard and pattern of behavior is correct and civil. They have
never seriously listened to the voice from the East and have always sized up the
East at a distance and from a height. Even in the face of the fact that in recent
years East Asian countries have risen one after another and accomplished economic
miracles, some Western thinkers still hold a suspicious and negative attitude to
East Asia’s important role on the world. They even think that this is the result
of importing Western culture.
The formation of Western centralism is based first on the sense of superiority
resulting from the development of Western industrial revolution. Then it reflects
the fact that Western Christians consider themselves to be the chosen of God who
must shoulder the mission of disseminating civilization to the whole world. Hence,
they are always overweening, like to play the role of “Savior,” and cannot
tolerate any phenomenon contrary to Western cultural values. As early as 90 years
ago, Sun Yat-sen acutely pointed out that Europeans regarded themselves as
disseminators of orthodox cultures and posed as cultural masters. Any cultural
development or independent thinking outside the European was regarded as a revolt.
This was an “overbearing culture”.
Lingering Cold War “Customs”
In the Cold War period hegemonic countries confronted each other as enemies. Since
then geopolitical enemies no longer existed, but by habit and out of their
political and economic needs, countries accustomed to the Cold War shifted their
struggles to the more extensive field of civilization and culture, and extended
their target to the whole Third World. They vowed to conduct “a war without gun
smoke” with all non-Western civilizations and attempted to use their value
standards to unify the world; they have raised civilizational and cultural issues
as a new excuse for interfering in other countries’ internal affairs.
The U.S. regards the drastic changes in East Europe and the disintegration of the
former Soviet Union as a victory of the tactics of peaceful evolution or of U.S.
cultural values. In his agenda, Bush wrote that political and economic ties have
been favored by the attraction of U.S. culture for the whole world; this is a new
“soft power”. Some important U.S. Government officials have also put forward in
their speeches about foreign policy an “expansion strategy” of spreading the
market-oriented family of democratic countries to the rest of the world. Under
this thinking, the U.S. has actively intervened into Latin America to build a so-
called “democratized hemisphere”; it has also set up “Radio Free Asia” based on
the earlier “Radio Free Europe” with ulterior motives. The U.S. has made it clear
that Radio Free Asia will also play a proper role in the ideological field.6 Its
motive in pushing cultural power and making Cold War noises is all too clear: the
Cold War has passed away as an era, but its habits remain.
CULTURAL POWER CONTRARY TO THE TREND OF WORLD CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT
World Cultural Pluralism
Cultural connotations are very rich. Its central content is a deep value system, a
characteristic national psychology evolved over a long history, and a kind of
lifestyle. Different economic, political, historical and geographic environments,
climate conditions and “genetic codes” have caused many differences between
various ethnic groups in custom, habit, ideology and concept. In this view a
cultural historical typology takes the expression of the diversity of the human
lifestyles as its mission and holds that culture is plural. Development of any
cultural type is the result of choice and is created according to its own cultural
law, cultural background, historical conditions and realistic needs; this develops
various cultural modes in reality. However, some Western centralist scholars often
mechanically look on and analyze the complicated reality of other cultural types
according to the Western model of cultural development, and deny the diversity of
various cultures and their ability to choose their own development road. This is
quite absurd and not in conformity with objective facts.
As all know, four countries with ancient civilizations of different cultural types
have made great contributions to world culture. Other countries’ national cultures
have also more or less enriched the cultural treasure house. Since modern times,
because of the industrial revolution in the West, “Western centered theory” and
“Western cultural superiority theory” have prevailed for a time. Western cultural
values long occupied a dominant position in the world. Modernization became almost
a synonym for Westernization. Western culture naturally has its own strong points,
but is not universally applicable and cannot be imposed on countries and peoples
with different national conditions.
“East Asian economic miracles” have presented a development road different from
the West. Though much influenced by Western culture, some countries are quite
different on a series of issues such as ideology, concept and interrelations
between individuals, family, the collective and the state. Even Japan actively
absorbing Western culture has always combined the Japanese spirit with Western
learning and tenaciously defended its national spirit.7 Under the leadership of
the Communist Party of China, guided by Marxism, China has had as its objective
the realization of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Especially since the
beginning of its reform and opening China has insisted on the road of building
socialism with Chinese characteristics. It has made giant strides in socialist
modernization and formulated socialist culture and values with Chinese
characteristics, attracting world attention. These facts strongly prove that in
contrast to the opinion of Western scholars, it is not only Western culture that
can help bring about a sole successful mode of modernization in the history of
humankind.
Economic success has strengthened the cultural self-confidence of East Asian and
Southeast Asian countries, which no longer consider that the “Western moon seems
more full” and have clearly recognized that Western values are not adapted to
Asia. But they do not rule out an absorption of the strong points of Western
cultures. Some insightful Western personages have begun to realize the limitations
and drawbacks of Western culture. Some have pointed out that the problem of
Western culture is that it can successfully reduce mortality from diseases, but it
can not reduce the suicide rate from the collapse of values. They advocate
learning from ancient Oriental culture, resulting in an “Oriental fad” in some
regions.
Each culture has its inherent value. There is only difference between cultures,
but no distinction between the good and the bad. Taking Western cultural values as
the sole choice of the whole of humankind is unrealistic, unscientific and
unreasonable. The world is developing towards a multi-polarization that promotes
cultural pluralism. With the world economic center moving eastward, it is fully
possible for East Asia to become the third largest cultural center in the world,
following North America and West Europe.
Cultural Blend And Conflict
Each culture has its own national characteristics. With the construction and
hookup of information superhighways and the close interrelation between the
economies of the world, different countries and ethnic groups have forged
unprecedented interrelations. This greatly increases the chance of exchange and
collision between different countries.
Generally speaking, in contacts with different cultures, one ethnic group always
measures the others by its own value standards, either deepening understanding and
blending or broadening the divergence and causing friction and conflict. Neither
blend nor conflict is absolute; there is conflict in the process of blending,
while there is slow mutual infiltration tending towards blending even in the
process of conflict. This is an unavoidable phenomenon in contacts between
different cultures. One major advance in the modern cultural theory is that people
universally realize that cultures are mixed, different, interrelated and
interdependent. Edward Said held that the development and maintenance of each
culture needs another different and competitive culture, that is, the existence of
an alter ego.8 Undifferentiated culture is unrealistic and can be said to be
lopsided.
Divergence does not mean conflict, while blend does not mean the elimination of
national individuality. Correct realization of blend and conflict in cultural
development lies in exploring how to make different cultures blend and avoid
conflict; this is the requirement of peaceful development in human society.
Historically, there have existed many civilizations such as Islam, Confucianism
and Buddhism on the Asian continent. Over thousands of years they have been marked
by exchange and coexistence. Only after meeting with Western civilization, have
relations between rule and subjection appeared. Since the beginning of its reform
and opening, China has felt that it can absorb advanced technology and managerial
experience favorable to its modernization drive in contact with other (including
Western) civilizations. Facts have proved the coexistence of different
civilizations to be possible. Here the key lies in the attitude of mutual respect,
the position of equality, and in the full realization that this is a two-way
choice. Marx showed how history transfers into world history by bringing to light
from the angle of productive forces the importance of the extension of universal
human contacts to cultural accumulation and evolution. We must realize that the
interaction between Eastern and Western civilizations is the fundamental condition
for the progress of humankind. The 21st century is an era pf the globalization of
the coexistence of plural cultures and requires a corresponding “global
awareness”. The whole world cannot have but one kind of cultural values and one
voice. Exchanges, learning from each other’s strong points and blending between
different cultures will promote friendship between peoples of various countries
and ethnic groups. But taking an overweening attitude to push cultural power goes
against the trend of the times; it is bound to trigger or intensify contradictions
and conflicts between different cultures and to create a tense international
situation.
THE “CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS” THEORY IS A CULTURAL POWER THEORY
After the Cold War, some Western scholars have actively cooperated with U.S.-led
Western countries in pushing cultural power on developing countries and put
forward in succession such theories as “the end of history”, “the clash of
civilizations” and “post-colonialism”. They have attempted to create theoretical
foundations for their cultural infiltration and expansion under the cloak of
rationality and legality. Among these views, the “clash of civilizations” theory
has had the most extensive influence. It holds that in the next century, conflict
between civilizations will supplant ideological and other forms of conflict as the
dominant form of global conflict. We must analyze this theory in order to detect
its crux.
Behind Heavyheartedness
First of all, it must be noted that here the concept of civilization is basically
equal to the concept of culture. The two can be interchanged. For example,
“Confucian civilization” can also be called “Confucian culture”. Civilization is
an existential form of culture. Then to what does the “clash of civilizations”
theory specifically refer? Professor Samuel Huntington of Harvard University wrote
in the article “The Clash of Civilizations?” that non-Western civilizations no
longer remain objects, but have become actors. The centerpiece of international
politics will become the interaction between the West and non-Western
civilizations. In the near future, the focus of conflict will concentrate on
relations between the West and some Islamic-Confucian countries. He means that
non-Western civilizations have gone up on the international stage and stood up to
the West as equals, leading to cultural conflict.
In essence, this is entirely a cultural power theory that regards Western
civilization as the orthodox one which embodies the “absolute spirit”, to which
other civilizations should be subjected. Once non-Western civilizations have an
independent spirit and move from being “objects” to “actors”, there will be a
deluge of rebellion which should be “contained” and struck down. This thinking
represents the aspirations of some Western centralists. For instance, an article
in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said that the clash of
civilizations between Islam and the West is obvious and that political Islam seeks
to replace Western civilization so that Islamic civilization occupies the world’s
leading position.9 An article in German Die Welt also held that Oriental culture
is weakening the infiltration of Western ideology. It pointed out that with the
end of the Cold War various civilized societies outside the West seem to emit a
new radiant force, which is crippling the imported principles of Western life and
strengthening local cultural awareness.
As described above, world culture is moving towards diversification. There is not
only conflict, but also a blending of different cultures in their exchanges and
interchanges. The key lies in mutual respect and inclusiveness, which is
beneficial to cultural blending and coexistence. The “clash of civilizations”
theory has absolutized local ethnic and religious cultural conflicts in history
and reality. It has turned a blind eye to the megatrend of peaceful coexistence,
exchange and development between ethnic groups and cultures. In cultural
development history, while Western culture has made great contributions to human
civilization, Oriental culture is also a gem of human ideology. They should
exchange with each other and learn from each other’s strong points in order to
benefit humankind, rather than be used to repel each other and contend for
hegemony.
If Not Power, What?
The “clash of civilizations” theory has naturally been criticized in many
quarters. For this reason, S. Huntington wrote another article entitled “If Not
Civilization, What?: Paradigms of the Post-Cold War World”, reiterating that
civilization is the source of post-Cold War conflicts.
Cultural power is bound to accompany political power. For example, U.S. foreign
policy has always included a plan of disseminating U.S. cultural values to the
rest of the world, of which exporting the mode of U.S. political development is
one of the major elements. In the international political arena, the U.S. has
always brandished a menacing club, now sanctioning this country, now punishing
that country. The world has on occasion been divided into four types of countries
-- “law-abiding,” “newly-emerging,” “barbarous” and “gloomy”. To guarantee U.S.
interests, it has been considered imperative to have an operable international
system in conformity with U.S. standards. The U.S. has been regarding China as its
potential rival and after the “clash of civilizations” theory very many pages
about the so-called “China threat” theory have appeared in some overseas
newspapers and periodicals. China has always adhered to the Five Principles of
Peaceful Coexistence and advocated settling international disputes through
peaceful means. In its modern process of seeking national and ethnic interests, it
has never expanded to other regions and fields outside its homeland. Where did the
“China threat” come from?
The so-called human rights issue is a political slogan of which the U.S. is most
fond and a main means by which the U.S. pursues its cultural power. It accuses
Singapore of being an Oriental authoritarian state on the grounds of infringing on
human rights. For this reason, Lee Kuan Yew has made a series of statements. On
the one hand, he expounds the divergence between concepts of family, society and
state in Oriental civilization and those in Western civilization. On the other
hand, he criticizes Western values based upon individualism and various problems
occurring in U.S. society.
However, the U.S. has managed with difficulty to subject other countries to its
cultural values. Time and again it has issued human rights reports with vicious
slanders and charges against human rights situations in Eastern countries,
especially China, interfering in other countries’ internal affairs. This has
aroused dissatisfaction and resistance from many countries. In reply to the
question: “if not civilization, what?” aimed at establishing the dominant position
of Western civilization, we would counter with a question “if not power, what?”.
Marxist cultural theory, based on the fundamentals of historical materialism,
fully affirms the diversity of various ethnic and social cultures and firmly
opposes an absolutization of any culture. It opposes cultural expansionism and
rejects cultural relativism. As early as the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels
predicted the trend of world integration:
In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have
intercourse in every direction, universal interdependence of nations. And as in
material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of
individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-
mindedness become more and more impossible and from the numerous national and
local literatures, there arises a world literature.
Today, when the world has become a “global village”, all ethnic cultures should
join hands in creating a more rational and healthy world culture based on
maintaining and developing individuality.
Deng Xiaoping’s theory of building socialist culture with Chinese characteristics
is the result of combining the universal truth of Marxism with concrete Chinese
cultural practice. Under the guidance of this thinking, the CCCPC “Resolution on
Several Important Issues in Strengthening Socialist Spiritual Civilization” put
forward the concrete objectives of the struggle to build a socialist spiritual
civilization. We will not only actively absorb excellent foreign civilizational
achievements and carry forward our country’s traditional culture, but also prevent
cultural refuse from dissemination, clear it away, and withstand the attempts of
hostile forces to “Westernize” and “split” China. In international cultural
exchanges, we will insist on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence and in
order to contribute to the progress of human civilization oppose any exercise of
cultural power.
NOTES
1. Quoted from Dai Wenrong, “From ‘Orientalism’ to ‘Cultural Imperialism’”,
Foreign Social Sciences, No. 6, 1996.
2. Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, Vol. 3, p. 275.
3. Washington Post, October 7, 1995.
4. See Jiang Danlin, Eastern Path of Rejuvenation (Guangdong Education Publishing
House, 1996), p. 2.
5. Quoted from Abstract of Foreign Modern Philosophy and Social Sciences, No. 12,
1991.
6. Gu Ping, “Asia Is Disgusted with Cold War Noise”, October 11, 1996.
7. Quoted from Fang Li, “Post-Cold War Cultural ‘Invasion’ and ‘Anti-invasion’ in
International Relations”, Strategy and Management, March 1, 1996.
8. Edward Said, “Orient Is Not Orient---Orientalist Era on the Verge of Dying
Out”, Foreign Social Sciences, No. 6, 1996.
9. Quoted from Fang Li, “Post-Cold War Cultural ‘Invasion’ and ‘Anti-invasion’ in
International Relations”, Strategy and Management, March 1, 1996.
****
CHAPTER IV
AESTHETIC CULTURE: FROM TRADITION TO MODERNITY
CHEN CHAONAN
AESTHETIC CULTURE DOES NOT BEGIN IN MODERN TIMES
In contemporary China aesthetic culture has already become a hot topic in
academia, business, and mass media. Studies and theses concerning aesthetic
culture appear frequently; in business transactions the words "aesthetic culture"
often are used as a sort of decoration. It has become widely known through the
channels of the mass media: newspapers and magazines, TV and radio. Therefore it
has been stated that "aesthetic culture is a new phenomenon cropping up in the
course of the development of modern aesthetics and arts."1
But as a matter of fact, aesthetic culture is really not newborn in contemporary
society, nor is it a special feature of the market economy. The attitudes people
take towards the world can be classified generally into three types: knowledge,
utility and aesthetics, which correspond to truth, good and beauty. Sometimes
these three attitudes cannot be separated clearly in real life. Ernst Cassirer
noted: "It is man’s special characteristic that he is not limited to take one sole
specific attitude towards reality, but can think in terms of images, apart from
concepts and utility."2
The attempt to put human activity into images can be seen clearly in "Li" (ritual)
and "Yue" (music) in ancient China. The basic significance of "Li" in primitive
society is to worship god. But in the process of changing into a slave society the
basic meaning of "Li" was turned into recording merit, governing state and holding
ritual. In its primitive sense "Yue" does not indicate music but various kinds of
artistic activities including music. If used in a broad sense this implies any
activity that makes people feel happy. So "Yue" assumes the meaning of happiness.
In such events as worshipping god, recording merits and governing the state, in
order to cover the apparent religious, utilitarian and political purposes, some
proper mode of expression must be found. This can be by turning to images, as this
not only makes it easy to accept ideas in a visual manner and to put them into
concrete performance, but also is able to inspire one’s passion and produce a kind
of resonance so as to achieve an edifying effect. For instance, China is well know
for its bronze ware, and the "Ding" (an ancient cooking vessel with two loop-
handles and three legs) can be regarded as its special representative. The
following passage is found in the Chinese ancient literature "The king sent
someone to bring gifts to a chancellor in recognition of his service. Seeing the
large `Ding’ given him as a gift, the chancellor asked about its size and weight.
The envoy replied: the significance of `Ding’ does not lie in its size and weight,
but in its symbolizing things that make ordinary people tell good from evil and
loyalty from betrayal." So "Ding"’s function is to display morality and nothing
else of importance is attached. Morality is both the spiritual principle and
behavioral norm. If one would like to translate this into an image, building a
"Ding" is one of the proper methods. The aesthetic characteristics of such images
come from their shape and decoration which still are admired by day people.
For E. Cassirer, "Art can be regarded as a painting that implies the meaning of
moral truth. It is looked upon as the expression of a sort of metaphor that covers
some ethical significance."3 We can see from the "Ding"’s shape, decoration and
forging process the moral spirit that is displayed through its image in the form
of artistic exaggeration. As this endeavor to bring the features of aesthetic
imagery to human activities occurred at the beginning of cultural development, we
cannot say that such practice has nothing to do with an aesthetic culture or that
it is a product exclusive to modern society.
The Chinese definition of aesthetic character can be found in Modern Aesthetic
Systems, a textbook on aesthetics used widely in colleges and universities. Owing
to its wide use, its definition is to some extent accepted by most people:
"Aesthetic culture is the combination of materialized product, ideological system
and behavioral pattern; it is an important focus for the research of aesthetic
sociology."4 This definition covers three aspects: 1. artificial products with
aesthetic features, including various kinds of artistic works; 2. the ideological
system concerning taste, ideas and evaluative standards of aesthetic activity; and
3. the aesthetic activities carried out by man, such as creation, appreciation and
so on. According to this definition, no clear line can be drawn between history
and the modern age, between East and West. Aesthetic culture appears when a
nationality or a country begins to acquire culture; it exists permanently in the
course of the historical development of a nationality or country.
The contents listed in the definition focusing on artistic works, aesthetic
ideology and aesthetic activity involve the problem of the relation between
aesthetic culture and the arts. Undoubtedly, the creation, evaluation and
appreciation of materialized products in artistic activity manifest the aesthetic
relationship between man and the world. The arts are an important aspect in
aesthetic culture, but people have aesthetic needs and make efforts in other kinds
of cultural activities which have aesthetic characteristics. Thus, they too are
able to establish some kind of relationship with man. It seems inappropriate to
restrict ourselves to artistic activity when researching aesthetic culture. These
aesthetic cultural activities constitute another important content of aesthetic
culture, which therefore is constituted of two basic components: 1. the arts, and
2. other aesthetic cultural elements.
AESTHETIC CULTURE IN WORSHIPPING GOD, RECORDING MERIT AND SETTING RITUALS
In primitive cultures, which had no classifications, music, dance, religion and
sorcery were mixed together. In religious devotions sacrifice, worship, fortune
telling and sorcery were all accompanied with song, dance and music of primitive
artistic form. It is recounted from ancient times that Sheng ordered musicians to
welcome with music their ancestor who was a half-man, half-god idol. In this way,
worship of ancestors was given sensible form in the rhythm and tune of the music,
and thereby attained to social value.
Another ancient Chinese book recounts the story about worshipping heaven. Social
leaders should take the lead in paying homage to heaven with song and dance in
order to show that their leading position was endowed by heaven. In this turning
to singing and dancing the implications of the worship heaven were given artistic
expression.
In the transition to a slave society recording merits, governing the state and
setting rituals became the primary meaning of "Li". Ling Wu of Zhou dynasty died
shortly after he conquered King Chou of the Yin dynasty; King Cheng succeeded the
monarch and appointed Duke Shoo to assist in official affairs. Six years later the
country was peaceful and thriving, so Duke Shoo began to set rituals and compose
music to replace military power with civil administration for the governance of
the state. It is said that national accomplishments and social security could not
be fulfilled without the composition of music and the establishment of ritual.
In ancient times, ritual and music usually were mentioned together, but this does
not mean that "Yue" had as high a position as "Li". "Li" was in the dominant
position to which "Yue" was subordinate; "Li" was the goal, "Yue" the means. "Yue"
must be in the course of "Li" and serve its purpose. Nevertheless, "Yue" is not
passive or negative. It brings emotional coloring to "Li" and can display
figuratively the necessity and importance of "Li" to society. In one story "Li"
and "Yue" are used as the same thing. A chancellor of the State of Lu paid an
official visit to the State of Jin. The king of Jin arranged to welcome him with
music. First, when three tunes of music in (...........) were played, the envoy
from Lu did not come forward to meet the king. Then the king ordered the musician
to sing three songs in (.........), the envoy still did not advance. At last, when
the musician sang three songs in (.........), the envoy came forward to show his
respect to the king. The reason for the envoy’s action is that the music in
(...........) was used for the king to feast dukes or princes, and songs in
(...........) were sung when dukes or princes met each other. Only songs in
(...........) was music for the king to receive state officials. The envoy knew
the rituals and regulation implied in the music very well, and would not violate
the regulation to enjoy too high a reception.
AESTHETIC CULTURE IN RELATION TO VIRTUE, AMBITION AND SENTIMENT
The merging of "Li" and "Yue" in the early period of slave society later turned
into a long tradition of Chinese culture. Apart from its meaning as worshipping
heaven, recording merits and setting rituals, "Li" was used in a broad sense to
indicate the moral norms of feudal society. Artistic activity like music played
the role of moral edification.
It is pointed out in an ancient book that the purpose of setting rituals is to
bring various kinds of social behavior under control and keep society from
deviating from the norms. Poems were written in order to express the contents of
rituals. This is the origin of the view that music was created for expressing
virtues. Such artistic forms as music and poetry should be used to display noble
virtues and should become a figurative approach to spread noble virtues
everywhere. "Virtue" is the aim of "music" and "music" is the expression of
"virtue". Virtue acquires form and feeling through "music", and thereby aesthetic
features. In ancient China, some famous tunes have clear moral implications. The
work of Qu Yuan Ode to the Orange, "despite its description of the beauty of an
orange and the shape and color of the tree, is intended to symbolize such human
virtues as selflessly clinging to virtues and independence without following out-
of-date models. His works conform to the direction that "music was aimed to
display virtues."
An expression similar to "music is aimed to manifest virtues" is "music is used to
keep virtues." That is to say, if a king wanted to keep his state in permanent
order and long peace, he should be content with moral norms, follow the rituals
and practice justice. This relates artistic activity and national politics.
Confucius said that if "Li" and "Yue" were not considerably developed in a state,
criminal law and the regulation of reward and punishment would not be proper. This
is a political function of the arts. (..........) is the earliest work in our
country about musical theory. It points out that ritual, music, criminal law and
politics, though different, must be unified for the common goal, namely, to enable
the people to share a similar aspiration and to direct state administration along
a regular track. In rituals, criminal punishment and politics, the arts should not
only serve the common purpose, but also endow these events with a concrete visible
image.
In ancient China, with the view that music was to display virtue, it was suggested
also that poetry be used to express aspiration (..........). In ancient language "
" (poem) is equal to " " (aspiration), the two characters expressing the same
meaning. The early poems were used to express the intention of gods and ancestors
in the events of politics, religion and hunting. Later poetry changed so as to
express the author’s thoughts and motivation, ambition and aspiration, life
experience and internal feelings.
In the Han dynasty " ", an important paper discussed poetry, "..........",
affirming its connection with ambition, and at the same time recognizing it as the
external linguistic expression of the mind’s activity. This enriched the cultural
connotation of "............" and thus established the position of " ....."
(sentiment or feeling). Since that time, poetry as an aesthetic form expressing
feeling has attracted the attention of ever more scholars and artists.
In the Wei and Jin periods (3rd century A.D.), the scholar Lu Ji proposed that the
beauty of poetry came from the rich feeling contained therein. This can be
understood to mean that the beauty of poetry was produced by its rhythm, image and
metaphor. At that time some artists paid great attention to the expression of
sentiment in poetry, painting and music, and also strove for the creation of new
artistic forms. In this way, art itself was greatly developed. Lu Xun said: "The
age of Chao Pei can be said to be a conscious age of literature or an age of arts,
for art as indicated in modern times."5 This is of special significance in Chinese
cultural history.
After the Wei and Jin periods, not only did a conscious sense of art appear, but
aesthetic features were attached to a person’s talents, appearances and speech,
which formed the fashion of the times. The speech and behavior of the officials of
that time involved one’s demeanor and temperament. To find beauty in a person’s
behavior and manner is to be conscious of one’s own beauty.
AESTHETIC CULTURE IN ENTERTAINMENT, EXPRESSION OF FEELING AND MARKETING
The long duration of Chinese feudal society enabled Confucian ideology to dominate
for a very extended period. It put much emphasis on the edifying function of art
and the ethical purpose of culture. In such a context art and other sorts
aesthetic culture had very advanced social functions in the service of politics,
morality and religion. In the relationship of arts to feeling, taste and leisure,
though the Confucian ideology exerted a confining influence, some development took
place during that period. For instance, poetry in the Tang dynasty paid great
attention to feelings, and some Tang poems are rich in feeling or sentiment and
taste. The great poet of the Tang dynasty, Bai Juyi, said: "In what affects
people, feeling can be counted as the first." The emphasis on sentiment is very
clear here. The man of letters Wang Ruoxu in the late Song dynasty said: the
sentiment implied in poetry is quite different from ordinary feelings. It is a
"charm and delicate taste", i.e., a kind of aesthetic sentiment. This kind of
understanding is very close to the distinction made by modern aestheticians
between feeling in daily life and that expressed in artistic works.
In the period of the Ming and Qing dynasty, the Chinese feudal culture reached its
mature and final stage. The Confucian influence was marked by "music aimed at
displaying virtue, poetry for ambition, and reason applied in poetry." Though this
remained very strong, social developments created many conditions for aesthetic
culture. Many excellent novels, dramas, paintings, calligraphy, horticulture, and
works of music appeared at that time. The standard of literary and artistic
creation and criticism were varied as well. Writer Zhu Yunming said: "The
situation derives from the contact between the person and the object, while
sentiment comes from the contact between the person and situation." The dramatist,
Tang Xianzu, said: "Feelings or sentiments and dreams lead to the creation of
drama." Writer Yan Zhongdao said: "Poetry is mainly intended for airing one’s
inborn nature and inspiration." The musician Zhu Zaiyu said: "Elegance is the
highest beauty." Thus, sentiment, taste, nature and inspiration, beauty, etc., all
took shape and became the criteria for evaluating the arts and aesthetic culture.
What most attracted people’s attention was the rise of popular novels and folk
art. The popularity of such sentimental and chivalrous novels as Dream in Red
Chamber sufficiently demonstrated the improvement of artistic reality and
entertainment. The folk printing of large numbers of New Year’s paintings
fulfilled the demand of farmers for the celebration of the New Year’s Festival,
family culture and entertainment. The subject matter of New Year’s paintings in
the Ming and Qing dynasties varied widely from myth, legend, and dramatic story to
men farming and women weaving, celebrations and congratulations. They became
almost an art gallery reflecting rural life. Behind the popular literature, drama
and arts stood the Chinese people who at the turn of the century showed increased
demand for aesthetic culture.
In the 20th century Chinese society has undergone radical changes during which the
social functions of various kinds of arts has been fully displayed. Worshipping
god, recording merit, ritual settings, displaying virtues, expressing aspirations
and sentiments still were closely related to the arts. Their social functions drew
support through representation in images; they were carried forward by their
aesthetic features. Moreover, such functions as entertain-ment, sentimental
expression and marketing which originally were implied in aesthetic culture were
developed and resulted in many characteristics of modern aesthetic culture.
Entertainment and the expression of feelings as the original functions of the arts
never received as much attention as they have in the 20th century. While the
modern industry creates plentiful material wealth, at the same time it imposes the
patterns of industrial production upon social life, such as a quick pace, a rigid
social order and a noisy urban environment, thereby pushing people into a strange,
gigantic social machine. While obtaining material living conditions far better
than before, people also have lost many things they once possessed, such as a warm
and peaceful environment for the family and close relations with friends and
relatives. Now the family has become a market for making money; furniture,
electrical appliances, foods and medicine all pour into the family.
More unfortunate is the rise in the proportion of families with but a single
parent. Material wealth cannot make up for the spiritual loss and suffering.
Modern people need entertainment and leisure to ease the tension of work and to
ease their rigid schedules. They need also to break through spiritual repression
in order to recover a balance of body and mind. They need not only those arts
which create the peaceful and harmonious mood which Henri Matisse compared to a
restful armchair, but also the expression of feelings to pacify distorted mental
states as, for example, the loud cry as described in Shout, the well-known
painting of Edward Munch. Since people need entertainment and leisure, the
entertainment and leisure industry develops through artistic forms which inspire
the sense of beauty. For instance, on TV, programs which integrate games,
entertainment and artistic form have a high level of viewers. Such programs would
be unimaginable in the 70s. People today need to express their feelings, and
cultural and artistic activities are a natural means for this. Shouts in popular
songs, though lacking a sense of beauty, vent deeply buried feelings. Though the
improvised movements of the disco do not require the basic training needed in
artistic dance, still it can display the individual’s personality and produce the
joy of a balanced body and mind.
The new cultural needs of modern society are utilized by commerce to develop a
commercial culture never before known. Industrial and agricultural products are
turned into consumer goods through commercial channels. Marketing gives rise to
commercial advertisement which under the stimulation of large profits brings
various artistic methods into play. Painting, music, movies, sculpture all feed
the image approach to marketing. In the commercial streets of Shanghai one can see
as advertising not only paintings of all forms, but imitations of Michelangelo’s
sculptures in front of shops. Female film stars with world reputations can be seen
in TV commercial ads. Such marketing requires an aesthetic culture.
John Dewey said: "There is a sort of art which is multiplying fastest which
includes structures built in the name of architecture, paintings under the cover
of art, novels and drama under the sign of literature and so on. In reality, these
works are, to a large extent, the concrete expression of commercialization in
production. . . . Their owners’ qualification for catering to elegance is only
their economic status."6 This suggests the huge power of commerce in modern
aesthetic culture, both positive and negative.
It is possible, however, that cultural aesthetics has a deeper significance. It
already has been suggested that aesthetic culture should be the basic component of
the general culture and include its ways of thinking, living and education.7 This
would form a new project for research in aesthetic culture.
NOTES
1. Li Xijian, "The Structural System of Aesthetic Culture", Learning and Probing,
no. 6, 1992.
2. E. Cassirer, An Essay on Man (New York, 1994), ch. 9.
3. Ibid.
4. Ye Lang, ed., Modern Aesthetic Systems (Beijing: Beijing University Press), p.
259.
5. Lu Xun, The Complete Works of Lu Xun, vol. 3.
6. John Dewey, Experience and Nature (1925), p. 296.
7. News Letter of China (Aesthetic Society, 1996), no. 1.
****
http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-16/chapter_v.htm
CHAPTER V
THE LOSS OF THE SUBJECT AND THE DISORDER OF VALUES:
Critical Reflections on Present Cultural Research
YU WUJIN
In the present circumstances in which everyone is talking about culture and a
jumble of all kinds of viewpoints are on display, what is the historic mission of
philosophy, now and for a long time to come? It is important that philosophy not
follow the fashion and simply drift with the tide, for example, building a new
system of cultural philosophy, or translating all sorts of new trends into
cultural thought, etc. Rather it must aim at critical reflection to clarify the
essential viewpoints which exist generally in present cultural research.
Otherwise, the more we talk about cultural research, the further we are likely to
wander from the truth. In present cultural research, the coexistence and conflict
of many different viewpoints is obvious. Some call this a "multi-cultural state",
which, of course, is beyond reproach. Moving from the past "unitary cultural
state" to the present "multi-cultural state" is a type of historical progress, but
it is not sufficient simply to stop on this point. To admit a "multi-cultural
state" and to treat different ideas on culture with lenience and openness, though
necessary, does not mean that the existence of each viewpoint on culture is
reasonable, or that one viewpoint on culture has no right to think critically
about other viewpoints. In fact, without critical thinking, not only will the
"multi-cultural state" degenerate into a simple juxtaposition of viewpoints, but
all cultural research also will lose its vitality.
THE LOSS OF THE SUBJECT
If one looks closely at the very different viewpoints on culture, one finds a
general and significant phenomenon, namely the loss of the subject and a disorder
of values. Here "subject" refers to the Chinese people in the 1990s; the so-called
"loss of subject" refers to the subject’s loss of any objective position upon
which to stand. This kind of loss of subject or of identity necessarily causes a
disorder, and even a reversal of the appreciation of the value of the subject,
thus leaving it to float like duckweed on all kinds of different ideas. This loss
of subject appears in the following circumstances.
The first is the misplacement of the subject, namely, the subject does not regard
itself as Chinese in the 1990s, but replaces its own position by that of other
people when researching all sorts of cultural phenomena and problems. Of course,
"the people" referred to here are varied, but the most typical or common are the
following two kinds: one is the ancients, especially Confucianism as represented
by Confucius himself. Although such a research position as "approve the past, not
the present", "stress the past, not the present" is not so flagrantly manifest as
the school of the quintessence of Chinese culture bitterly attacked by Lu Xun, but
its latent appearance in the present cultural research can be found everywhere.
One example is critically to praise the Chinese cultural tradition,
unconditionally worshipping such ancient texts as The Confucian Analects, The
Works of Mencius, The Book of Chang, etc., while avoiding or concealing the
historical limitations of Confu-cianism, etc. These are instances of the subject
misplacing his or her position onto the ancients.
Another example is the attitude toward contemporary representatives of Western
modernism and postmodern cultural thoughts. In recent years, Chinese scholars have
scrambled for such new thoughts coming from the West as anti-rationalism, existen-
tialism, the philosophy of the absurd, deconstructionism, post-colonialism, etc.
They have employed the position, attitude and methods of these new thoughts
uncritically to describe and even to comment on Chinese modernization and social
and cultural problems, while neglecting to a great extent their identity. In
pursuing moder-nization contemporary Chinese society has a completely different
life interest and value-orientation than contemporary Western society. Therefore,
when the subject uncritically replaces his or her own position with that of such
representatives of the Western modernist or post-modernism schools on culture as
Camus, Lyotard, Derrida, etc., they not only cannot correctly solve the types of
problems which contemporary Chinese society is facing, but misdirect the
discussion.
A second mode of loss of the subject is prejudice, that is, the subject being
unable to master the objective value-orientation needed by the Chinese in the
1990s, replaces this with one that is purely subjective. The subject’s prejudice
appears mainly in two inclina-tions: one is that the subject evaluates all sorts
of cultural problems and phenomena completely according to one’s own liking, for
example, the one who worships Lao Zi praises him up to the heavens or those who
worship Confucius and Mencius praise them as perfect sages, forgetting that
Confucius himself has even said: "I am fortunate that if I have any errors, people
are sure to know them" (The Confucian Analects). In contrast, people who dislike
Confucius denigrate his thought as devoid of any merit. Another example is how
often in investigating cultural and social problems people miss the essence of
these problems, and grasp only some partial, accidental, temporary or detailed
elements. This echoes the common expression that prejudice is further from the
truth than innocence. In a word, setting out from a purely subjective value-
orientation and writing articles interpreting the six scriptures seems to be a
high activity of the subject, but in fact it is a new form of the subject’s
ignorant, homeless and embarrassed state.
The third is lack of awareness of the subject, namely, when research on the
subject’s identity and on such cultural phenomena as cultural character, cultural
events, texts, etc., attempts to clear up any elements and feelings through so-
called purely objectively investigation of all objects in order to make not value
judgements, but factual judgements. This research attitude seems extremely fair,
and even can be honored by such high sounding terms as scientific research. In
fact, it is a timid approach through which the subject avoids the difficultly of
researching the life world in which he or she lives and avoids ascertaining the
value-orientation he should possess. Actually, factual judgments completely devoid
of value dimensions never exist. Even in research on the natural sciences, our
choice of research theme and our interpretation of its meaning indicate our
values.
From the above analysis it becomes manifest that loss of the subject is a key
problem in cultural research. If we leave aside the subject’s identity to expand
blindly the range of cultural research, for instance, to prostitution, tea,
dietary cultures, etc., or argue endlessly on some side issues, we cannot lead
general cultural research along a healthy trajectory. Nor can the loss of subject
be avoided only by continually using such expressions as "I think" or "I find" or
"I believe". On the contrary, the more these sentences are used, the more the
rootless, homeless and embarrassed state of the subject is revealed. Besides, as
also can be made out from the above analysis, the loss of subject necessarily
causes confusion, even disorder in one’s value views, as well as errors in one’s
cultural critique. This deforms "plural cultural states" into purely exterior and
pseudo-morphologies.
THE LOSS OF HISTORICITY AS THE CAUSE OF THE LOSS OF SUBJECT OR OF IDENTITY
Let us look further into what actually causes the universal phenomena of loss of
subject and disorder in values. There are two primary reasons.
Objective Reasons
One reason is objective. With the development of the market economy and the
acceleration of social transition all sorts of problems have sprung up. To solve
these people resort to various ideas and cultural viewpoints. When all forms of
cultural views are chaotically on display, however, contemporary Chinese scholars,
who have just freed themselves from the pure ideological cultivation of the style
of the "Great Cultural Revolution," are at a loss as to what to do. It is like
Grandma Liu visiting a great theme park. Under the clash of the cultures pouring
in, the standpoint as well as the monistic axiological perspective begins to
oscillate.
By continually translating and introducing new thoughts and using them in a semi-
skilled manner some try to indicate that they are continually thinking and in
earnest. This unceasing pursuit of new ideas and terms and continued change of
one’s position seems to some people to be thinking in earnest, but it may be only
loss of the subject’s identity. Of course, in all fairness, whenever a society is
in a period of great transition, the above phenomena are almost inevitable. But
this should not continue for long, for drifting with the tide without thinking and
criticizing is contrary to the contemporary scholar’s mission.
Subjective Reasons
The other reason for the loss of the subject and a disorder of values is
subjective, namely, the peeling off of historicity. This appears in two respects.
The first is the peeling off of subjective historicity. As mentioned above,
"subject" in this article refers to the Chinese person living at the turn of the
millennia, or the contemporary Chinese to use an imprecise concept. What is the
historicity of the contemporary Chinese, and how can it be peeled off? Generally
speaking, this means the historical circumstances in which they have placed
themselves. These are complicated, but here we refer not to the whole scope and
detail of these historical circumstances, but to the essentials which are its
developing trends. To contemporary Chinese, these historical circumstances appear
to constitute an extremely rich and concrete life-world. At the heart of this
world and promoting its forward development is the emergence of a Chinese style
market economy. This is where the historicity of the contemporary Chinese lies.
The Chinese market economy possesses both the general characteristics of a common
market economy and the particularity formed in the Chinese cultural context. With
regard to its general character, the rise and develop-ment of a market economy is
bound to lead to the disintegration of the primitive ethical spirit based on
natural blood relationships and local connections, and to the rise of new outlooks
based on independent personality and centrally characterized by the spirit of
democracy, freedom, equality and science. With regard to its particularity, the
Chinese market economy emerged and developed under the conditions of a planned
economy radically characterized by administrative decree. Therefore the existence
of such phenomena as administrative power interfering unreasonably, and even
illegally with economic life, and the use of one’s political power for one’s own
profit, corruption, etc., are facts without question. Under the circumstances, it
is especially important to advocate equal opportunity and social fairness and to
set up and perfect various laws and regulations.
In a word, the inescapable historicity of contemporary Chinese, especially those
living in the 1900s, is embodied in the Chinese style market economy. To develop
the market economy in a healthy manner, namely, to move it forward in a more
perfect and reasonable manner, it is necessary to develop a new value system which
cooperates with this style. Its core idea is precisely the spirit of freedom,
equality, democracy, science and social fairness which presuppose the
establishment of an independent personality as mentioned above. This is the
objective value orientation that contem-porary Chinese, especially those living in
the 1900s, should possess. Those who consciously can apply this value orientation
in the analysis and research regarding different cultural phenomena are those who
really understand their own historicity.
Otherwise, the subject’s historicity is in the state of being peeled off, not to
say that this state naturally leads to loss of the subject’s identity and to
disorder in values. For example, the basic theme of Western modernism and
postmodernism is to reflect the social problems caused by a highly developed
science and tech-nology. Obviously, this kind of reflection is a profound
contemporary Western apprehension of its own historicity. But, these contemporary
Western themes cannot simply be moved into contemporary Chinese subject. In
contrast to the contemporary West, the Chinese are moving into modernization, that
is to say, in contemporary Chinese society it still is very important to devote
effort to developing science and technology and to expanding the scientific
spirit. Consider how the chaotic state of administration leads to endless
bureaucratic delays in the construction of roads and houses, or the superstitions
which pervade popular, especially rural, culture. There is reason to repeat Hu
Shi’s discourse of seventy years ago in the well-known "debate between science and
metaphysics". If we look about everywhere there are altars for divine sages and
Taoist and Buddhist shrines everywhere with divine prescriptions and ghost photos.
With such underdeveloped traffic and industry where do we get the right to exclude
science.
Certainly, compared with the time of Hu Shi, contemporary Chinese science and
technology has already developed to some de-gree, but, who will doubt that China
still needs to develop a scientific technology and spirit for realizing
modernization? In recent years, some mainland scholars have advocated objecting to
scientism and expanding the spirit of humanism. Outwardly, they seems to try to
let contemporary Chinese society absorb in advance the experience and lessons
which Western society have undergone in the process of modernization. However,
this is actually the complicated response of a conservative psyche contending with
the historical process of Chinese modernization. Indeed, to oversee and contain
the extension of scientism in some degree is significant. We should realize also,
however, that in contemporary Chinese society the urgent matter is not to prevent
the popularization and development of science and technology under the excuse of
anti-scientism, but to develop scientific technology and to cultivate the
scientific spirit. This goes beyond simple utility and bravely devotes one to
truth (such as Coper-nicus, Galileo, Bruno, Darwin, Huxley, etc., in Western
history). To advocate an ill-timed and excessive containment of scientism, to
disregard the scientific spirit and expand lopsidedly the spirit of humanism is a
typical mode of peeling off the historicity of subject. Inevitably this would lead
to a loss of the subject and a disorder of values. Perhaps this state can be
called conflict between the life situation of preindustrial society and the
cultural state of mind of post-industrial society.
The second peeling off of objective historicity is found when the subject
researches such cultural issues as the cultural character, ideas and affairs,
etc., but does not organically associate the theoretical side of the object with
its social and historical side, thus peeling off the historicity of the object.
For example, when some scholars conceal the great difference between ancient
Chinese society and contemporary society in its present historical circum-stances,
and discuss abstractly the relation in theory, the historicity of the object of
which they talk is peeled off.
Equally, when scholars conceal the historicity of Chinese and Western society,
abstractly comparing similarities and differences of the two cultures, they make
the same mistake. For instance, some contemporary Chinese scholars propose
expending the humanistic spirit of the Confucian school, in terms of abstract
theory. This is beyond reproach. How can one gain say or contradict such
humanistic ideas as "let the father be kind, and son filial" advocated in
Confucianism? However, the problem is that we cannot remain on the side of
abstract theory, but must present the concrete, social and historical connotation
which the Confucian humanistic spirit possessed in the historical circumstances at
this time, namely, historicity. Only thus can we bring to light the correct
attitude for treating the spirit.
The Confucian Analects: Xue Er have the maxim that the superior man bends his
attention to what is radical. That established, the practical applications follow
naturally. Filial piety and fraternal submission are the root of all benevolent
actions. That is, in his time he hoped to found a humanistic spirit based upon
"filial piety and fraternal submission". In this spirit a man was taken first for
son and brother, in other words, he was regarded as an element of the patriarchal
clan system which turned to natural blood relationships for its ties and regarded
patriarchy as its center. In the opinion of Confucius, not only were man and woman
not equal, but neither were father and son; thus there is the direction that the
son conceal something for his father in the Confucian Analects.
It is well-known that the humanistic spirit in modern civilized society is based
on the independent personality, that is to say, man is not first regarded as son
and brother, but as an independent personality. In family life, modern people
still advocate "let the father be kind, and the son filial", but this cultural
idea has been given a new social and historical connotation, i.e., "kind" and
"filial" are discussed on the basis of independent personalities and equal re-
lations between people. To disregard this concrete character of society and
history, and to discuss abstractly the humanistic spirit of the Confucian school
necessarily obliterates the essential difference between the modern and ancient
humanistic spirit, thereby leading to confusion and even a crisis of cultural
construction.
For an example in Western culture one might ask why philoso-phical circles in our
country inquire into the identity philosophy represented by Fichte, Schelling and
Hegel. Often they analyze this in its purely theoretical aspect, namely, as
maintaining that thinking and being are identical, thereby denying agnosticism in
epistemology , etc. They completely neglect its social and historical
characteristics. In fact, identity philosophy was put forward under the influence
of the French Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Its social and historical
connotation, in accord with Hegel’s view, is to "construct reality according to
thought". In other words, it means using the general principles of Enlightenment
thought to remodel German social reality. Thus, "identity philosophy" is not an
abstract and tasteless philosophical doctrine, but a kind of revolutionary theory
expressed by German philosophers in obscure language. In studying "identity
philosophy", to disregard this concrete historical intentionality is to peel off
the historicity of this research object, leading to a loss of the subject and to
disorder in values.
By way of summary, it is not difficult to see that the subjective reason for the
phenomena of loss of the subject and the disorder of values is caused mainly by
peeling off historicity. This tells us that in any cultural research, it is
decisive that the subject clarify in advance its historicity so as to identify
consciously the objective value-orientation which the subject should establish.
TWO MEANINGS OF TIME AND THE NEED FOR AN EXISTENTIAL ONTOLOGICAL HERMENEUTICS
The main point in all this thusfar has remained in the shadows of negation and
critique. Now , we must answer such questions from the positive side, namely, how
to avoid loss of the subject and disorder in values in cultural research, in other
words, how to clarify historicity in cultural research, and thereby to establish
the objective value coordinate of the subject.
Before solving these problems, we need to clarify in advance the preconceived
ideas that most easily lead the subject along the wrong path. The "central axis
era" theory put forward by German philosopher, Jaspers, is just such a
preconceived idea. It seemed to him that from the eight to the second century B.C.
was the period in which Confucius, Sakyamuni, Socrates, etc. founded respectively
the different normative cultural forms. This age is called the central axis era
because the subsequent development of cultures is under the control of the
normative cultural forms of this era. If one understands Jaspers only according to
the transference and development of normative cultural forms, one cannot say he is
wrong. But his error lies in regarding that era as the central axis, which implies
that later developments of culture revolve around this "central axis era". This
theory is focused on the phenomenon of the misplaced subject. In fact, the
"central axis era" lies never in the past, but in the present. The present, of
course, is a relative concept; it is what the history human beings attains.
Contemporaries are those living at that time: their life interest is the genuine
central axis, starting from which one interprets ancient cultures and their
character.
The Romans and Greeks lay in tombs; their culture was not aroused until the
Renaissance European spirit acquired maturity. Similarly, the sense of long
periods of history which we now regard as annals and many documents which are
still silent will be made manifest in the light of new life, and will speak once
again.
In view of this, Croce put forward the well-known proposition that "all genuine
history is contemporary history," affirming the central function of contemporaries
and of contemporary culture. In fact, according to Croce’s logic, even such a word
as "the Renaissance" is not exact, because it easily can cause the misunder-
standing that modern Europe is the sudden return of ancient civilization. The real
circumstance, however, is just the contrary; modern Europeans employ the slogans
and costumes of ancient characters only to play the program of a new life. Here,
Croce actually put forward a kind of "new-central-axis-era" theory radically
opposed to Jaspers. It proposes that to avoid the mis-placement of the subject’s
position on the ancient position, namely, the replacement of the contemporaries’
position by that of the ancients’, what is most important is to realize that the
central axis lies in the contemporary from beginning to end. Henceforth, to
apprehend the essential significance of the contemporary life-world where the
subject lives is the prerequisite for keeping the subject independent and free. We
should not retain the shallow common sense that "not to understand the past is not
to understand the present," but should apprehend the much more profound truth that
"not to understand the present is not to interpret the past."
Another preconceived idea which greatly effects us, even in our unconscious
psyche, is "to worship chronicle time," namely the internationally current concept
of time as the present. The 1990s, as we mentioned above, belongs to chronicle
time, which in any case is inevitable for contemporary life. People unthinkingly
take this idea of time into cultural research, especially comparative cultural
research, thereby extending the faults of isochronalism. This is just one of the
profound reasons that cause the peeling off of the subject’s historicity and the
loss of the subject.
For example, the Chinese in the 1990s usually think that they are in the same time
as the Westerners. In fact, the concept of isochronalism here has formal meaning
only for chronicle time. To extend this to mean that they are isochronal in their
cultural state of mind is an especially great mistake. In fact, contemporary
Chinese live in two different kinds of time, one is the chronicle time mentioned
above, according to which people arrange their lives and contacts, especially
international contacts. Another I would call the time of the form of society,
which is decided by the economic relations that hold the dominant status in social
life and restrict the cultural state of people’s mind. For cultural research,
especially comparative cultural research, only this time of the form of society is
the radical premise. In accord with such an idea of time we can say that the
Chinese in the 1990s are not at the same time as regards the cultural state of
mind as are the Westerners in the 1990s; in other words, Western culture in the
1990s and Chinese culture in the 1990s are not isochronical. In this respect, we
must not be misled by such exteriors as that there are color TVs, compact discs,
thunderbolt-dancing and rock in China in the 1990s as in the 1990s West. Chronicle
time may also intrude into the cultural state of mind to a certain extent in a
stage of development of a society, but the impact produced by it is next to
nothing in comparison with the time of the form of society decided by economic
relations.
That is to say, the grounds on which to determine whether two kinds of culture are
isochronical is fundamentally determined by the time of the form of society. Up to
now, what people have and are undergoing is a pre-commodity economy and social
form. Contemporary China is just entering upon the primary stage of commodity
economy. Even if reluctantly it is put into the commodity economy or social form,
still it lies in a different stage of development from contemporary Western
society whose commodity economy has been highly developed. Thus, their cultural
state of mind is not isochronal. The cultural state of mind of contemporary
Chinese society still remains very deeply a brand of natural economy and planned
economy. People often say that the Chinese walking and doing is either sluggish or
unpunctual, whereas the Western is swift and punctual. This is just because
contemporary Chinese society lies in a different state of time from contemporary
Western society. Therefore, investigated from the point of view of the time of the
form of society, the cultural state of mind of contemporary Chinese society rather
more resembles, or to be more exact, is at the same time as the cultural state of
mind of Western society in the 16th to 18th century. Contemporary Chinese
society’s stress upon the use of transport and technology, it’s call for the
consciousness of morality and right, it’s attention to civil society and social
fairness, etc., are the past events which Western society has undergone in the
16th to 18th century. Cultural research, especially comparative cultural research
that remains in chronicle time, necessarily leads to loss of the subject. As
mentioned above, the subject’s misplacing his or her standpoint upon that of the
Western modernist or post-modernist school, abstracts from their respective
historical background and renders impossible any general comparison of the Chinese
and Western states of mind. This research of similarities and differences of
thoughts of such Eastern and Western cultural characters as Lao Zi and Heidegger,
Zhung Zi and Derrida, Zhu Xi and Hegel proceeds by shallow insight in pursuit of
superficial resemblances. All these are closely related to errors in time theory.
In fact, comparative cultural research should be based on the foundation of the
time of the form of society. If people are blinded to this foundation their
research will have no scientific value.
After this de-covering or uncovering, we need directly to probe into the
philosophical premises of cultural research. Such premises are ontologic
hermeneutics — ontology in the existential sense. This kind of hermeneutics asks
the cultural researchers to apprehend in advance their historicity, and grasp the
essence of the life-world where they are situated, thereby setting a kind of
objective value coordinate. When they do so, before beginning their research,
researchers should have the courage to clear up their own subjective value
orientation and avoid any misplacement or loss of the subject and disorder of
values.
****
CHAPTER VI
AN OUTLINE OF INTERNATIONAL CULTURE
YU XINTIAN
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RESEARCH ON INTERNATIONAL CULTURE
The history of cultural research can be traced far back. However, in the past the
cultural research in international relations, even if involved, is only scattered
through international political and economic treatises. This kind of research
seems to have prospered only since the 1990s. Researchers engaged in research in
this field use the concepts of “civilization” or “culture”. The original meaning
of “culture” in the Latin language was cultivation or manipulation as applied to
human activities. The original meaning of “civilization” was civil and organized,
referring to norms, standards or ethics in social life. Classical German
philosophers differentiated culture from civilization as follows: the former
concerns religion, philosophy and the arts in the deeper ideal state and spiritual
life, while the latter belongs to the results of surface technology and materials.
Engels held that the intention of writing and the use of ironware marked the
beginning of civilization, but humankind had culture for hundreds of thousands of
years before. This shows that the scope of culture is wider than civilization. In
modern times, culture and civilization often are used as synonyms. For example,
Edward Burnett Tylor in Britain regarded them as synonyms in his Primitive
Culture. Besides, civilization is often referred to as civilized society, that is,
people with reasonable behavior in their material and spiritual lifestyle
constitute an interrelated whole. In this sense, it may become the basis of some
particular nation-state or states.
Because the concepts of civilization and culture have something in common and
differ in the special emphases of their meaning, the term “international culture”
seems more appropriate. Research on international relations generally has two
subdivisions: one is world politics and the other is world economy. Neither can
escape its extensive cultural background, which was only indistinct in the past
but now becomes distinctly prominent. Thus a third subdivision should be made:
world culture. But, the term of “world culture” is liable to cause
misunderstanding by suggesting erroneously that a unified world culture exists.
For this reason, the term “international culture” is more accurate as an
abbreviation for cultural research in international relations.
The difference in definition reflects a difference in real life. International
politics has not yet been fully integrated into “world” politics, and all
countries have not been under the unified leadership of a “world government” or
“world federation”. The international economy has not yet been completely
“globalized” and contradictions and conflicts in economic interests often occur
between various countries. The UN is the landmark organization of world politics,
and economic interests have greatly strengthened the interdependence between
countries through the development of finance and information. People have accepted
the concepts of “world politics” and “world economy” as common practice. However,
in the cultural field, a “world culture” has not yet appeared and probably will
not take shape in the foreseeable future.
In the past hundreds of years with Western colonial powers taking the lead
modernization has moved across the rest of the world with the force of a
thunderbolt, throwing open the doors of backward countries with gunboats, goods
and missionaries, and spreading Western culture upon gaining political
independence. In order to realize modernization developing countries have
consciously learned from Western countries their thinking, concepts and culture.
However, developing countries do not agree that “modernization means
Westernization”; they pay increasing attention to their unique ways of combining
traditional culture with modernity. They also stand against Western countries
judging everything with Western value standards. So, “world culture” probably will
not be created in-depth, though a kind of worldwide industrial culture and popular
culture begins to emerge as modernization makes progress in every country. The
concept of “international culture” reflects the interaction between the different
cultures ranging from learning, absorption and integration to isolation, struggle
and conflict.
There are a number or reasons why research in international culture has been
growing since the 1990s. Firstly, after the Cold War, severe ideological struggles
between the two camps came to an end and many originally covered or constrained
contradictions have broken out of a “Pandora’s box”. Most of the conflicts in the
world since the 1990s have involved ethnic conflicts, national divisions and
religious wars. To understand religious, national and ethnic contradictions and
conflicts we must give greater attention to the identity, thinking, feeling and
cultural psychology of peoples. Existing geopolitical and geo-economic
explanations are far from sufficient to deal with the new issues emerging in an
endless sequence.
Secondly, the development of economic globalization at an unprecedented speed, the
scale of the worldwide flow of materials, funds and personnel, and the rapidly
deepening economic interdependence between countries have made possible an
intensification of mutual antagonisms between various cultures in all countries.
In recent years, the eruption of a new technological revolution, especially in
information, has rapidly reduced distances over the world both in time and in
space. Developed transportation has enabled people to leave in the morning and
reach any place in the world by evening. The improvement of telecommunications and
of coverage by broadcasting and TV networks have made any event at any place the
focus of concerns all over the world. If in recent centuries it was Westerners who
conquered the world or migrated to other regions, now a tide of migrants from
developing countries pours into Western countries. If in the past there was a one-
way exportation of Western thinking, it now has turned to a two-way interchange of
thinking between East and West, as well as between the South and the North.
European scholars note the new trend as the “Europeanization of the world” changes
into the “globalization of Europe”. This cultural interaction has produced results
in international relations. For instance, on the controversial issue of human
rights, not a few developing countries have begun to pay attention to their
importance, while some insightful people in developed countries have begun to
integrate rights to subsistence and development in the scope of human rights. This
requires further research in international culture.
Lastly, at the turn of the century, humankind is faced with many common problems
whose resolution must be coordinated through new international relations. This
requires changes in the accustomed thinking, principles and norms in order to
reach new consensus. This calls for research in international culture. Drugs,
AIDs, environmental pollution, ecological destruction and terrorism cannot be
resolved on the basis of the national strength of a single country. If the
simplest term is to be used to summarize modern humankind’s achievements, it is
probably scientific and technological progress which originates from Western
scientific and rational thinking and its concept of conquering nature. However,
worship of science and technology may be blind, hampering the development of
humankind. A variety of absurd theories challenge humankind, to which there can be
no response while one sticks to traditional concepts. This requires research in
international culture in order to absorb the quintessence of pluralism so as to
shape the new thinking and values guiding humankind.
The development of research in international culture has significance that cannot
be reduced to past theoretical structures for understanding or conducting
international relations. The formation of international relations in a modern
sense was occasioned by the expanding colonialism of Western powers throughout the
world. War, conquest, manoeuvre among the great powers, the outbreak of two world
wars, and the birth of nuclear weapon all appeared in this period. The Cold War
occupied people’s vision and geopolitical theory unified and almost became the
synonym for international relations. In fact, it reflected only the political
dimension of the theory of international relations. After WWII, especially since
the 1970s and 1980s, the song of peace and development has gradually increased in
volume and economic regionalization and integration has made rapid progress. Not
only do developing countries increasingly depend on developed ones, but the
flourishing of the latter cannot be separated absolutely from the prosperity of
the former, spurring the constant innovation of world economic theories. The
political Economy of International Relations, International Trade Relations,
Development Economics and Geo-economics have emerged as the times demand, adding
an economic dimension to the theory of international relations.
In spite of this, the theory of international relations has considerable flaws and
cannot explain many international phenomena. For example, the international
community defines nuclear and chemical weapons as “weapons of mass destruction”
and bans their use which will be morally condemned. But there are reasons to ask:
Cannot conventional weapons “cause mass destruction”? It is hard to say that the
ban of one kind of weapon will be more important than the ban of another. That
definition to a considerable extent depends on people’s concept of humanity and
morality. Also according to geopolitical theory, one country’s military
interference in other countries always results from a rational calculation of
egoism. However, in recent years, multilateral interjection has become the main
form of international involvement. Many countries participating in interference
have no direct or indirect relations of interests, which emerge from a collective
understanding of some kind of morality. The emergence of research in international
culture, as the third dimension of the theory of international relations, is of
necessity aimed at remedying the defects of research in international relations.
This will make the theory of international relations more multidimensional, richer
and deeper. Though Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations has greatly promoted
people’s concerns with this issue, research in international culture did not start
from him and has not been a simple response to his argument. In reality, since the
1980s, many researchers began such exploration and a considerable number of works
have paved the way.1
Furthermore, the rise of world economic theories cannot replace world political
theories, while research in international culture, cannot, of course, substitute
for research in world politics and world economy. Each has its own theoretic
emphasis to help people observe international phenomena from different angles.
However, these three dimensions are not isolated; they are different aspects of
the overall historical process of international affairs. Only by conducting
cultural research can the process be grasped overall. Strictly speaking, humankind
can learn only from its own history. As views on the past exert influence on the
development of humankind’s collective awareness generation after generation, there
is need for a clear explanation of history (including that of international
relations), for this has much to do with the future destiny of humankind. Till now
most explanations have focused on the parts of the whole, such as economy,
politics, technology and warfare, rather than on the whole itself. This can result
in one-sided and even distorted understanding.
The explanation of history from the perspective of culture is conducive to
overcoming these drawbacks. Culture has a bearing on all the activities of
humankind -- artistic, social, political, educational, religious, spiritual,
economic and technical. People throughout the world try every means to explain the
world, organize themselves, handle various kinds of affairs, improve and beautify
their life and fix their own position in the world. In this, culture is
particularly inclusive and integrative. If research in international relations
transcends the level of event description and explanation, through cultural
research it can be upgraded to the theoretic deliberation of historical
philosophy. On the other hand, only by breaking through the national boundaries
and answering all questions raised by the integrated world, can cultural research
enter a new realm.
STRAIGHTENING OUT VALUE ORIENTATIONS
Values provide the sole basis for fully understanding culture, because the core of
all cultures is values. In international culture, different values have an
objective reality. With the cultural issue increasingly prominent, controversies
over different values are becoming rather fierce. Approaches to Western values,
East Asian values, global values and future values in recent years reflect
concerns over the core of research in international culture. Before conducting
research in values, we should first of all straighten out our value orientation.
In general the following main value orientations are found in China and the world
at large.
Ethnic Cultural Centralism
Ethnic cultural centralism firmly believes in the superiority of the native ethnic
culture and holds that it is not only of utmost value to the native ethnic group,
but has universality and should be spread to other ethnic groups. As cultures of
various ethnic groups in the world have arisen under separate historical
conditions, almost all ethnic groups once had similar views. This is
understandable in the environment of the times. This view contains positive and
negative aspects. Positively either at the level of group, society, region and
country or at the international layer, all cultures have made important
contributions to international development and to the cultural heritage of
humankind. Their spread reflects initiative in retaining and developing native
ethnic cultures. Negatively, all cultures have their drawbacks. Unbelievably
savage and brutal acts, war, violence, oppression, exploitation, infringement on
human rights, racial purges and terrorism, are all more or less manifest in
various cultures. Ethnic cultural centralism turns a blind eye to this, and even
tries by every means to defend it, leading to a blind sense of national
superiority.
With the isolation of various countries having been broken so that people can
witness the reality of multicultural coexistence in the world. Now they can
correctly evaluate the strong and weak points of their native ethnic cultures with
reference of other cultures. Remaining with ethnic cultural centralism at this
moment is regarded as narrow, one-sided and stubbornly biased -- or worse,
preaching a national chauvinism and playing down other ethnic groups for some
purpose. This will not only harm other ethnic groups but also bring great
suffering to native ethnic groups. History has repeatedly proved this truth, which
deserves close attention.
“Western centralism” is the most conspicuous manifestation in the world of ethnic
cultural centralism. Though the view that Western culture is universal has been
criticized, its force is still very strong. For instance, Forer wrote that the
quintessence of Western political values is universal and unavoidably will spread
extensively. This cannot be denied,2 and numerous such expositions are available.
On the other hand, we cannot but recognize that in developing countries, including
China, many people hold an ethnic cultural centralism. Western cultural centralism
has a “controlling nature”, while in developing countries it takes the form of
“resistance”. The two are different, but cultural centralism is still incorrect
and must be studied.
Cross-cultural Relativism
Cross-cultural relativism holds that there is no morale or truth which can become
central for the world, and that all cultures are relative and coexist. Though
various cultures differ and are subject to time and place, they are equal. Culture
is the result of ethnic historical life. In the 20th century, very extensive
investigation and research by cultural anthropologists has promoted this view.
Relative to Western centralism and cultural superiority theory, this represents
great progress. At least theoretically, it recognizes and looks squarely at world
cultural pluralism. Not a few insightful Westerners hold this view with sincerity.
But it cannot fundamentally eliminate the influence of Western centralism. On the
contrary, it may enable Western centralism to take on a more moderate and covert
appearance. The positivist research of cultural anthropology has only provided
arguments which to some prove Western culture to be advanced while others are
uncivilized and primitive. While bare faced ethnic cultural centralism is
notorious, some regard their own values as advanced while playing down other
ethnic cultures under the cover of cross-cultural relativism. For instance,
criticizing Huntington for holding the view of Western centralism did not strike
home, because Huntington said Western culture was unique rather than universal and
cannot be imposed on others. But this does not stop him from insisting on Western
cultural superiority at heart, and expressing his worries about the “only
valuable” Western culture suffering challenges from different cultures. His
attitude is somewhat representative.
It is interesting that many Asian, African and Latin American countries also favor
cross-cultural relativism, but at the other pole. Constrained by Western
centralism for hundreds of years, they need to prove themselves through ethnic
cultural rejuvenation in order to enhance the people’s confidence, beyond
political independence and economic development. Faced with the assaults of strong
Western cultures, they are unable to upgrade their own to universal cultures. They
must hold the bottom-line of cultural relativism in order to gain equality with
Western culture. Cross-cultural relativism is also highly influential in Chinese
academia. Many people, including this author, have written articles stressing that
all cultures are equal.
However, conceptual introspection reveals cross-cultural relativism to be not
unassailable. Stating cultural specificity and its local significance is, to a
considerable extent, a description of the objective situation, rather than a
judgment of values. We cannot withhold comment on the drawbacks of various
cultures or even speak highly of them on the basis of recognizing cultural
equality. Acts of killing babies, murdering elderly people, oppressing women or
mutual slaughter in cultures should not be accepted, but must be criticized. Value
judgments either within or between cultures must have an acceptable standard.
Empirical Global Minimum Morale
This view holds that not only are the values within a particular culture precious,
but experience has proven that there exist global minimum common values. Not a few
cultural anthropologists have observed that the majority of cultures have rejected
deception, stealing, violence or incest; no culture takes pain as a value, has no
respect for life or fails to memorialize death. Even areas where revenge is
considered legal strictly limit the number of deaths. To substantiate this theory,
some have put forward arguments in biology, namely, that morals originate from a
moral gene. If the genes are identical, there is no relativism; if genes are
different, culture is also different. Others have advanced arguments in sociology,
that is, the universal process of socialization has led to a universality of moral
awareness. For example, all babies require attention by others. In this process,
humankind has attained some common characteristics.
However, these arguments are inadequate. We are in no position to explain whether
the biological and sociological arguments have nurtured egoism or altruism.
Proceeding only from experiences to prove the existence of the minimum values is
also questionable. For instance, preservation of life is the most universal and
fundamental value in the world, but often it is related to betrayal of belief,
violating the law and sheltering family or tribal members. Furthermore, this
argument is premised on global acceptance. The morale supported by the majority
seems stronger than that supported by the minority or minor cultures. But there
are reasons to ask: if all societies discriminate against women (or migrants, the
disabled or some the group), can this prejudice be proved reasonable? This view is
rare in Chinese scholars, but with the extension of cultural exchanges between
countries it has gradually influenced the Chinese academia, especially young
researchers.
Universal Value Theory
The universal value theory was first put forward by Western scholars.
Its core is the recognition that everyone has the right to existence or human
rights. Its original contents were limited to the rights of citizens and political
freedom, but in recent years, due to the response of developing countries, some
scholars have added basic economic and other rights. Amitai Etzioni holds that
human rights is a demand upon all countries and societies, rather than being
directed against some only. Though the concept of human rights historically was
created in the West, it does not reflect only Western values, but rather is a
demand on everyone. He has also observed that in recent years Asian countries have
begun to pay attention to improving human rights and have no longer regarded human
rights as an instrument of foreign oppression, but as a means of enhancing Asian
specialization. He has quoted Bilahari Kausikan, a Singaporean diplomat, as saying
“Human rights have become a legitimate issue in interstate relations. How a
country treats its citizens is no longer a matter for its own exclusive
determination”. This has been creating a global culture about human rights.
Amitai Etzioni’s criticism of the theory of Western universal values is also
thought-provoking. First, people always quote the U.N. Charter, international law,
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and various resolutions and
international conferences to prove the rationality of human rights. However, these
have not been extensively recognized; for lack of participation by representatives
of all the countries in the world they lack the foundation of a global moral
dialogue. Second, it should be admitted that Western developed countries can
afford political freedom, while developing countries can achieve political
development only after economic development by leaps and bounds. Under conditions
of extreme poverty, subsistence is humankind’s primary choice; other things are
secondary. To those countries knowing nothing about peace, stability and progress,
it is nonsense to talk about rights of citizens and political rights.
Nevertheless, he still demands moral voices and global dialogue, and opposes
imposed dialogues or rebukes at the slightest provocation.3 This view reflects a
revised theory of universal Western values.
In the Chinese academia, wide differences exist on the theory of universal Western
values. Some hold that now that modernization is the goal being sought and that
Western society has taken the lead in carrying forward modernization, our cultural
orientation naturally should draw closer to that of developed societies. Some
consider that the West has made use of its powerful cultural force to pursue
colonialism and hegemony, so Chinese people should increase their own cultural
cohesion to deal with “a clash of civilizations”. This author opposes simple
approval or simple opposition. It should be recognized that Western culture does
provide some values of universal significance. Though taking the human as the
foundation and respecting human existence is manifested in various cultures,
enhancing it to the level of human rights in a modern sense is indeed the result
of processes of extraction and distillation in Western civilization. It is because
of their universality, that they have been increasingly accepted by developing
countries including China. Except for the drawbacks Etzioni has criticized, this
author wants to supplement what is perhaps a more important drawback, namely, that
universal values are not limited to the human rights provided by the West; all
cultures have the possibility of providing universal values. If human rights
values did not absorb such basic rights as that to subsistence and economic rights
raised by developing countries, they might not be so complete, and in that sense
universal. So, universal values are not those which only the West can provide, but
should integrate various kinds of excellent values found in the world; they are
not a finished and established moral system, but are still in the process of
formation.
Cultural Internationalism
This orientation is based on the theory of universal values. Furthermore, it holds
that only by cultural interaction across national boundaries can we redefine the
world order and determine the future face of the world. Akira Iriye pointed out
that a sharp increase of transnational trade and the recognition of international
law by all the countries have laid the initial foundation for forming
theoretically a common international system. In the 20th century, cultural
internationalism made rapid progress, such as exchange of information,
coordination of weights and measures; cooperation across national boundaries of
scientists, artists, educators and many others to promote mutual cross-cultural
understanding; and various international organizations which form a network
covering the whole world. The telephone, radio, cinema, TV and Internet have
provided brand-new technology and means for cross-cultural communication. Even
after suffering the destruction of two world wars and the Cold War, cultural
internationalism has still kept its flames alive. Since the independence of
developing countries cultural internationalism has become more comprehensive: non-
European countries have been increasingly active, more common issues facing
mankind such as environmental protection and human rights have been put on the
agenda, and there has been an unprecedented enhancement in the self-awareness of
world diversity. If this kind of position can be agreed to by more countries,
there may eventually emerge a new international order in which culture will be
returned to its central place.4 Chinese scholars have also expressed similar
views. For instance, Chen Lemin wrote that, from the perspective of a general
world history which stresses political struggles, conflicts are everywhere in the
human society. However, from the angle of the history of human civilizations, the
general trend is toward integration, even in the midst of fierce conflicts.5 But
no one has clearly put forward the concept of “cultural internationalism,”
perhaps, on the one hand, because of the difficulty of differentiating cultural
conflict from cultural integration, and, on the other hand, because of a certain
taboo on “internationalism”. If a breakthrough can be made on the basic issues of
universal values, the turn toward cultural internationalism may be confirmed.
In short, the value orientation of Chinese scholars is bound to be varied and
difficult to unify. However, no matter what attitude is taken, we should first
make clear the starting point, the strong and weak points of this position in
fulfilling the objectives, and how to remedy the defects so as to achieve a more
rational explanation. Otherwise one can easily fall into the trap of blindness.
Research in international culture based on objective scientific theories is
beneficial in bringing about a new value orientation. This process must transform
beneficial values, Eastern or Western, from the many cultures in the world,
extract and distill excellent values from the native ethnic cultures, and
integrate them into new values capable of guiding humankind in its way forward. As
Cheng Zhongying discussed, the universality of ideologies and concepts is related
to the depth of their taking root in subjectivity and is closely connected with
the horizontal network of meaning.6
Chinese culture goes back to ancient times, has extensive and profound knowledge
and can provide rich cultural factors. The challenge is to modernize and upgrade
these ideological factors and then transmit them to the rest of the world. This
requires arduous efforts at cultural building, rather than a simple overall
presentation, for otherwise they cannot be accepted and integrated. In the
practical situation, the facts that Western countries possess strong technical
means and that they began earlier the process of value modernization and
globalization are very favorable to their dissemination of values. Relatively
speaking, developing countries have just begun. But we cannot wait to see and
bungle the chance. If we cannot attend to our research in earnest, we will lose
the right to speak in the cultural upsurge of the new century.
A FRAMEWORK FOR RESEARCH IN INTERNATIONAL CULTURE
The aim of research in international culture is to recognize and understand more
deeply contemporary international relations, and to explain how cultural factors
play a role in the formation of international relations and how cultural research
can enlighten international relations. Cultural research must involve the fields
of ideology, concept and consciousness in order to be sure to reflect the
realistic base of international relations. Denial of this point will lead to a
break with historical materialism. However, ideology, concept and consciousness
are not entirely passive reflections of objective reality, but at the same time
play a counteractive role in the real situation of international relations. Not to
see this point will lead to being entrapped in a mechanical materialism. In this
sense we can say that changes in concepts cause changes in the world. Now when
people see the world, what often appears in their minds are geopolitical concepts
such as military power, security strategy and balanced diplomacy. Using these
concepts to understand phenomena and explain results in turn strengthens
geopolitical relations. For example, dealing with potential enemies by means of
war or alliance often makes them real enemies. This is called “Cold War thinking”.
Any phenomena which are hard to explain by geopolitics often are regarded as
“confusions”.
In fact, cultural forces have existed and been developing, and have constituted
the contemporary world. Only because geopolitical theory has occupied the central
position in international relations, has people’s sight been obstructed. The
development of transnational cultural forces linking different countries,
societies and peoples cannot be fully understood within the geopolitical and geo-
economic framework. Only by making use of the concepts and methods of cultural
research can the interrelations between various domestic and international forces
and the cultural interaction between individuals and groups transcending national
boundaries be explained. Besides, some “confusions” are not real confusions; if
cultural views are accepted then a clear explanation can be achieved. Therefore,
we must build a framework for research in international culture.
The first layer of research in international culture looks into the conditions of
time and place in which new concepts, ideas and principles are put forward, and
how they change people’s recognition and understanding of international relations.
China’s definition of the current era has changed from “war and revolution” to “
peace and development”; this is a great transformation. To a considerable extent,
“war and revolution” did reflect the world political situation in the greater part
of the 20th century. There were two World Wars, the Cold War and a series of
conventional wars; developing countries, except in Latin America, gained
independence; most adopted the means of revolutionary wars, others went through
peaceful transitions. However, this definition ignored the adjustment of modern
capitalism on the basis of the new technological revolution and the change in the
tasks of newly emerging countries after independence.
In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, when foreign scholars first advanced a new
definition of “peace and development”, China regarded it as the main melody of the
current era and proposed it. Deng Xiaoping noted that “peace and development” do
not refer to two fulfilled tasks, but rather to the orientation of our efforts. On
the basis of this view, the differences between social systems will no longer
become an obstruction to exchange between countries. To fulfill the task of
development, we should fall in line with the world economy, properly deal with
contradictions with other countries, and strive for a peaceful and safe
environment. In the same era, the U.S. definition diverged widely from China’s. It
stressed “market and democracy” and “security and order”. The aim of the U.S.
definition is to maintain the current order, prevent any country from threatening
its status, and strongly promote U.S.-style marketization and democratization. The
difference between China and the U.S. in the definition of the current era endowed
their foreign policies with both cohesive and conflicting contents. Definition and
concept are the overall reflection of the realistic situation, and the guideline
for behavior that changes the status quo.
The second layer of research in international culture is the analysis of the
collective recognition of various concepts and ideas. The higher the degree of
collective recognition, the greater the influence on international relations.
Definition, concept, idea and principle not only guide the behavior of various
actors in the world, but also impact common behaviors by collective recognition if
the actors generally accept some idea and principle. Recently, Tanaka Akihiko,
professor of Tokyo University in Japan, advanced the idea of “word politics”, that
is, that the main point of current politics lies in “stating one’s views”, “daring
to create marvelous words,” the “force of speech”.7 Why does speech have such
force? This is because it must achieve recognition by other countries. Otherwise,
it is only soliloquy and can only guide a country’s foreign policy with limited
force. The 1998 Strategic Review by the U.S. Department of Defense pointed out
that in analyzing the Asia-Pacific situation almost all the countries in the
region had accepted the economic values of such core countries as the U.S., which
were conducive to promoting economic relations between the core countries and this
region. However, some countries continued to resist and reject the values of
democratic politics, thereby generating suspicions and worries in interrelations
with them.
The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence initiated by China have become the
common ground for many developing countries. Therefore, it is easy for them to
achieve equality, mutual benefit and mutual respect in their relations. Because
the degree in which Western developed countries’ recognize these principles is
lower, anti-power sentiments often crop up in developing countries’ dealings with
them. This shows that initiating creative ideas and principles for world affairs,
which are subsequently accepted by other countries, will be an important mark of a
country’s ability.
This kind of ability depends on whether its material carriers are strong, that is,
that it is taken for granted that more and better goods and cultural products are
delivered to the world through these carriers. In this respect, developed
countries, especially the U.S., are strong. What Coca-Cola and McDonald market is
not only beverage and food, but also the meaning of the culture and lifestyle
attached to them. Hollywood’s swift and fierce attacks move triumphantly with
hundreds of millions of people enjoying US movies. From the angle of culture, the
ability of producing collective recognition takes root first in domestic cultural
recognition and innovative awareness.
If the people even of one country have divergent and confused awareness, how can
they convince peoples of other ethnic groups? To reach domestic consensus in
culture, a country is bound properly to deal with relations between foreign and
native cultures and to better resolve contradictions between traditional culture
and modernity. Only on the basis of a collective national recognition can
innovative ability sharply increase.
Secondly, it depends on a country’s awareness of the world. If a country takes
care only of its own domestic affairs and speak only when having something to do
with its own direct interests, its ability to promote collective recognition will
certainly be extremely low. Only by paying close attention to international
affairs, upholding the force of morality and holding humankind’s future destiny in
mind, can such a culture contribute more ideological elements to international
relations.
The third layer of research in international culture is the ability to explore
systems of culture. Where a number of countries recognize some kind of concepts,
ideas and principles, this provides only a common ground in thought and speech.
Turning this into behavior in international relations requires the support of a
system. Some cultures have a strong ability at systematization and some, though
contributing new thinking, lack initiative in systematization, and thus fall short
of success for lack of an integral effort. After the victory of WWII, Roosevelt
and Churchill did their utmost to design the U.N. to put the spirit of the
“Atlantic Charter” into practice. To prevent the economic crisis in the 1930s from
reemerging, all the countries set up a series of economic organizations at the
Bretton Woods Conference. All these reflect the U.S.-led ability of Western
culture for systematization. Western countries occupy great superiority in
cultural systematization, because they have advanced most of the basic principles
of international law and the world system, and hence dominate the current world
order. The system of innovation comes down in one continuous line from the
original culture and is well reasoned.
Developing countries must take into account current international law and the
world system in pursuing their own cultural systems in international relations so
that there will be no great conflict and their cultures will be widely accepted.
Their cultures and Western culture do not belong to the same system, so their
combination and integration requires a lot of work. But this does not mean that
developing countries cannot make innovations in cultural systems. On the contrary,
their non-Western pluralistic traditions can inject new strains of thought into
the world. China has advanced the “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” and
achieved ideas such as “pursuit of joint development while preserving
differences”. These are all full of creativity; their drawback is that their
systematization has not been explored. Fortunately, in recent years, some progress
has been made. The border security guarantee of China, Russia, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan is a successful example of systematization of the “Five
Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” on the issue of the border between China and
Central Asia.
Putting forward new thinking demands a creative and forward-looking culture.
Promoting systematization requires flexibility, coordination, inclusiveness and
pragmatism of culture. New thinking often reflects the ideal appeal of
international relations, while systematization takes into greater consideration
feasibility and serviceability. The perfect combination of the two is a severe
test for any culture. Both the development and dissemination of concepts and the
initiation of systems need the support of the comprehensive national strength.
However, simply to equate cultural ability with economic or military strength is
mechanical and one-sided. The solution of difficult problems depends on wisdom.
The role of culture can also be manifested in the ingenuity of “moving 1000 jin
with 4 liang force”. It is especially so under the conditions of the post-Cold War
new technological revolution and in the environment of the development of both
globalization and diversification. For instance, Canada initiated the Anti-Mine
Treaty, gaining a reputation all over the world. Australia-advanced APEC has
become one of the most important organizations in the Asia-Pacific region. ASEAN
has raised its international position by actively launching dialogues and
cooperation between East Asian countries, between Europe and Asia, as well as
across the Pacific.
The fourth layer of research in international culture is the above-mentioned role
of culture in world politics and the world economy in dynamically changing and
delineating international relations. First, let us look at the impact of culture
on the world economy. As Francis Fukuyama pointed out, the key field where culture
plays the most direct role in domestic welfare and international order is the
economy.8 People have a misunderstanding: Economy seems to be a field separated
from other sectors of the social life and ruled by an independent law. In the
economy or market natural forces dominate everything and man is seen as only a
cold-blooded animal haggling over everything. In fact, the economy has to operate
against a non-economic background, where culture is the main factor. Today
everyone marvels at the width, depth and speed of economic globalization, whose
powerful motive force is scientific and technological progress. But both science
and technology belong to culture in a broad sense. At the turn of the millennia
there has appeared an inkling of a knowledge economy depending mainly on
intellectual resources. Human resources have become central to economic
development and input from science, technology and culture has become the main
motive force of social development. Without a rapid development of information
technology, there will possibly be no putting out the Southeast Asian financial
storm and no reexamination of the world economic system and mechanism.
The economy is also the most fundamental and active field in the socialization of
humankind, and modern economic activity needs the cooperation of people. Through
economic activity, individuals and state are linked and are recognized by other
and by the world. In the past, people won recognition through cold blooded wars
and conquest; now they do so through economic activity and the social benefit
derived from creating rather than destroying wealth. This is historic progress.
The increase of interdependence in the world economy has made cultural exchanges
between ethnic groups more central. The world market is, of course, an
indispensable system, but if what flows in the market is only economic capital and
there is no social capital to bind it, the market will not create maximum value.
If the ethnic groups think only of their own interests and shift their own
troubles onto others, they will finally damage their own development. So, what a
culture proposes in social capital for the world operation will be a new issue for
research.
Let us observe the impact of culture on world politics. Obviously, the basic
contradiction of world politics is that between effective rule in various
countries and anarchism of the whole world. The current world pattern is one
superpower, as several great powers and multi-polarization and diversification
develops. Although the U.N. and various international organizations advance
equality between countries in the hope of creating a democratic system in the
world family, in practice, “one vote for each country” is incapable of resolving
questions. Most countries are unsatisfied with the current political world system
and have put forward a variety of reform options, but with very little effect. A
change of cultural concepts is of vital importance for the better integration and
resolution of imminent common questions. Hegemony and power politics have met with
opposition from more and more countries.
But what kind of world order is fair, reasonable and efficient? How to make use of
the achievements in world politics in order to overcome its malpractice? Without
applying the cumulative cultural heritages of humankind, people cannot look
forward to the future. World politics was originally referred to as the sum total
of behavior between sovereign states. Proceeding from that reality, sovereignty
remains the key concept in world politics. Safeguarding sovereignty is an
important aspect of increasing the political resources of developing countries in
particular, which have gained their independence more recently. But the concept of
sovereignty also took shape in the modernization process of Western countries.
This has been spread to the rest of the world with the occupation by these
countries of the dominant position in the world system. The EU countries are no
longer scattered entities with distinct identities, but have created a common
political identity from within, transcending the definition of traditional
theories. Though other countries and regions have not reached such a high degree
of integration, there have appeared frequent contacts between the government and
economic and civil organizations, non-governmental organizations and individuals,
as well as between individuals, enriching and supplementing the relations between
sovereign states. A change in concepts is often the precursor of political reform;
this is the task of cultural research.
The framework of research in international culture can be shown with the following
diagram:
Ideas, Concepts and Principles
?
Systemic Identity of Ideas and Concepts
?
Cultural System
??
——World Economy World Politics——
? ?
?_ International Relations ______?
As for the new field of research in international culture, it is better to say
that this paper has put forward questions, rather than given answers. The hope is
to stimulate criticism and discussion, and to ask for advice from all.
NOTES
1. See this author’s article, “A Summary of America Cultural Research,” Pacific
Journal, No. 1, 1999, p. 38.
2. Graham Forer, “The Next Ideology”, Foreign Policy, Spring 1995.
3. Amitai Etzioni, “Conclusion”, The New Golden Rule: Community and Morality in a
Democratic Society (New York Basic Books, 1997).
4. Akira Iriye, Cultural Internationalism and World Order (The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1997).
5. Chen Lemin, “Widening the Fields of International Politics Research”, Pacific
Journal, No. 2, 1997.
6. Cheng Zhongying, “The 21st Century: Blend of Chinese and Western Cultures and
Globalization of Chinese Culture”, Pacific Journal, No. 1, 1995.
7. Tanaka Akihiko, “Japanese Diplomacy in the Era of ‘Word Politics’”, Chuokoron,
Sept. 1998.
8. Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtue and the Creation of Prosperity (Free
Publishing House, 1995), p. 6.
****
http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-17/chapter_vii.htm
CHAPTER VII
INCULTURATION OF THE CHRISTIAN
FAITH IN ASIA THROUGH PHILOSOPHY:
A DIALOGUE WITH FIDES ET RATIO OF JOHN PAUL II
PETER C. PHAN
This study examines first what Fides et Ratio says about philosophy in general and
about Asian philosophies in particular. Next, it expounds the principles which,
according to Fides et Ratio, Christians must observe in inculturating the
Christian faith into local cultures. The third part evaluates the applicability of
these principles to the task of inculturating the Christian faith into East Asian
cultures, with special reference to some central ideas of Confucianism.
Before his election to the see of Rome, Karol Wojtyla was already a celebrated
philosopher in his own right, especially in the fields of philosophical
anthropology and ethics, with a widely recognized expertise in Thomism and
phenomenology.1 For helpful comprehensive introductions to John Paul II’s thought
in English, see George H. Williams, The Mind of John Paul II: Origins of His
Thought and Action (New York: Seabury, 1981); Ronald Lawler, The Christian
Personalism of Pope John Paul II (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1982); Andrew
Woznicki, A Christian Humanism: Karol Wojtyla’s Existential Personalism (New
Britain, CT: Mariel, 1980); Rocco Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyla: The Thought of the
Man Who Became Pope John Paul II, trans. Paolo Guietti and Francesca Murphy (Grand
Rapids, MI: William Eerdmans, 1997); and Kenneth Schmitz, At the Center of the
Human Drama: The Philosophical Anthropology of Karol Wojtyla/Pope John Paul II
(Washington, DC: The Catholic University Press, 1993). As Pope, John Paul II has
continued to demonstrate a deep concern, already pronounced in his philosophical
writings, for the unity of human knowledge that is born out of the harmonious
marriage between reason and faith. This concern is especially evident in the
Pope’s encyclicals on Christian ethics in which he insists both on the autonomy of
human reason and on the necessity of divine revelation, and urges a close
collaboration between these two epistemological orders for a full knowledge of
ethical truths.2 In the encyclical the unity of reason and faith constitutes the
central focus of John Paul II’s reflections. No doubt the title Fides et Ratio
(FR) with the et (and) rather than the aut (or) is emblematic of the Pope’s
fundamental stance in this matter.3
This essay will carry out a critical dialogue with John Paul II’s teaching on the
relationship between reason and faith as expressed in FR, especially with respect
to the use of philosophy as a tool for the inculturation of the Christian faith in
Asia.4 Again, the first part expounds the Pope’s view of the relation between
reason and faith; the second part evaluates his proposal to use philosophy as an
instrument for inculturating the Christian faith in Asia; the concluding part
assesses the usefulness of this proposal with regard to some aspects of
Confucianism.
REASON AND FAITH ACCORDING TO FIDES ET RATIO
The basic theme of the encyclical is beautifully expressed in its opening lines
with a metaphor depicting faith and reason as "two wings on which the human spirit
rises to the contemplation of truth." By this, says John Paul II, the human heart
fulfills its God-given "desire to know the truth." Before examining how FR
understands the relation between reason and faith, it would be helpful to
delineate the context in which this relation is broached.5
Overview of the Encyclical
The encyclical begins with a preamble (nos. 1-6), entitled the Socratic injunction
"Know Yourself," on the role of philosophy in asking about and answering questions
concerning the meaning of human life. It states that the church regards philosophy
as "the way to come to know fundamental truths about human life" and at the same
time as "an indispensable help for a deep understanding of faith and for
communicating the truth of the Gospel to those who do not yet know it" (no. 5).
Unfortunately, according to FR, contemporary philosophy "has lost the capacity to
lift its gaze to the heights, not daring to rise to the truth of being," and as a
result, is wallowing in agnosticism and relativism (no. 5). This lamentable
situation prompted the Pope to write his encyclical FR with a twofold purpose:
first, "to restore to our contemporaries a genuine trust in their capacity to know
and challenge philosophy to recover and develop its own full dignity" and,
secondly, to concentrate "on the theme of truth itself and on its foundation in
relation to faith" (no. 6).
The body of FR is composed of seven chapters, entitled successively as "The
Revelation of God’s Wisdom" (nos. 7-15), "Credo ut intellegam" (nos. 16-23),
"Intellego ut credam" (nos. 24-35), "Relationship between Faith and Reason" (nos.
36-48), "Magisterium’s Interventions in Philosophical Matters" (nos. 49-63),
"Interaction between Philosophy and Theology" (nos. 64-79), and "Current
Requirements and Tasks" (nos. 80-99). FR concludes (nos. 100-108) with appeals to
philosophers, theologians, seminary professors, and scientists to "look more
deeply at man, whom Christ has saved in the mystery of his love, and at the human
being’s unceasing search for truth and meaning" (no. 107). Just from the titles of
the chapters, especially chapters 2, 3, 4, and 6, it is obvious that the central
theme of the encyclical is the relationship between reason and faith, or
correlatively, between philosophy and theology.
Faith and Reason: Basic Issues
The issue of the relationship between faith and reason is as old as Christianity,
and, arguably, as old as revelation itself.6 Against biblical fundamentalism and
fideism, it must be maintained that reason is unavoidably and inexplicably
intertwined with revelation, at least in the sense that revelation, however
supernatural and gratuitous a gift it may be, cannot but be received within the
horizon of some particular human, even philosophical, understanding.7 In addition
to this direct implication of reason within revelation, there is a further task
that believers must perform, namely, to decide reflectively, on philosophical and
theological grounds, which philosophical horizon, for example, Platonic,
Aristotelian, or existential, is the most appropriate and valid (and not merely
historically accepted) philosophy for an elaboration of the contents of the
Christian faith. Finally, there are three other tasks that are incumbent upon
believers in God’s self-revelation in history as they address the issue of the
relation between reason and faith: first, to justify philosophically the
possibility of such a self-revelation; secondly, to vindicate historically the
credibility of such a divine self-revelation if it has occurred at all; and
thirdly, and more fundamentally, to demonstrate whether this philosophical and
historical foundationalism is compatible with the nature of the Christian faith,
that is, whether the Christian faith would not be emptied of its specific
character were it to be subjected to the tribunal of secular reason, be it
historical or philosophical.8 In particular, on the issue of foundationalism in
theology, see the helpful introduction by John E. Thiel, Nonfoundationalism
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994) with discussions on philosophers such as Ludwig
Wittgenstein, Wilfrid Sellars, Willard Van Orman Quine, and Richard Rorty and on
theologians such as Karl Barth, George Lindbeck, Ronald Thiemann, Kathryn Tanner,
Hans Frei, and Stanley Hauerwas. See also a good survey by Thomas Guarino, "Post-
modernity and Five Fundamental Theological Issues," Theological Studies 57 (1996):
654-89. For a helpful collection of essays on post-modern theology, see Theology
After Liberalism, ed. John Webster and George P. Schner (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000).
Among Roman Catholic theologians who argue for a nonfoundationalist approach,
besides Francis Schüssler Fiorenza mentioned above, see Frans Josef van Beeck, God
Encountered: A Contemporary Systematic Theology, vol. 1; Understanding the
Christian Faith (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989); Nicholas Lash, Easter in
Ordinary: Reflections on Human Experience and the Knowledge of God (Notre Dame,
IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990); and James J. Buckley, Seeking the
Humanity of God: Practices, Doctrines, and Catholic Theology (Collegeville:
Liturgical Press, 1992).
In his encyclical, John Paul II does not treat in any detail the above-mentioned
issues, which are much debated in contemporary theology, though, of course, his
answers to any of them can be inferred from his teaching on the relation between
reason and faith. The Pope begins, on the one hand, by affirming the fact of God’s
utterly gratuitous and supernatural self-revelation in history and consequently
rejects the rationalist critique of the possibility of such a divine self-
revelation. On the other hand, he also affirms the capacity of human reason to
know God. As to the relation between the knowledge of God through divine
revelation and that of God through reason, John Paul II contents himself with
repeating Vatican I’s teaching that "the truth attained by philosophy and the
truth of revelation are neither identical nor mutually exclusive" (no. 9).9 These
two "orders of knowledge," are, according to Vatican I’s Dei Filius, distinct from
each other both in their "source" and in their "object."
This double distinctness does not, however, mean that reason, though autonomous
(because of its distinct source and object), can and should function apart from,
much less in ignorance of, Christian faith:
Revelation has set within history a point of reference which cannot be
ignored if the mystery of human life is to be known. Yet this knowledge refers
back constantly to the mystery of God, which the human mind cannot exhaust but can
only receive and embrace in faith. Between these two poles, reason has its own
specific field in which it can inquire and understand, restricted only by its
finiteness before the infinite mystery of God (no. 14).

The basic issue to be elucidated then is the interplay between reason and faith.
FR explicates this relationship in four parts. The first two (chapters 2 and 3)
invoke the Augustinian-Anselmian formulas of "intellego ut credam" and "credo ut
intellegam." The third (chapter 4), the heart of the encyclical, deals with the
relationship between faith and reason; and the fourth (chapter 6) narrows this
relation down to the "interaction between philosophy and theology."10
Faith in Search of Understanding: Credo ut intellegam
It is significant that in explicating the relationship between reason and faith,
FR begins with the "credo" rather than the "intellego." While deeply convinced
that "there is a profound and indissoluble unity between the knowledge of reason
and the knowledge of faith" (no. 16), John Paul II clearly and repeatedly
privileges the role of faith over reason as the path to the truth: ". . . Reason
is valued without being overvalued. The results of reasoning may in fact be true,
but these results acquire their true meaning only if they are set within the
larger horizon of faith . . . . Faith liberates reason insofar as it allows reason
to attain correctly what it seeks to know and to place it within the ultimate
order of things in which everything acquires true meaning" (no. 20). This need of
faith is of course caused by human sin whereby "the eyes of the mind were no
longer able to see clearly: Reason became more and more a prisoner to itself" (no.
22). This is why, says the Pope, "the Christian relationship to philosophy
requires thoroughgoing discernment" (no. 23). Here he invokes the Pauline
opposition between "the wisdom of this world" and "the foolishness of the cross,"
not in order to suppress the indispensable role of reason but to affirm the
necessity of faith for the discovery of truth: "The preaching of Christ crucified
and risen is the reef upon which the link between faith and philosophy can break
up, but it is also the reef beyond which the two can set forth upon the boundless
ocean of truth. Here we see not only the border between reason and faith, but also
the space where the two may meet" (no. 23).11
Reason in Search of Faith: Intellego ut credam
"Credo," however, is not to be separated from "intellego." Human life is a
"journeying in search of truth." The quest for truth and understanding, says John
Paul II, echoing Augustin’s memorable phrase, is native to humans: "In the far
reaches of the human heart there is a seed of desire and nostalgia for God" (no.
24). This quest for truth has been carried out by humans, "through literature,
music, painting, sculpture, architecture, and every other work of their creative
intelligence," but "in a special way philosophy has made this search its own and,
with its specific tools and scholarly methods, has articulated this universal
human desire" (no. 24). This quest, however, is performed not only in theoretical
reflection, but also in ethical decisions. Hence, the object of this quest is both
truth and value.
This quest, the Pope points out, often begins with questions about the meaning and
direction of one’s life. But the decisive moment of the search, he maintains,
comes when we determine "whether or not we think it possible to attain universal
and absolute truth." The Pope goes on to affirm categorically: "Every truth–if it
really is truth–presents itself as universal, even if it is not the whole truth.
If something is true, then it must be true for all people and at all times" (no.
27). Ultimately, the Pope claims, the search for truth is nothing but the search
for God: ". . . People seek an absolute which might give to all their searching a
meaning and an answer–something ultimate which might serve as the ground of all
things. In other words, they seek a final explanation, a supreme value, which
refers to nothing beyond itself and which puts an end to all questioning" (no.
27).
Two further points made by FR concerning the "intellego ut credam" need to be
mentioned. The encyclical notes that there are "different faces of human truth" or
"modes of truth," or more simply, there are three ways of arriving at truth (no.
30): first, through immediate evidence or experimentation ("the mode of truth
proper to everyday life and to scientific research"); secondly, through
philosophical reflection ("philosophical truth"); and thirdly, by means of
religious traditions ("religious truths"). In addition, FR emphasizes the social
character of the quest for truth. Though recognizing the necessity of critical
inquiry, the encyclical points out that "there are in the life of a human being
many more truths which are simply believed than truths which are acquired by way
of personal verification" (no. 31). Hence, the necessity of entrusting oneself to
the knowledge acquired by others and of bearing personal witness, even by way of
martyrdom, to the truth (no. 32).
Relationship between Faith and Reason
Having affirmed the necessity of both faith and reason in the search for truth and
value, FR moves on to discuss the ways in which their relationship has been
enacted throughout Christian history (chapter 4). The purpose is not to present an
exhaustive overview of how reason and faith interacted with each other in the
past, but to derive instructive lessons for a proper understanding of their
relationship.12 The first encounter between Christianity and philosophy took
place of course in the first centuries of the Christian era. Of this phase, FR
summarizes the main features as follows: (1) The earliest Christians preferred to
dialogue with philosophy rather than with the prevalent religions of their times
because the latter were judged to be infected with myths and superstition, whereas
the former made a serious attempt to provide a rational foundation for a belief in
the divinity. (2) The first and most urgent task for the early Christians was not
an intellectual engagement with philosophy for its own sake but "the proclamation
of the risen Christ by way of a personal encounter which would bring the listener
to conversion of heart and the request for baptism." Indeed, the Gospel offered
them such a satisfying answer to the hitherto unresolved question concerning the
meaning of life that "delving into the philosophers seemed to them something
remote and in some ways outmoded" (no. 38). (3) The early Christians were quite
cautious in approaching the surrounding cultures. While deeply appreciative of
their true insights, the early Christian thinkers were critical in adopting the
philosophies of their times. FR highlights "the critical consciousness with which
Christian thinkers from the first confronted the problem of the relationship
between faith and philosophy, viewing it comprehensively with both its positive
aspects and its limitations" (no. 41). (4) The early Christian thinkers did more
than perform "a meeting of cultures"; rather their originality consists in the
fact that "they infused it [reason] with the richness drawn from revelation" (no.
41). FR summarizes its survey from the patristic era to Anselm: "The fundamental
harmony between the knowledge of faith and the knowledge of philosophy is once
again confirmed. Faith asks that its object be understood with the help of reason;
and at the summit of its searching, reason acknowledges that it cannot do without
what faith presents" (no. 42).
This harmony, which exists between faith and reason, was well established by
Thomas Aquinas for whom "just as grace builds on nature and brings it to
fulfillment, so faith builds upon and perfects reason" (no. 43). For this reason
FR calls Thomas "a master of thought and a model of the right way to do theology"
(no. 43). Thomas is also praised for his emphasis on the role of the Holy Spirit
in the process by which knowledge matures into wisdom. This gift of wisdom "comes
to know by way of connaturality; it presupposes faith and eventually formulates
its right judgment on the basis of the truth of faith itself" (no. 44). Thomas’s
granting of primacy to the gift of wisdom did not, however, make him belittle the
complementary roles of two other forms of wisdom, that is, philosophical wisdom
and theological wisdom.
Unfortunately, the delicate balance between reason and faith that Thomas
established and maintained, according to FR, fell apart toward the end of the
Middle Ages: "From the late medieval period onward, however, the legitimate
distinction between the two forms of learning became more and more a fateful
separation. As a result of the exaggerated rationalism of certain thinkers,
positions grew more radical and there emerged eventually a philosophy which was
separate from, and absolutely independent of, the contents of faith" (no. 45).
This "fateful separation" between faith and reason brought in its wake disastrous
consequences, not least for reason itself. FR enumerates some of these: a general
mistrust of reason and fideism, idealism, atheistic humanism, positivism,
nihilism, the instrumentalization of reason, and pragmatic utilitarianism (nos.
46-47 and 86-90). Nevertheless, John Paul II discerns even in these errors
"precious and seminal insights which, if pursued and developed with mind and heart
rightly tuned, can lead to the discovery of truth’s way" (no. 48). These insights
include "penetrating analyses of perception and experience, of the imaginary and
the unconscious, of personhood and intersubjectivity, of freedom and values, of
time and history" (no. 48).
Interaction between Philosophy and Theology
After its overview of the history of the relationship between reason and faith, FR
addresses the narrower question of how philosophy (as representative of reason)
should interact with theology (as representative of faith). The Pope states that
his purpose is not to impose a particular theological method, but to reflect on
some specific tasks of theology that by their nature demand a recourse to
philosophy. Following the time-honored tradition, John Paul II distinguishes two
functions of theology, namely, the auditus fidei and the intellectus fidei and
shows how philosophy contributes to the performance of each. With regard to the
auditus fidei, philosophy helps theology with "its study of the structure of
knowledge and personal communication, especially the various forms and functions
of language" as well as its "contribution to a more coherent understanding of
church tradition, the pronouncements of the magisterium and the great teaching of
the great masters of theology" (no. 65).
With regard to the intellectus fidei, FR explains the indispensable contribution
of philosophy to dogmatic theology, fundamental theology, moral theology, and the
study of cultures. I will postpone the discussion of the study of cultures to the
next section of the essay; here I will mention only how FR understands the role of
philosophy in two theological disciplines. First, with regard to dogmatic
theology, FR argues that "without philosophy’s contribution, it would in fact be
impossible to discuss theological issues such as, for example, the use of language
to speak about God, the personal relations within the Trinity, God’s creative
activity in the world, the relationship between God and man, or Christ’s identity
as true God and true man" (no. 66). Secondly, with regard to fundamental theology,
John Paul II argues that its task is to demonstrate the truths knowable by
philosophical reason that "an acceptance of God’s revelation necessarily
presupposes" and show how "revelation endows these truths with their fullest
meaning, directing them toward the richness of the revealed mystery in which they
find their ultimate purpose" (no. 67). These truths include, for example, "the
natural knowledge of God, the possibility of distinguishing divine revelation from
other phenomena or the recognition of its credibility, the capacity of human
language to speak in a true and meaningful way even of things which transcend all
human experience" (no. 67)
To conclude his exposition on the relationship between theology and philosophy,
John Paul II uses the image of a "circle" with two "poles" to describe it.13 On
the one hand, is the Word of God that is the "source and starting point" of
theology; on the other, is "a better understanding of it." Moving between these
two poles is reason that "is offered guidance and is warned against paths which
would lead it to stray from revealed truth and to stray in the end from the truth
pure and simple. . . . This circular relationship with the word of God leaves
philosophy enriched, because reason discovers new and unsuspected horizons" (no.
73).
PHILOSOPHY AND INCULTURATION OF
THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IN ASIA
For those familiar with the Roman Catholic traditional understanding of the
relationship between reason and faith, especially as mediated by Thomas Aquinas
and the two Vatican Councils, John Paul II’s teaching offers no new or surprising
insights, and rightly so, since his primary task is not to innovate but to stand
in continuity with the Tradition.14 Thus, he continues to affirm the autonomy of
reason and philosophy vis-à-vis faith and theology, as well as their necessary
harmony and mutual collaboration, while at the same time categorically emphasizing
the primacy of Christian revelation over philosophy as its guide and norm. Not
surprisingly, to non-Catholic philosophers John Paul II seems to want to have his
cake and eat it, too. Whether this charge is valid or not is an open question, but
the blame should not be laid at the Pope’s feet since he does nothing more than
restate the traditional Catholic position on the relationship between faith and
reason.
This does not mean that FR does not contain novel accents and perspectives. For
one thing, in spite of his severe critique of contemporary Western philosophy,
John Paul II, as we have seen above, recognizes several of its positive
achievements. Moreover, his recommendation of Thomas Aquinas as the master and
model for theologians is a far cry from Leo XIII’s elevation of Thomas to the
status of official philosopher of the Catholic Church and Pius X’s imposition of
24 theses of Thomistic philosophy to be taught in all Catholic institutions. In
addition, while reiterating the importance of philosophical inquiry, John Paul has
not forgotten the power of personal witness, in particular martyrdom, in
convincing others of the truth of one’s faith. But there is no doubt that one of
the most interesting and challenging elements of John Paul II’s teaching on faith
and reason is his proposal to use philosophy as a tool for the inculturation of
the Christian faith, especially in Asia. And to this we now turn.
John Paul II and Asian Philosophies
It is well known that the relationship between the Christian faith and cultures,
or to use a neologism, inculturation, has been a constant and deep preoccupation
of John Paul II’s pontificate.16 For helpful overviews of inculturation as a
theological problem, see Marcello de C. Azevedo, "Inculturation," in Dictionary of
Fundamental Theology, ed. René Latourelle and Rino Fisichella (New York:
Crossroad, 1995), 500-10 and Hervé Carrier, "Inculturation of the Gospel," ibid.,
510-14. General works on inculturation have recently grown by leaps and bounds.
Among the most helpful, from the Catholic perspective, are: Aylward Shorter,
Toward a Theology of Inculturation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988); Robert
Schreiter, Constructing Local Theologies (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1985); idem,
The New Catholicity: Theology between the Global and the Local (Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis Books, 1997); Stephen Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology (Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis Books, 1992); Gerald Arbuckle, Earthing the Gospel: An Inculturation
Handbook for the Pastoral Worker (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990); Michael
Gallagher, Clashing Symbols: An Introduction to Faith & Culture (New York: Paulist
Press, 1998); Peter C. Phan, "Contemporary Theology and Inculturation in the
United States," in The Multicultural Church: A New Landscape in U.S. Theologies,
ed. William Cenkner (New York: Paulist Press, 1996), 109-30; 176-92; idem,
"Cultural Diversity: A Blessing or a Curse for Theology and Spirituality?" Louvain
Studies 19 (1994): 195-211.
In this essay, we will focus on the Pope’s proposal of philosophy as a tool for
inculturation of the Christian faith in Asia.17 At the outset, it would useful to
preface our discussion with a few remarks. First, it is important to recall that
FR’s immediate objective is not to conduct a dialogue between the Christian faith
and Asian philosophies and religions as such, but to defend the necessity of
philosophy, particularly metaphysics, for theology and to heal the rift between
the two disciplines: "Metaphysics thus plays an essential role of mediation for
theological research. A theology without a metaphysical horizon could not move
beyond an analysis of religious experience nor would it allow the intellectus
fidei to give a coherent account of the universal and transcendent value of
revealed truth" (no. 83). It is within this context that John Paul II speaks of
the encounter between faith and culture. For a more complete presentation of the
Pope’s view on inculturation, recourse must be made to his other writings.18
Secondly, in his discussion of inculturation of the Christian faith in Asia in FR,
John Paul remains at a very general level. It is no disrespect to him to point out
that he is no expert in Asian philosophies and religions. Among recent thinkers
whom he mentions as exemplifying a "courageous research" into the "fruitful
relationship between philosophy and the word of God," no Asians or non-Asian
thinkers who have worked in Asia, and of course no Asian religious founders, are
named.19 Even though FR mentions the Veda and the Avesta, Confucius and Lao Tzu,
Tirthankara and Buddha (no. 2), and Indian, Chinese, and Japanese philosophies
(no. 72), it is clear that John Paul II’s knowledge of these is rudimentary.20
By my counting, there are six significant, direct or indirect, references in FR to
Asian philosophies. The first reference occurs when FR claims that people in
different parts of the world with diverse cultures have dealt with the same
fundamental issues such as "Who am I?" (anthropology), "Where have I come from and
where am I going?" (cosmology), "Why is there evil?" (Theodicy), and "What is
there after this life?" (Eschatology). As evidence, FR invokes the sacred texts of
Hinduism (the Veda) and of Zoroastrianism (the Avesta), the writings of Confucius
and Lao Tzu, and the preaching of Tirkhankara and the Buddha (no. 1).
The second reference is found in FR’s remark that philosophy has exerted a
powerful influence not only in the formation and development of the cultures of
the West, but also on "the ways of understanding existence in the East" (no. 3).
The third reference takes place in the context of FR’s discussion of agnosticism
and relativism. Lamenting the fact that a legitimate pluralism of philosophical
positions has led to an undifferentiated pluralism that assumes that all positions
are equally valid and, therefore, betrays "lack of confidence in truth," FR goes
on to say that "[e] ven certain conceptions of life coming from the East betray
this lack of confidence, denying truth its exclusive character and assuming that
truth reveals itself equally in different doctrines even if they contradict one
another" (no. 5).
The fourth reference occurs when FR explains the three stances of philosophy vis-
à-vis Christian revelation, that is, a philosophy completely independent of the
Gospel, Christian philosophy, and philosophy as ancilla theologiae (no. 75).21
Asian philosophies are said to belong to the first category because they were
elaborated in "regions as yet untouched by the Gospel" and because they aspire to
be "an autonomous enterprise, obeying its own rules and employing the powers of
reason alone." This does not mean that they are cut off from grace, because "[a] s
a search for truth within the natural order, the enterprise of philosophy is
always open–at least implicitly–to the supernatural" (no. 75).
The fifth reference is made in FR’s recommendation that Christian philosophers
develop "a reflection which will be both comprehensible and appealing to those who
do not yet grasp the full truth which divine revelation declares" (no. 104). This
philosophy is all the more necessary today since "the most pressing issues facing
humanity–ecology, peace, and the coexistence of different races and cultures, for
instance–may possibly find a solution if there is a clear and honest collaboration
between Christians and the followers of other religions" (no. 104).
The last and by far the most important reference to Asian philosophies is given in
the context of FR’s discussion of the encounter between the Gospel and cultures,
or inculturation. Because the text touches the core of our theme, it is
appropriate to cite it in full:
In preaching the Gospel, Christianity first encountered Greek philosophy; but this
does not mean at all that other approaches are precluded. Today, as the Gospel
gradually comes into contact with cultural worlds which once lay beyond Christian
influence, there are new tasks of inculturation, which means that our generation
faces problems not unlike those faced by the church in the first centuries.
My first thoughts turn immediately to the lands of the East, so rich in religious
and philosophical traditions of great antiquity. Among these lands, India has a
special place. A great spiritual impulse leads Indian thought to seek an
experience which would liberate the spirit from the shackles of time and space and
would therefore acquire absolute value. The dynamic of this quest for liberation
provides the context for great metaphysical systems.
In India particularly, it is the duty of Christians to draw from this rich
heritage the elements compatible with their faith in order to enrich Christian
thought. In this work of discernment, which finds its inspiration from the
council’s declaration Nostra Aetate, certain criteria will have to be kept in
mind. The first of these is the universality of the human spirit, whose basic
needs are the same in the most disparate cultures.
The second, which derives from the first, is this: In engaging great cultures for
the first time, the church cannot abandon what she has gained from her
inculturation in the world of Greco-Latin thought. To reject this heritage would
be to deny the providential plan of God, who guides the church down the paths of
time and history. This criterion is valid for the church of every age, even for
the church of the future, who will judge herself enriched by all that comes from
today’s engagement with Eastern cultures and will find in this inheritance fresh
cues for fruitful dialogue with the cultures which will emerge as humanity moves
into the future.
Third, care will need to be taken lest, contrary to the very nature of the human
spirit, the legitimate defense of the uniqueness and originality of Indian thought
be confused with the idea that a particular cultural tradition should remain
closed in its difference and affirm itself by opposing other traditions.
What has been said here of India is no less true for the heritage of the great
cultures of China, Japan and the other countries of Asia, as also for the riches
of the traditional cultures of Africa, which are more the most part orally
transmitted (no. 72).
Philosophy and Inculturation of the Christian Faith in Asia
It would be useful to highlight and comment briefly upon some of the more
important points FR makes with regard to philosophy as a tool for inculturation in
this lengthy excerpt. First of all, the interaction between philosophy and
theology is here seen in the context of the inculturation of Christianity into the
local cultures. There is recognized the necessity for Asian Christians to develop
a philosophy by which their cultures may "open themselves to the newness of the
Gospel’s truth and to be stirred by this truth to develop in new ways" (no. 71).
Secondly, of the cultures of Asia "so rich in religious and philosophical
traditions of great antiquity," FR singles out that of India which is said to be
endowed with "a great spiritual impulse" and whose quest for the liberation of
"the spirit from the shackles of time and space" provides the context for "great
metaphysical systems."
Thirdly, it is incumbent upon Indian Christians to draw from their rich cultural
resources elements compatible with Christian faith in order to enrich the
Christian thought. It is interesting to note that FR sees inculturation as a
reciprocal process, with Christian faith and theology not unilaterally enriching
local cultures, but being enriched by them as well.
Fourthly, in order for inculturation to reach this goal, certain criteria and
norms must be observed, and FR enumerates three:
(1) The first criterion is "the universality of the human spirit, whose basic
needs are the same in the most disparate cultures." By "universality of the human
spirit" FR presumably means not only that certain fundamental philosophical and
theological themes have been addressed by all cultures such as the nature of the
self, the origin of the world, the problem of evil, and the eternal destiny of the
individual (no. 1), but also that humans, despite their cultural diversities, can
and should communicate with each other. In other words, FR indirectly rejects the
theory of incommensurability proposed by some pluralists according to which humans
are so socially situated that genuine mutual understanding and judgment of another
person’s culture and values is logically impossible. As to the "basic needs" of
the human spirit, FR does not elaborate on them, but in light of what FR has said
elsewhere, these needs include the "need to reflect upon truth" (no. 6), and more
specifically, the "truth of being" (no. 5).22 In addition, there is the need to
formulate the certitudes arrived at in a rigorous and coherent way into a
"systematic body of knowledge" (no. 4) and to proclaim them to others.
(2) The second criterion is that the church cannot "abandon what she has gained
from its inculturation in the world of Greco-Latin thought." To reject this
heritage, according to FR, is to "deny the providential plan of God, who guides
the church down the paths of time and history." FR does not explain what it means
when it says that Asian Christians cannot abandon what the church has gained from
its encounter with the Greco-Latin heritage.23 Furthermore, because it is also
part of the plan of divine providence that the Gospel be inculturated into the
Asian soil, FR explicitly says that the fruits of this encounter will become in
their turn "fresh cues for fruitful dialogue with the cultures which will emerge
as humanity moves into the future" (no. 72).24
(3) The third criterion is a corollary of the first. FR cautions that given the
universality of the human spirit, one culture cannot close itself off from other
cultures in the name of its "uniqueness" and "originality." There is, however, an
ironic twist to this warning. Whereas Western culture has long regarded itself so
unique and original that it considered itself superior to and normative for all
other cultures, now the cultures of Asia are seen more liable to fall to this
chauvinistic temptation.
Critical Questions
No doubt there is much in John Paul II’s proposal to use philosophy as a tool for
the inculturation of the Christian faith into Asia that is valuable.25 His
admiration for the riches of Asian philosophies and religions is genuine. His
insistence on the possibility and necessity of dialogue across cultures and
religions is well taken. His reminder that inculturation has been a practice of
the church from its very beginning and that there are lessons to be learned from
the past is helpful. His warning against the danger of cultural chauvinism and
xenophobia is also salutary.
There are however certain affirmations in FR that are open to challenge or even
seriously misleading. A word should be said first of all about FR’s charge that
"certain conceptions of life coming from the East" betray "a lack of confidence in
truth, denying its exclusive character and assuming that truth reveals itself
equally in different doctrines even if they contradict one another" (no. 5).
Because the encyclical does not specify which "conceptions of life coming from the
East" it refers to, it may be presumed that it has in mind the celebrated capacity
of Asian religions to absorb various and apparently conflicting philosophies and
practices and the Asian inclusive worldview that is embodied in Daivism, the
Middle Way of Nagarjuna, and the concepts of yin and yang. Admittedly, this
Weltanschauung tends to see complementarity in different and even opposite (not
contradictory) views and practices, but it is a caricature to say that it lacks
"confidence in truth" because it is precisely in order to reach the truth that
such opposites are held together. Needless to say, no Asian "conception of life"
can be accused of holding "different doctrines, even if they contradict one
another," if by contradiction is meant logical self-contradictory negation and not
simply opposites.26 Perhaps, this charge is not simply a misunderstanding of a
minor point in Asian philosophies, but is symptomatic of the fundamental
difference between two ways of seeing reality.
In addition, it is significant that FR emphasizes the "exclusive character" of
truth, which certain Asian "conceptions of life" are alleged to deny. The
encyclical consistently speaks of "truth" in the singular and in the abstract,
especially when it affirms the universal and absolute character of truth. This is
particularly evident in the already cited text: "Every truth–if it really is
truth–presents itself as universal, even if it is not the whole truth" (no. 27).
Asian philosophies will have no problem with the first part of the Pope’s
statement, namely, that every truth presents itself as universal. In terms of
Bernard Lonergan’s cognitional theory with its four transcendental precepts (that
is, "be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, and be responsible"), truth-
claims are well-founded and so can be true when they are made as the result of due
attention to relevant evidence (attention), careful consideration of a range of
hypotheses (intelligence), reasoned affirmation of a particular hypothesis as best
corroborated by the available evidence (judgment), and choice of the values
implied in the affirmation (responsibility).27
Asian philosophies would however make three significant qualifications.28 First,
truths are not the same as apprehension, understanding, and formulation of what is
true. Truth, or better still, what is true (ontological truth) is by its very
nature universal, and the judgment in which this truth is affirmed is true (truth
as adaequatio mentis ad rem), but a particular apprehension, understanding, and
formulation of the truths need not and indeed cannot be universal, given the
intrinsically finite, incomplete, and historical character of human knowledge.
Furthermore, truths do not and cannot exist independently from particular
apprehensions, understandings, judgments, and formulations, floating as it were
above time and space like a Platonic form. Truth, or better, truths always
manifest themselves and are grasped in these particular epistemological acts
(truth as aletheia or manifestation); and their universality is always mediated in
and through these limited and historically evolving acts of apprehending,
understanding, judging, and formulating.
Secondly, Asian philosophies maintain that reality itself or what is ontologically
true is not or at least does not manifest itself as one but plural. This view of
reality itself as plural, or of the necessarily plural manifestation of reality,
is found, for example, in Indian philosophies, even though they privilege the
concept of the unity of all things in the universal Self (Brahman, atman) over the
particularity of individual realities.29 It is espoused especially by the Chinese
philosophy of yin and yang and of the Five Elements (wu-hsing), according to which
the movement of reality–humanity and nature–is governed by an alternating
multiplicity of contrary but unifying forces.30 It follows then that no act of
apprehending, understanding, judging, and expressing reality at any given time can
fully and totally express reality. The best that can be achieved is relative
adequacy between the mind’s affirmation and reality.
Thirdly, Asian philosophies will draw out the implications of the second part of
John Paul II’s statement, that is, "even if it is not the whole truth," with
regard to the use of philosophy as a tool for the inculturation of the Christian
faith in Asia. Asian philosophies would affirm that all apprehensions,
understandings, judgments, and formulations of any truth, revealed or otherwise,
cannot be anything but partial. Partiality in knowledge, which is not the same as
falseness, is not just an occasional mishap that can in principle be overcome by
dint of mental efforts, as might be implied by the Pope’s qualification ("even if
it is not the whole truth"), as though most of the times the "whole truth" is
readily available, in philosophy as well as in revelation. Rather it is our
inescapable lot to possess knowledge always in fragments, that is, partial and
relatively adequate apprehensions, understandings, judgments, and formulations of
reality. This fact does not of itself invalidate the claim that Jesus is the
perfect and full revelation of God (which Christians may of course legitimately
make), because the church’s apprehensions, understandings, judgments, and
formulations of this claim about Jesus and of the truths revealed by him will
always remain partial and only relatively adequate, even in the case of infallible
definitions.
It follows that in the inculturation of the Christian faith, it is not simply a
matter of adaption (much less translation) of the Christian truths (most if not
all of which have been formulated in Jewish-Greek-Latin-European categories) to an
alien tongue and mode of thought. Rather inculturation is a two-way process in
which the Christian faith is given a better and more adequate apprehension,
understanding, judgment, and formulation of itself, almost always at the cost of
abandoning its own categories, and in which other faiths are in turn enriched by a
better and more adequate apprehension, understanding, judgment, and formulation of
themselves. Genuine intercultural encounter between the Christian faith and
cultures always involves mutual challenge, critique, correction, and enrichment so
that a new tertium quid will emerge.
FIDES ET RATIO AND THE INCULTURATION OF
THE CHRISTIAN FAITH INTO CONFUCIANIST ASIA
The concluding part of this essay will assess John Paul II’s teaching on
philosophy, and more specifically metaphysics, as a tool for inculturating the
Christian faith into Asia by exploring its applicability to some aspects of
Confucianism. The theme is no doubt extremely vast, and limited space will permit
consideration of only two issues, the one methodological and the other
substantive. The point here is neither to prescribe a method for the project of
inculturating the Christian faith into cultures that are shaped by Confucianism,
nor critically to review past efforts, both in theological reflection and church
practices, to carry out this task.31 Rather attention will be drawn to some of the
challenges and difficulties that the inculturation of the Christian faith into
Confucianist Asia will encounter if the method recommended by FR is implemented in
a simplistic manner.
Metaphysics and Ontological Categories in Inculturation
FR argues vigorously for the use of philosophy in general and metaphysics in
particular not only in theology but also in the inculturation of the Christian
faith. To cure the "crisis of meaning" which he discerns in contemporary culture
infected with eclecticism, historicism, scientism, pragmatism, and nihilism (nos.
86-90), John Paul II prescribes a threefold therapy: a recovery of philosophy’s
"sapiential dimension as a search for the ultimate and overarching meaning of
life" (no. 81), a re-affirmation of human reason’s "capacity to know the truth, to
come to knowledge which can reach objective truth" (no. 82), and the use of "a
philosophy of a genuinely metaphysical range, capable, that is, of transcending
empirical data in order to attain something absolute, ultimate and foundational in
its search for truth" (no. 83). John Paul II points out that by metaphysics he
does not mean "a specific school or a particular current of thought" (no. 83), and
he has already affirmed that "the church has no philosophy of her own nor does she
canonize any one particular philosophy in preference to others" (no. 49).32
As to whether metaphysics is necessary for the inculturation of the Christian
faith into Confucian Asia, the answer is straightforward if by metaphysics is
meant simply the general affirmation of the human mind’s capacity to know reality
objectively. No Asian philosophers–indeed, no philosopher of any stripe–can deny
this capacity without self-contradiction, because the very act of denying it
necessarily affirms it. They would concur with John Paul II’s affirmation of the
"universality" of "truth," though with the three important qualifications
elaborated above.33 In this context, Asian philosophers would no doubt consider
unfounded and even offensive FR’s accusation that "certain conceptions of life
coming from the East" betray a "lack of confidence in truth" because they
allegedly assume that "truth reveals itself equally in different doctrines even if
they contradict one another" (no. 5).
As to whether metaphysics can serve as an effective tool for inculturating the
Christian faith into Confucians Asia, the answer depends on what is meant by
metaphysics beyond the general meaning indicated above. Metaphysics may refer to a
style of philosophizing or a way of thinking and a particular school of thought.
The second meaning, though distinct from the first, is unavoidable since it is not
possible to speak of metaphysics in the abstract. In spite of his disclaimer that
he does not intend to propose "a specific school or a particular current of
thought," John Paul II cannot but espouse a specific metaphysics. In fact, the
Pope’s brand of metaphysics may be called "critical realism," since he insists–
adamantly and repeatedly–that metaphysics ought to maintain the possibility "to
know a universally valid truth" (no. 93). It does not matter much whether this
critical realism is of the Thomistic stamp or some other varieties such as
Lonergan’s or Rahner’s.
Of course, there has not been anywhere one style of philosophizing and one school
of metaphysics. As Kenneth L. Schmitz has shown, in the West metaphysics has been
developed both as a style of thinking (metaphysics as "fundamental enquiry") and a
philosophical discipline (metaphysics as "ontological discourse"), and in this
double form it has undergone radical shifts as a result of the triple revolution
in modernity, namely, the empirio-mathematical, historical, and linguistic
turns.34 Therefore, if Western (and even Christian) metaphysics is used as a tool
for the inculturation of the Christian faith into Confucians Asia, both as a style
of thinking and an ontological discipline, there must be a deep sensitivity first
of all to the distinctive style of philosophizing in Confucianism.
In his masterful description of the Chinese way of thinking, Hajime Nakamura has
argued that the Chinese characteristically did not develop "non-religious
transcendental metaphysics."35 This does not mean, of course, that there is no
"metaphysics" in China. Indeed, among the ancient Chinese philosophies, Taoism can
surely be said to have a metaphysical character. Neo-Confucians were attracted to
certain aspects of Buddhist metaphysics and developed their own metaphysics (for
example, Chu-Tzi’s Sung-hsüeh philosophy). The Hua-yen sect incorporated some
metaphysical doctrines of Mahayana Buddhism. However, metaphysical thinking was
completely abandoned when Taoism turned into a religious art of achieving
immortality; even Chu-Tzi, the founder of Sung-hsüeh philosophy, did not elaborate
a metaphysical system; and in the Hua-yen sect, the Buddhist all-important
distinction between Absolute Reality and the phenomenal world is rejected. This
anti-metaphysical trend of Chinese thought was not due to a lack of intellectual
sophistication, but to a distinct way of thinking, and awareness of this
difference will help overcome what Robert Solomon calls the "transcendental
pretense" of the Enlightenment.36
The style of thinking which accounts for the nondevelopment of metaphysics among
the Chinese has been referred to variously as "emphasis on the perception of the
concrete," "non-development of abstract thought," "emphasis on the particular,"
"fondness for complex multiplicity expressed in concrete form," "the tendency
towards practicality," and "reconciling and harmonizing tendencies."37 David Hall
and Roger Ames characterize the Chinese way of thinking as "first problematic, or
alternatively, analogical or correlative thinking" and the Western way as "second
problematic" or "causal" thinking.38 The Chinese way of thinking is described as
"neither strictly cosmogonical nor cosmological in the sense that there is the
presupposition neither of an initial beginning nor of the existence of a single-
ordered world. This mode of thinking accepts the priority of change or process
over rest and permanence, presumes no ultimate agency responsible for the general
order of things, and seeks to account for states of affairs by appeal to
correlative procedures rather than by determining agencies and principles."39
With this basic difference in modes of thinking in mind, it would be difficult to
concur fully with John Paul II’s threefold recommendation for the inculturation of
the Christian faith into Confucians Asia. First, he suggests that Christians in
Asia should "draw from this [Asian] rich heritage the elements compatible with
their faith in order to enrich Christian thought" (no. 72). This procedure seems
to envisage inculturation as a straightforward business of adapting elements of
one culture into another, without due attention to the different–at times,
incommensurable–modes of thinking among cultures.40
Secondly, John Paul II appears to hold that nothing short of metaphysics can give
a coherent account of divine revelation: "Metaphysics thus plays an essential role
of mediation in theological research. A theology without a metaphysical horizon
could not move beyond an analysis of religious experience nor would it allow the
intellectus fidei to give a coherent account of the universal and transcendent
value of revealed truth" (no. 83). Depending on what is meant by "metaphysics" and
"metaphysical horizon," this view belittles the epistemological validity of the
narrativistic and aphoristic mode of thinking, knowing, and expressing that is
characteristic of Chinese philosophy and no less able to "give a coherent account"
of its worldview. It seems to require that an Asian Christian theology must of
necessity take the form of systematic exposition, as has been done so far in the
West, if it were to achieve self-coherence.41
Thirdly, and perhaps in a piece with his second point, John Paul II specifies that
"in engaging great cultures for the first time, the church cannot abandon what she
has gained from her inculturation in the world of Greco-Latin thought. To reject
this heritage would be to deny the providential plan of God, who guides the church
down the paths of time and history" (no. 72). What John Paul II intends to say in
this excerpt is highly ambiguous: (1) If the church cannot abandon its gains in
its inculturation in the world of Greco-Latin thought in engaging great cultures
for the first time, does it mean that the church is free to do so later, perhaps
when the local church has reached sufficient maturity? (2) What is being included
in the church’s Greco-Latin "heritage"? Theology, liturgy, ethics, canon law,
institutions, etc.? In terms of theology, does it mean for instance that an Asian
Christology must employ categories such as person, nature, hypostatic union, and
so on, perhaps in translation? And how far should this Greco-Latin heritage be
extended? Until the Middle Ages, but no further? (3) What is meant by saying that
denying the church’s Greco-Latin heritage is tantamount to denying the
"providential plan of God"? Is it being implied that God has sanctioned and
canonized the development of Western (even conciliar) theology? (4) If it is now
God’s providential plan to bring the Christian faith into Confucianist Asia,
should the new Asian theologies be incorporated into the heritage of the church?
If so, what are the mechanisms whereby this incorporation can be carried out
effectively? How can this be done when papal and other official documents are all
written in Rome, in Western languages, and then promulgated (and at times
enforced) with authority and power to the churches of the non-Western world?
The Rites Controversy Revisited
As a concrete example of the inculturation of the Christian faith into Confucians
Asia, perhaps no doctrine and practice can be as illuminating and challenging,
both historically and theologically, as the cult of ancestors.42 My interest here
is neither to rehearse this painful episode in the history of the Asian churches
in which cultural misunderstandings, theological dogmatism, ecclesiastical
rivalries, and international politics were all deeply enmeshed with a praiseworthy
desire to incarnate the Christian faith into the Chinese culture, nor to examine
the theological and liturgical validity of the cult of ancestors in itself.43
Rather, I would like to show how the inculturation of the Christian faith into
Confucians Asia with regard to the cult of ancestors cannot be adequately carried
out on the sole basis of the method proposed by John Paul II in FR.
As is well known, the cult of ancestors posed a difficult challenge to the
earliest missionaries to China and other countries influenced by Confucianism.44
Basically, the question was whether the cult is theologically acceptable. At issue
was the nature of this cult, that is, whether it has a "religious" character or is
a purely civil or political ceremony. If the former, then it is superstition and,
therefore, must be forbidden; if the latter, then it may be tolerated, and
Christians’ participation in it would be permissible, due care being exercised to
prevent misunderstanding and scandal. The final position of the Catholic Church
toward the cult of ancestors, after repeated and severe condemnations by several
Popes, was acceptance, and the ground for this complete volte-face is the alleged
nonreligious nature of this cult.45
The question of interest here is whether the issue of the cult of ancestors would
have been more correctly and speedily resolved had the method of inculturation,
which is now advanced by John Paul II, been known and applied? No doubt there were
many metaphysical and, more generally, philosophical issues at stake.
Philosophically, the cult of ancestors obviously implies certain views regarding
the human person, the person’s survival after death, the nature of this post-
mortem life, and the relationship between the dead and the living. Ethically, it
concerns the heart of the moral life as Confucianism understands it, namely, as
the proper performance of the duties entailed by various relationships, the most
important of which being the relationship between the children and their
parents.46 It has been rightly said that filial piety is the central virtue for
every Confucian. Furthermore, the cult of ancestors has implications for marriage
and the family, because a man who does not have children by his wife may be
morally bound by filial piety to marry another woman and have children by her so
as to perpetuate this cult. Politically, the cult of ancestors functions as the
glue that binds society together, from the king as the August Son of Heaven to the
humblest citizen of the country, and provides continuity across generations.
Theologically, the cult of ancestors raises, at least for Christians, the question
of the relationship between this cult and the worship of God.
In view of these complex aspects of the cult of ancestors, it is questionable
whether a method for the inculturation of the Christian faith into Confucians Asia
that relies principally on philosophy and metaphysics is adequate to the task.
Indeed, were one to follow John Paul II’s three suggestions discussed in the
previous section, one would run into intractable difficulties. First, it is
impracticable, even counterproductive, simply to select from the Chinese cult of
ancestors elements that are compatible with the Christian faith and incorporate
them into the Christian worship because, apart from their immediate context, these
rites lose all their meanings. In fact, it is only when it is viewed apart from
its context that the cult of ancestors can be regarded as being nothing more than
a civil and political act. The oft-endorsed practice of baptizing non-Christian
rituals not rarely amounted to a cultural cannibalism and colonialism which
divested these rituals of their own religious meanings and made them serve the
Christian purpose.
Furthermore, metaphysics would not be the most effective tool to evaluate the cult
of ancestors. The issue here is not whether Chinese philosophy would deny
personhood or post-mortem survival or even the immortality of the "soul," all of
which are postulated by the cult of ancestors.47 Nor is it about whether Chinese
philosophy is open to the affirmation of "God"; in fact, the existence of a
transcendent being may be said to be implied in the Chinese concepts of t’ien,
t’ien ming, te, and tao.48 Rather, even after all these metaphysical realities are
affirmed, it still remains to be determined whether the cult of ancestors with all
its manifold rituals is acceptable to Christians ethically, politically, and
theologically. And on this question there is little that metaphysics can settle
apodictically.
Lastly, it would be even less helpful to invoke the church’s Greco-Latin heritage
as the criterion for judging the validity of the cult of ancestors. Indeed, it was
the early missionaries’ approach to this cult from the vantage point of the
Western understanding of worship that prevented them from achieving a full
understanding of its meaning. Even the basic terms framing the debate were
misleading. Should the term "cult" be translated as "worship" (latria) or
"veneration" (dulia)? Should one use "worship of ancestors" or "veneration of
ancestors"? Needless to say, the validity of the cult of ancestors, according to
Roman Catholic sensibilities, depends very much on which of these expressions is
used. And yet, the cult of ancestors cannot properly be understood in these terms.
Nor would it be very helpful to find equivalents for the cult of ancestors in
Roman Catholic devotional practices such as the cult of Mary and the saints,
because these practices are undergirded by very different theological worldviews.
As has been said above, to obtain a comprehensive understanding of John Paul II’s
teaching on inculturation, especially the inculturation of the Christian faith
into Asia, one should not limit oneself to FR. The Pope’s fuller and richer
insights can be found elsewhere, especially his Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in
Asia, which he promulgated in the wake of the Special Assembly for Asia of the
Synod of Bishops on November 6, 1999.49 FR’s somewhat narrow views should,
therefore, be supplemented by those the Pope proposes in Ecclesia in Asia as well
as in another Apostolic Exhortation, Ecclesia in Africa (1995). Only by taking
these papal documents together can a relatively adequate method for the
inculturation of the Christian faith into Asia be devised.
The Warren-Blanding Distinguished
Chair Professor of Religion and Culture,
School of Religious Study and Education,
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.
NOTES
1 Wojtyla’s best-known philosophical work, though generally recognized as highly
abstract and abstruse, remains his Osoba i Czyn (Crakow: Polskie Towarzystwo
Teologiczne, 1969). Its English translation by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, which
bears the title The Acting Person (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Reidel, 1979), has
been judged unreliable and criticized for having excessively phenomenologized
Wojtyla’s language and thought. A collection of Wojtyla’s philosophical essays is
available as Person and Community: Selected Essays, trans. Theresa Sandok (New
York: Peter Lang, 1993).
2 See his encyclicals Veritatis Splendor (August 6, 1993) and Evangelium Vitae
(March 25, 1995). English translations of these encyclicals are available in The
Encyclicals of John Paul II, ed. Michael Miller (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday
Visitor, 1996), 674-771 and 792-894.
3 For the English translation of Fides et Ratio, henceforth FR, which was
promulgated on September 14, 1998, see Origins vol. 28, no. 19 (October 22, 1998):
318-47. Citations of the encyclical will be followed by the number of the
paragraph in parentheses.
4 I have already examined FR in relation to Asian philosophies in "Fides et Ratio
and Asian Philosophies: Sharing the Banquet of Truth," Science et Esprit 51/3
(1999): 333-49.
5 For studies on FR, see Louis-Marie Billé et al., Foi et raison: Lectures de
l’encyclique Fides et Ratio (Paris: Cerp, 1998); Fede e ragione: Opposizione,
composizione? ed. Mauro Mantovani, Scaria Thuruthiyil, and Mario Toso (Roma:
Libreria Ateneo Salesiano, 1998); Tomás Melendo, Para leer la Fides et Ratio
(Madrid: Rialp, 2000); Faith and Reason: The Notre Dame Symposium, ed. Timothy
Smith (South Bend, IN: St. Augustin’s Press, 2000); Per una lettura dell’enciclica
Fides et Ratio (Città del Vaticano: L’Osservatore Romano, 1999); Peter Henrici,
"La Chiesa et la filosopfia: In ascolto della ‘Fides et Ratio’," Gregorianum 80:4
(1999): 635-44; idem, "The One Who Went Unnamed: Maurice Blondel in the Encyclical
Fides et Ratio," Communio (US) 26 (1999): 609-21; Joseph Kallarangatt, "Fides et
Ratio: Its Timeliness and Contribution," Christian Orient 20 (1999): 22-39; Albert
Keller, "Vernunft und Glaube," Stimmen der Zeit 217 (1999): 1-12; Job
Kozhamthadam, "Fides et Ratio and Inculturation," Vidyajyoti 63 (1999): 848-59;
Salvador Pié-Ninot, "La Encíclica Fides et Ratio y la Teología Fundamental: Hacia
una propuesta," Gregorianum 80:4 (1999): 645-76; Kenneth Schmitz, "Faith and
Reason: Then and Now [Dei Filius and Fides et Ratio]," Communio (US) 26 (1999):
595-608; Angelo Scola, "Human Freedom and Truth According to the Encyclical Fides
et Ratio," Communio (US) 26 (1999): 486-509; Tissa Balasuriya, "On the Papal
Encyclical Faith and Reason," Cross Currents 49 (1999): 294-96; Avery Dulles,
"Faith and Reason: A Note on the New Encyclical," America 179 (Oct 31, 1998): 7-8;
Anthony Kenny, "The Pope as Philosopher," The Tablet 253 (June 26, 1999): 874-76.
6 Pierre d’Ornellas, auxiliary bishop of Paris, offers helpful reflections on
FR’s concern with the unity of human knowledge in "Une préoccupation déjà ancienne
pour l’unité de la connaissance," in Foi et Raison: Lectures de l’encyclique Fides
et Ratio, 15-29.
7 Awareness of this fact has profound implications for theology today, especially
the discipline of historical theology, because it is the task of theology to bring
about a contemporary understanding, which is itself historically conditioned, of
another past understanding, which is also historically conditioned. Hence, the
complex yet inevitable task of hermeneutics in theology.
8 For recent studies of these issues, see Christliche Philosophie im katholischen
Denken des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Emerich Coreth et al., 3 vols. (Graz:
Styria, 1987-1990); Wolfhart Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science
(Philadelphia: Westminster,1976); Helmut Peukert, Wissenschaftstheorie
Handlungstheorie Fundamentale Theologie (Frankfurt, 1978); Johann Baptist Metz,
Faith in History and Society: Toward a Foundational Political Theology (New York:
Seabury Press, 1979); Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, Foundational Theology: Jesus and
the Church (New York: Crossroad, 1984); René Latourelle, Finding Jesus through the
Gospels (New York: Alba House, 1979); idem, Man and His Problem in the Light of
Jesus Christ (New York: Paulist Press, 1983); Problems and Perspectives of
Fundamental Theology, ed. René Latourelle and Gerald O’Collins (New York: Paulist
Press, 1982); David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the
Culture of Pluralism (New York: Crossroad, 1981); Franz-Josef Niemann, Jesus als
Glaubensgrund in der Fundamentaltheologie der Neuzeit: Zur Genealogie eines
Traktats (Innsbruck: Tyrolia-Verlag, 1983); George Lindbeck, The Nature of
Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster,
1984); Martin Cook, The Open Circle: Confessional Method in Theology (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1991); Avery Dulles, The Craft of Theology: From Symbol to System (New
York: Crossroad, 1992); Thomas Guarino, Revelation and Truth: Unity and Plurality
in Contemporary Theology (Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 1993).
9 On the relationship between Vatican I’s Dei Filius and FR, see the balanced
study of Mauro Mantovani, "Là dove osa la ragione. Dalla ‘Dei Filius’ alla ‘Fides
et Ratio’," in Fede e ragione: Opposizione, composizione? , 59-84. Mantovani
rightly points out that there is a basic continuity between the two documents in
their stance on the relationship between faith and reason, though there are of
course novelties in FR, such as its rejection of contemporary philosophical
errors, its recognition of certain valuable aspects of contemporary thought, and
its appreciation of Asian cultures.
10 André-Mutien Léonard, bishop of Namur and former professor of philosophy at
the University of Louvain, provides a helpful overview of FR in "Un guide de
lecture pour l’encyclique Fides et Ratio," in Foi et Raison: Lectures de
l’encyclique Fides et Ratio, 31-73.
11 Obviously John Paul II’s appeal to the Pauline contrast between the
"foolishness of God" demonstrated on the Cross and "human wisdom" elaborated in
philosophy is no endorsement of fideism and fundamentalism.
12 For studies of FR’s view of the relationship between faith and reason, see
Carlo Chenis, "‘Quid est veritas?’ Valore della ‘ratio’ nei processi veritativi
secondo la ‘mens’ della Chiesa," in Fede e ragione: Opposizione, Composizione?,
85-105; Aniceto Molinaro, "La metafisica e la fede," in Fede e ragione:
Opposizione, Composizione?, 107-118; Mario Toso, "La fede se non è pensata è
nulla," in Fede e ragione: Opposizione, Composizione?, 119-30; Armando Rigobello,
"Il ruolo della ragione, la filosofia dell’essere, la comunicazione della verità:
Luoghi speculativi per un confronto tra ‘Fides et Ratio’ e pensiero
contemporaneo," in Fede e ragione: Opposizione, Composizione?, 131-37; Francesco
Franco, "La filosofia compito della fede: La circolarità di fede e ragione," in
Fede e ragione: Opposizione, Composizione?, 155-75; and Rino Fisichella, "Rapporti
tra teologia e filosofia alla luce di ‘Fides et Ratio,’ in Fede e Ragione:
Opposizione, Composizione?, 177-85.
13 However evocative is the image, speaking of a "circle" with two "poles" is
geometrically infelicitous. Perhaps it would be better to speak of an ellipse.
14 For a study of FR’s continuity with the Tradition and its relative
originality, see Kenneth Schmitz, "Faith and Reason: Then and Now," Communio (US)
26 (1999): 595-608.
15 Of course, John Paul II is neither the first nor the only one to denounce the
various errors of modern philosophy. As Anthony Kenney has correctly pointed out,
in criticizing modern philosophy he stands in the company of philosophers such as
Gottlob Frege and Lugwig Wittgenstein, and it may be added, Martin Heidegger. See
Anthony Kenny, "The Pope as Philosopher," The Tablet 253 (June 26, 1999): 875. On
the other hand, feminists will argue that other no less pernicious errors of
modern philosophy such as its patriarchal and androcentric bias have not received
the Pope’s attention.
16 This concern is demonstrated in John Paul II’s founding of The Pontifical
Council for Culture in 1982 with its quarterly Cultures and Faith. John Paul II’s
writings on the theology of culture are voluminous. For a study of this aspect of
John Paul II’s theology, see Fernando Miguens, Fe y Cultura en la Enseñanza de
Juan Pablo II (Madrid: Ediciones Palabra, 1994).
17 Some of the material that follows is taken from my earlier essay "Fides et
Ratio and Asian Philosophies: Sharing the Banquet of Truth," Science et Esprit
51/3 (1999): 333-49.
18 Among the most important are: Catechesi Tradendae (1979), nos. 52-54; Slavorum
Apostolorum (1985); Redemptoris Missio (1990), nos. 55-56, and Ecclesia in Asia
(1999), nos. 21-22.
19 The thinkers mentioned are: John Henry Newman, Antonio Rosmini, Jacques
Maritain, Etienne Gilson, and Edith Stein "in a Western context" and Vladimir S.
Soloviev, Pavel A. Florensky, Petr Chaadev, and Vladimir N. Lossky "in an Eastern
context" (no. 74). Apparently, the "Eastern context" does not include Asia in
general (at least insofar as recent thinkers with whom the Pope is familiar are
concerned). The list underlines John Paul II’s European cultural formation.
20 For John Paul II’s comments on Buddhism, which have provoked a storm of
protest from Asian Buddhists because of his reference to its "atheistic" system,
see his Crossing the Threshold of Hope, ed. Vittorio Messori and trans. Jenny
McPhee and Martha McPhee (New York: Alfred A. Knoff, 1994), 84-90. There is also a
factual inaccuracy. FR mentions Tirkhankara as if he were an individual, like
Gautama the Buddha, with whom he is paired. In fact, Tirkhankara (lit. making a
passge, crossing, ford) is an honorific title in Jainism for a person who, by
example and teaching, enables others to attain liberation. It designates 24
ascetic teachers in a line reaching back into prehistory, the most recent of whom
was Mahavira (traditionally 599-527 BCE).
21 According to FR, the first stance is adopted by philosophy before the birth of
Jesus and later in regions as yet untouched by the Gospel. By "Christian
philosophy" FR understands "a Christian way of philosophizing, a philosophical
speculation conceived in dynamic union with faith." It includes "those important
developments of philosophical thinking which would not have happened without the
direct or indirect contribution of Christian faith" (no. 76). By viewing
philosophy as ancilla theologiae, FR does not intend to affirm "philosophy’s
servile submission or purely functional role with regard to theology," but to
indicate "the necessity of the link between the two sciences and the impossibility
of their separation" (no. 77). FR does admit that the expression ancilla
theologiae can no longer be used today, but asserts that in this stance philosophy
"comes more directly under the authority of the magisterium and its discernment"
(no. 77).
22 FR repeatedly asserts the duty of philosophy to search for ultimate and
universal truth. Indeed, it laments the fact that contemporary philosophy "has
lost the capacity to lift its gaze to the heights, not daring to rise to the truth
of being" (no. 5). Instead of focusing on metaphysics, contemporary philosophers
have concentrated their research on hermeneutics and epistemology, abandoning the
investigation of being. On the contrary, John Paul II wants "to state that reality
and truth do transcend the factual and the empirical and to vindicate the human
being’s capacity to know this transcendental and metaphysical dimension in a way
that is true and certain, albeit imperfect and analogical" (no. 83). Against post-
modern agnosticism and nihilism (see no. 91), FR affirms that "[e]very truth–if it
really is truth–presents itself as universal, even if it is not the whole truth.
If something is true, then it must be true for all people and at all times. . . .
Hypotheses may fascinate, but they do not satisfy. Whether we admit it or not,
there comes for everyone the moment when personal existence must be anchored to a
truth recognized as final which confers a certitude no longer open to doubt" (no.
27).
23 I will examine this criterion in detail in the last part of the essay.
24 I will draw out the implications of this statement for theological methodology
today in the last part of the essay.
25 For an evaluation of FR in terms of inculturation, see Job Kozhamthadam, "Fides
et Ratio and Inculturation," Vidyajyoti 63 (1999): 848-59; Scaria Thuruthiyil,
"L’inculturazione della fede alla luce dell’Enciclica "Fides et Ratio," in Fede e
ragione: Opposizione, composizione?, 249-55; and Mario Midali, "Evangelizzazione
nuova: Rilevanti indicazioni del "Fides et Ratio," in Fede e ragione: Opposizione,
composizione?, 257-76.
26 For the Nyaya-Vaisheshika epistemology which analyses human knowledge in terms
of the knowing subject, the object to be known, the known object, and the means to
know the object, see Satischandra Chatterjee (ed.), The Nyaya Theory of Knowledge,
2nd edition (Calcutta: University of Calcutta Press, 1950) and Karl H. Potter
(ed.), Indian Metaphysics and Epistemology: The Tradition of Nyaya-Vaisheshika up
to Gangesa (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).
27 See Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (London) and
Method in Theology (New York: Herder, 1971). For studies on how FR understands the
universality of truth, see Gaspare Mura, "L’universalismo della verità," in Fede e
ragione: Opposizione, Composizione?, 139-43.
28 For an informative contrast between the Western and Chinese ways of conceiving
truth, see David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, Thinking from the Han (Albany, NY:
State University of New York Press, 1998), 103-46. Broadly speaking, Westerners
ask, "What is the Truth?" ("Truth-Seekers"), whereas the Chinese ask, "Where is
the Way?" ("Way-Seekers"). Western philosophy makes two assumptions, namely, that
there is a single-ordered world and that there is a distinction between reality
and appearance. The first assumption takes truth as coherence, the second takes
truth as correspondence between mind and reality. These two assumptions are absent
in classical Chinese philosophy. Instead of the single-ordered world, the Chinese
hold that the world is but the "ten thousand things" (wanwu or wanyou) and,
instead of the distinction between reality and appearance, the Chinese hold that
reality is essentially polar (yin/yang). See also other works by the same two
authors, Thinking through Confucius (Albany, NY: State University Press of New
York, 1987) and Anticipating China (Albany, NY: State University of New York,
1995).
29 For an illuminating account of this characteristic of Indian philosophies, see
Hajime Nakamura, Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples (Honolulu: The University
Press of Hawaii, 1964), 93-129.
30 For a brief and helpful explanation of this theory, see A Source Book in
Chinese Philosophy, translated and compiled by Wing-Tsit Chan (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1963), 244-88 and Fung Yu-lan, A Short History of
Chinese Philosophy (New York: The Free Press, 1948), 129-42.
31 The works of seventeenth-century Jesuits in China and Vietnam, such as Matteo
Ricci and Alexandre de Rhodes, are well known. See Peter C. Phan, Mission and
Catechesis: Alexandre de Rhodes and Inculturation in Seventeenth-Century Vietnam
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998).
32 This stance does not prevent the magisterium from acclaiming "the merits of St.
Thomas’ thought" and making him "the guide and model for theological studies." But
FR argues that "this has not been in order to take a position on properly
philosophical questions nor to demand adherence to particular theses" (no. 78).
There is no doubt a bit of revisionist history here, in light of Leo XIII’s
Aeterni Patris (1879) and Pius X’s imposition of 24 "Thomistic" philosophical
theses. For a study of the position of Thomas Aquinas in FR, see Georges Cottier,
"Tommaso d’Aquino, teologo e filosofo nella "Fides et Ratio," in Fede e ragione:
Opposizione, composizione?, 187-94.
33 FR itself explicitly acknowledges that "the objective value of many concepts
does not exclude that their meaning is often imperfect" (no. 96).
34 See Kenneth Schmitz, "Post-modernism and the Catholic Tradition," American
Catholic Philosophical Quarterly LXXIII/2 (1999): 242. Schmitz argues that because
of the empirio-mathematical turn in modernity, metaphysics as philosophical
enquiry was replaced by epistemology as the primary philosophical discipline and
Aristotle’s concept of contingency as the result of the unintended conjunction of
the causes ("causal contingency") was replaced by Pascal’s concept of contingency
as probability ("predictive contingency"). Later, because of the historical turn,
metaphysics as a mode of discourse was forced to recognize its intrinsic condition
of historicity, and the concept of contingency as predictive contingency was
replaced by the concept of contingency as unrepeatable event ("non-predictive
contingency"). Finally, in the linguistic turn, contingency is understood as the
arbitrariness of linguistic signs (as in Saussurean linguistics) or as the
conventionality of relations (as in Anglo-American language analytic philosophy).
See Kenneth Schmitz, "An Addendum to Further Discussion," American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly LXXIII/2 (1999): 277-79). This narrative of the recent
career of metaphysics shows how complex the question about the use of metaphysics
as a tool for inculturation, especially the inculturation of the Christian faith
into Confucianist Asia, is.
35 Hajime Nakamura, Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples, 243.
36 See Robert Solomon, The Bully Culture: Enlightenment, Romanticism, and the
Transcendental Pretense 1750-1850 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993). The
transcendental pretense refers to the claim that rational objectivity and
universal science, allegedly the fruits of the Enlightenment, should be the norm
to judge all non-Western cultures.
37 See Hajime Nakamura, Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples, 177-294.
38 David Hall and Roger Ames, Anticipating China: Thinking Through the Narratives
of Chinese and Western Culture (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press,
1995), xvii.
39 David Hall and Roger Ames, Anticipating China, xviii. Graphically, the
difference between the Western and the Chinese modes of thinking is illustrated by
the former’s preference for the circle and the latter’s for the square as images
of perfection.
40 Apparently John Paul II is operating under the two Greco-Roman models of
inculturation, that is, assimilation of non-Christian philosophy and incarnation
in non-Christian culture, respectively. Aloysius has convincingly argued that
these two models are not applicable to Asia. See his An Asian Theology of
Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1988), 51-53. See also Peter C. Phan, "Fides et
Ratio and Asian Philosophies," 345-46.
41 It is unfortunate that the ratio in Fides et Ratio is successively reduced from
rationality to philosophy to metaphysics. This gradual reduction is all the more
misleading since "metaphysics" is currently understood not as reflective thinking
or fundamental inquiry but mainly as a mode of ontological discourse (e.g., "onto-
theology") and even, in popular circles, as astrology!
42 Systems of ancestor veneration are best known from Africa, China, Taiwan,
Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. In Asia, ancestor worship is an amalgamation of folk
religion, Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Shinto. It has been suggested that
ancestor worship may have emerged from the worship of guardian spirits. This shift
occurred when the family supplanted the clan or tribe as the basic unit of
society, so that prayers addressed to tribal spirits were now redirected to the
deceased members of the family. In Asian countries, ancestor veneration has been
connected with other Taoist practices such as magic, divination, witchcraft,
geomancy, and so forth.
43 For a history of the controversy, see George Minamiki, The Chinese Rites
Controversy from Its Beginning to Modern Times (Chicago: Loyola University Press,
1985).
44 I prescind here from the special question of the cult of Confucius in the
Temple of Literature.
45 See the instruction of the Propaganda Fide, Plane compertum est (1939). See
Peter C. Phan, Mission and Catechesis, 28.
46 The Doctrine of the Mean XX, 8 specifies five relationships and three virtues:
"The duties of universal obligation are five, and the virtues wherewith they are
practiced are three. The duties are those between sovereign and minister, between
father and son, between husband and wife, between elder brother and younger, and
those belonging to the intercourse of friends. Those five are the duties of
universal obligation. Knowledge, magnanimity, and energy, these three, are the
virtues universally binding. And the means by which they carry the duties into
practice is singleness." See The Doctrine of the Mean, trans. James Legg (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1893).
47 FR affirms that "it is metaphysics which makes it possible to ground the
concept of personal dignity in virtue of their spiritual nature" (no. 83). If it
is meant that it is in virtue of metaphysics alone that personal dignity can be
defended, then FR’s statement is gratuitous. Moreover, even if the statement is
granted, there is still a further question to be settled, namely, which
metaphysical argument for the dignity of the person is apodictic. For a study of
the notion of person in FR, see Sabino Palumbieri, "Fides et Ratio": la persona,
punto di sintesi," in Fede e ragione: opposizione, composizione?, 331-52.
48 For a discussion of t’ien and transcendence, as well as t’ien ming, te, and
tao, see David Hall and Roger Ames, Thinking Through Confucius (albany, NY:
University of New York Press, 1987), 201-37.
49 For an analysis and evaluation of this Apostolic Exhortation, see Peter C.
Phan, "Ecclesia in Asia: Challenges for Asian Christianity," East Asian Pastoral
Review 37/3 (2000): 215-32 as well as the essays by Michael Amaladoss, Edmund
Chia, John Manford Prior, and James Kroeger in this issue.
****
http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-7a/chapter_viii.htm
CHAPTER VIII
HUMAN NATURE AND THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS AND SOCIETY
SHI DEFU
Since humankind appeared on earth, it has tried continuously to obtain
knowledge of all surrounding things. Furthermore, it has continuously speculated
over what human beings are: for thousands of years philosophers and other thinkers
have been probing the essence and nature of the human being and putting forward
their own different ideas.
HUMAN NATURE
One of the oldest definitions of humankind is "a kind of two legged-
animal without feathers." But Xun Zi asserted, "What makes mankind to be such is
not only that they have two legs without feathers, but also that they have the
ability to discern."
The problem of human nature is the deepest of the issues regarding
human beings which have long been under discussion. In ancient Chinese philosophy,
disputations between doctrines on the goodness and evil of human nature led to
others between doctrines of "principle and desire". In modern western philosophies
the dominant position defined reason as the essence of human being, meaning that
it is reason which makes the human being to be human. But in modern philosophies
definitions of reason differ greatly. For example, though classical philosophy
defined reason as the human essence, Hegel considered it to be self-consciousness,
while Feuerbach included will and feeling along with reason. In contrast to modern
rationalists, con-temporary western philosophers have been being looking also to
irrational elements. Thus Schopenaur and Nietzsche focused upon will, Bergson upon
intuition, the existentialists upon feeling, and Freud upon human subconsciousness
and sexual desire, etc.
All the philosophical theories about human nature and essence
constitute a precious spiritual endowment which is instructive for us. Based on
different foundations they deepen our self-consciousness and ability to recognize
ourselves. But their shortcomings also are evident: some are too abstract, others
too onesided, the methods and starting points of others present obstacles to the
achievement of scientific knowledge or the recognition of human nature. This
chapter will focus upon this problem.
THE OBJECTIVE CHARACTER OF HUMAN NATURE
As humankind is an objective existent, in order to grasp human nature
we should first recognize and analyze it as it is, just as we treat natural
beings. Natural science has shown that humankind was not created by gods. Such
ideas as "God created mankind" or "Death and life lie within fate, wealth and
nobility lie with Heaven" have been shown to lack solid foundation, although they
are believed by some. Humankind exists and develops according to the laws of the
natural world of living things. But humankind is not simply an existent in the
natural world; it is moreover a subjectively social existent, a unity of
individual and species, of individual and society. Individuals are as cells which
constitute society so that humankind as an organic whole constituted by
individuals who on their own initiative actively and continuously exchange
materials, energy and information with the outside world. This kind of special
life process is the premise and foundation of individual and social existence and
development. This two-way passive-active process between humankind and the
external world forms laws for human development; it produces and manifests the
qualities and essence of humankind.
Therefore, in order to learn about the general nature of human beings
(i.e., of humankind generally), we should study thoroughly the process of human
history. In order to recognize the manifestations of human nature in different
times, societies, classes and even individuals, we should study concretely the
practices of classes and individuals in different times, societies and
communities. Methods which grasp only the general essence of human beings at most
can explain only the distinction between humankind and other animals, but cannot
reveal the difference between classes and individuals in different times and
societies. But if we study only the special character of classes and individuals
in different times and societies without grasping what is common to humankind, we
will not be able to grasp the essence by which human beings are distinguished from
other animals. Methods which try to get an eternal and abstract human nature in a
manner separated from human practice and historical development are not worth the
effort.
Not only does the human being have a complicated physiological
organization, but the multi-leveled and changing practice and relationship between
himself and the external world, and among individuals, classes and society, has
manifested that the human is the most complicated changing material system known.
Therefore, we can achieve the truth about human nature and essence only when we
regard it as a material living system and study it from a comprehensive and
developmental viewpoint. This means that in order to bring to light the real
essence of the human being not only should we analyze the concrete and manifest
form of each level and aspect of human nature in the system of human qualities,
but also we should study comprehensively and synthetically the position of
different human attributes and qualities in the system of human nature and in the
relationships among the qualities and attributes. This disqualifies the method of
some philosophers who grasp only a certain human attribute or special quality and
exaggerate it one-sidedly as the essence of the human being without paying
attention to other aspects.
THE SOCIAL CHARACTER OF HUMAN NATURE
As an object of the study of philosophy and the social sciences the
human being has natural attributes and social and spiritual qualities because the
human being is a natural, social and conscious existent. But comparatively
speaking, we must recognize that the human is first of all a social existent; thus
the social is the essential quality of the human being. His natural qualities of
physiological organization and function, such as appetite, sexual desire, and the
tendency of self-protection, are the natural material foundation on which the
human being as a physiological organism exists and multiplies. But these natural
qualities are transformed in continuous social practice and life; they differ from
the instincts of animals and are dominated or con-trolled by the human’s social
essence. Were human nature to be reduced to merely physiological instincts, we
could place it only in the category of animality. The spiritual qualities of human
being, such as the ability to think, consciousness, will, feeling and the capacity
to make aesthetic judgments are complicated conscious actions. Doubt-less they
constitute important aspects of human nature and play an important part in social
life. But when we study further the source and development of these conscious
actions we will find that essentially they are products of a social practice and
develop along with the development of practice.
The social qualities of the human being are many-sided, such as the
capacity to do productive work and other social practices, dependence upon other
individuals and groups for one’s existence, communication and cooperation with
other individuals and classes, etc. But for the following reasons productive work
is the most essential and dominates the others:
(A) External things and humankind itself both are objects of
knowledge, but in this they differ greatly. There is a special epistemological
difficulty regarding knowledge of one. A person’s eyes can ob-serve external
things, but cannot see themselves. External things can be presented to us, but our
faces are special objects which cannot be observed directly. In order to reveal
the secrets of human nature and essence, we must find means by which to observe
ourselves, just as we must use a mirror in order to look at ourselves. Objectified
action, namely, social practice, which is constituted of productive work and its
products, can be used as this means. In productive work one’s inner essential
strengths (physical and intelligential) are revealed and at last are reified in
their products so that we can recognize ourselves in the objectified world we
create.
(B) One cannot do productive work in isolation, but only in the social
relationships developed in productive work. Thus, in work people not only change
the forms of natural materials and create products which meet people’s material
and cultural needs, but in the material process of production also have created
social, political, ideal, racial, family and ethical relationships which are based
on economic relationships. It is in these working and social relationships that
human nature is revealed.
(C) To assert that productive work is the most essential dimension of
human being which distinguishes humankind from animals does not deny that
humankind has other qualities which distinguish it from animals, such as rational
thought, self-consciousness, the desire for freedom, language, etc. It asserts
only that productive work is more essential than these qualities, for they can be
explained only starting from productive work.
Therefore, society is not a collectivity of isolated individuals, but
a living organism united in social practice constituted of productive work. The
sum total of the connections and relationships formed in the social practice of
myriads of individuals constitutes society. An individual cannot be absolutely
separated from society because he or she is social, and society is a society of
individuals.
Because human nature and essence are determined by this social
dimension, it is not helpful to separate the individual from social practice,
relationships and development, and then to construct a completely inner human
nature and essence on the basis of an isolated "man-himself". This would reduce
the human being to an alienated human nature and essence and see the future of
society as the realization or return to this alienated human nature. But neither
is it correct to deny the existence of individual differences produced in
different interior and exterior conditions because human nature and essence must
be understood upon the basis of social practice and relation-ships.
****
http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-11/chapter_ix.htm
CHAPTER IX
CONFUCIANISM AND SCIENCE
A Philosophical Evaluation
VINCENT SHEN
PRACTICAL WISDOM VERSUS
THEORETICAL KNOWLEDGE
When searching for an explanation of the fact that no science in the Western
modern sense was produced in traditional Chinese culture under the dominant
ideology of Confucianism, we should first of all trace back to the philosophical
origins of both Western and Chinese sciences, and compare their differences. To be
brief, we could qualify Chinese science as a search for practical wisdom and
Western science as a searching for theoretical knowledge. In other words, one of
the fundamental reasons for the absence of modern science in Chinese culture is
the latter’s lack of purely theoretical interest.
Nowadays, modern science becomes more and more operational both in its theory
formation and its data construction processes. This calls for more interaction
between knowledge and action, thus disengaging itself f rom its former
qualification as knowledge f or knowledge ‘ s own sake. But, we should not forget
that, in the beginning, it was produced as the last avatar of the Greek notion of
theoria, the disinterested pursuit of truth and sheer intellectual curiosity.1
Compared with this, Chinese culture in general and Confucianism in particular
seemed to be short of such theoretical interest. Generally speaking, Western
philosophy began as a result of the attitude of wonder, which led to the
theoretical construction of scientific knowledge. In contrast, Chinese philosophy
began as a result of an attitude of concern, which led finally to practical wisdom
for guiding human destiny. Therefore, in the beginning, the difference between
them was that between "wonder" and "concern".
With regard to wonder, Aristotle wrote in Metaphysics:
For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began
to philosophize; they wondered originally at the obvious difficulties, then
advanced little by little and stated difficulties about the greater matters, . . .
therefore since they philosophized in order to escape from ignorance, evidently
they were pursuing science in order to know. and not for any utilitarian end.2

Aristotle continued to point out that the way of life in which science began was
constituted of leisure (rastone) and recreation (diagoge), as enjoyed by Egyptian
priests who discovered geometry. Aristotle believed that in such a state of life,
human beings did not need to care about the daily necessities of life and could
wonder about the causes of things and search knowledge for knowledge’s own sake.
The result of wonder was theories. These came from an important transformation of
the originally religious meaning of the Greek term "theoria"into its philosophic
meaning. Such a transformation was an essential event in the European intellectual
history. In the beginning, the "theoros" were the representatives sent by Greek
cities to Athenian public ceremonies. Through "theoria", that is, through looking
on and not through praxis (actions), they participated in the sacred events. This
religious meaning was transformed into the contemplation of the cosmos, of the
totality of beings.3
The philosophical meaning of"theory", therefore, was determined in one sense with
respect to praxis -- as Aristotle put it, "not in virtue of being able to act, but
of having the theory for themselves and knowing the causes."4 -- and second, in
another sense, with respect to a universal object, which was seen by Aristotle as
the first characteristic of science.5 Modern science was historically grounded in
this Greek heritage of theoria, which regarded our human life no longer as
determined by diverse practical interests, but as submitting itself hence forward
to a universal and objective norm of truth.
By contrast, Chinese thought in general and Confucianism in particular were
originated as a result of the attitude of concern which led not to universal
theorization, but to universal praxis. It was because of his concern with the
destiny of the individual and society that the Chinese mind began to philosophize.
The Great Appendix to the Book of Changes, traditionally attributed to Confucius
as its author, proclaimed that the author of Yi must be face anxiety and calamity
with compassionate concern. It reads:
Was it not in the last age of Yin, when the virtue of Chou had reached its
highest point, and during the troubles between King Wen and the tyrant Dzou, that
the study of Yi began to flourish? On this account the explanations in the book
express a feeling of anxious apprehension, and teach how peril may be turned into
security, and easy carelessness is sure to meet with overthrow. The way in which
these things come about is very comprehensive, and must be acknowledged in every
sphere of things, If at the beginning there is a cautious apprehension as to the
end, there probably will be no error or cause for blame. This is what is called
the Way of Yi.6

This important text shows that in the eyes of Confucius, philosophy as a serious
intellectual activity began with an attitude of concern in the situation of
anxiety and calamity, not at all in the situation of leisure and recreation, as
Aristotle would suggest. The proposition that "the way in which these things come
about is very comprehensive, and must be acknowledged in every sphere of things"
would suggest that Chinese philosophy intended to be a practical wisdom that could
serve as guidance for a universal praxis. Consequently, Confucianism did not have
any distinctive method of dialectical discourse, taking no explicit system of
logic as canon of reasoning. Neither did it, as did modern science, take
mathematics as model of true knowledge. The dialogues that we read in the Analects
(or Lun Yu) do show us a way of discursive interaction, yet they contain no
explicit logic. Dialogues are not yet dialogic.
Still we can recognize, as did B. Schwartz, that, to a certain degree, the
Confucian pleasure in learning may reflect a pure interest in "the mastery of a
body of significant knowledge as such."7 Confucius himself had shown his regret
for those who did not have such an interest. "In days gone by, he said, men
studied for their own sake. Today men studied for the sake of impressing others."8
Therefore the learning of practical wisdom could be seen as possessing an
independent value in Confucianism. But this is not the same as knowledge for
knowledge’s own sake, as in the case of modern Western science.
AMBIVALENCE OF THE CONFUCIAN RELATION
TO SCIENCE
The difficulty of evaluating Confucianism’s import upon science consists in its
ambivalent attitude towards the latter. Joseph Needham has pointed out this
paradoxical position of Confucianism which helped the beginnings of science, on
the one hand, and injured them, on the other.
On one side, Confucianism was basically rationalistic and opposed to any
superstitious or even supernatural forms of religion. . . . But on the other side
its intense concentration of interest upon human social life to the exclusion of
non-human phenomenon negated all investigation of Things, as opposed to Affairs.9

Here we have the contrast between "Natural Things" and "Human Affairs". The above
judgment of Joseph Needham is correct to a certain degree, but it has to be
developed by deeper reflection. We can ask, does this paradoxical attitude imply a
contradiction within the system of Confucianism, or, on the contrary, does it
manifest a coherent philosophical attitude that insists on developing science only
in a humanistic context?
Confucianism’s agnostic rationalism is manifested in the texts where Confucius
expressed his distance from such supernatural powers as ghosts and spirits.
Fan Chih asked what constituted wisdom. The Master Confucius said, "To
give one’s self earnestly to securing righteousness and justice among the people,
and while respecting the gods and demons, to keep distantiated from them, that may
be called wisdom.10
Chi-Lu asked about serving the ghosts and spirits. The Master Confucius
said, "While you are not yet able to serve human beings, how can you serve
ghosts?" Chi-Lu then ventured upon a question about the dead. The Master said.
"You do not yet know about the living, how can you know about the dead?"11

These texts show not only a negative attitude towards supernatural powers, but
also a positive emphasis on this life and social activities such as serving human
beings and securing righteousness. Max Weber was correct when he said,
"Confucianism maintained that magic was powerless in the face of virtue. He who
lived the classical way of life need not fear the spirits; only lack of virtue in
high places gave power to the spirits."12 Humanism with an ethical orientation is
therefore fundamental to Confucian teaching. This explains also why Confucius’
frequent themes of discourse were the Odes, history and the maintenance of the
rites.13 He took four subjects for his teaching: culture (letters), the conduct of
affairs, loyalty to superiors and the keeping of promises.14 Subjects on which the
Master never talked were: extraordinary things, unnatural forces, disorders and
spiritual beings.15
In J. Needham’s eyes, Hsun Tzu’ humanism perfectly exemplifies the ambivalent
relation of Confucianism to science.16 On the one hand, Hsun Tzu preached an
agnostic rationalism and even a denial of the existence of spirits. For him, the
term "Tao" means the order of nature and the right way of human society. His
socio-ethical orientation was shown in his exaltation of Li, the essence of rites,
good customs and traditional observances. On the other hand, he strongly opposed
to the efforts of the School of Names and the Mohists to work out a kind of
discursive logic. He insisted on the practical and social uses of technological
process while denying the importance of theoretical investigation.
J. Needham’s judgment upon Hsun Tzuis sound, but it does not tell the whole
story.Viewed from the philosophy of science, Hsun Tzu’s ideological framework is
favorable for the development of modern science and even for that of technology:
an attitude of domination over nature by seizing her causal regularities and her
transformation by technical process. In the following text, Hsun Tzu said:
Your glorify Nature and meditate on her,
Why not domesticate her and regulate her?
You obey Nature and sing her praises,
Why not control her and use her?
You look on the seasons with reverence and await them,
Why not respond to them by seasonal activities?
You depend on things, marvel at them,
Why not unfold your abilities and transform them?
You meditate on what make a thing,
Why not so order things, that you do not waste them?
You vainly seek into the cause of things,
Why not appropriate and enjoy what they produce?"17
Notice that this important text is interpreted by Needham as merely a protest
against Taoists, especially Chuang Tzu’s preference for nature and negligence of
man, and as exhibiting a certain legalist learning. In fact, it was not so simple,
because here "to domesticate and regulate" and "control over the course of Nature"
would mean an attitude of domination over Nature by using her causal regularities.
"Unfold one’s abilities", "transform things" "order things and appropriate what
they produce" would mean the application of technology in accomplishing things and
transforming natural process.
Therefore Hsun Tzu had an ideological framework favorable to the development of
science and technology in the modern sense. His difficulty consisted in the fact
that he did not understand the importance of investigating "what makes a thing"
and consequently missed the dimension of knowledge for knowledge’s own sake, the
disinterested pursuit of truth. What he had in mind was a pragmatic and
utilitarian vision of domination over nature and technological application.
As to the Neo-Confucians in the period of Sung and Ming Dynasties, their vision of
the world was also very congruent with that of the modern natural sciences. In
fact, as Needham’s studies have shown, Neo-Confucian philosophy in the Sung
dynasty was connected with the golden period of natural sciences and technologies
such as mathematics, astronomy, botany, zoology, architecture and military
technology in Chinese civilization.18 For example, Chu Hsi’s (1033-1170 A.D.)
emphasis on "the investigation of things" and "the extension of knowledge" were
quite positive for the development of science. Chu Hsi held that all actual and
potential principles are contained in the Great Ultimate, which is complete in all
things as a whole and in each thing individually. The Great Ultimate involves both
Li (logos) and Chi (physis) which, while seemingly dualistic, are never separate
but in mutual complementarity. This philosophy of organism is, as Needham would
suggest, quite analogous to that of Whitehead, without having passed through the
stages corresponding to Newton and Galileo. But it is not fair to say, as Needham
does, that this philosophical system was produced only by "flights of genius."19 I
would suggest that it was rather a philosophical system achieved by deep
philosophical meditation on the nature of reality and also by creative
interpretation of the Confucian tradition. The function of reason it implied was
therefore speculative and hermeneutic, without being scientific and operational.
Classical Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism never took into consideration the
interaction of the logico-mathematically structured theories with the
systematically controlled experimentation, which, on the contrary, was the essence
of modem science.
EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE INTERACTING
WITH INTELLIGIBLE UNITY
Modern Western science is a rational way of constructing knowledge of the world in
view of its valid explanation and efficient control . Science is a product of
human construction as well as a continuing process of construction. As we have
said in the first chapter, this process of construction consists in three aspects.
- First, on its rational side, modem science is an activity of constructing
theories that use logical-mathematically structured language to formulate
knowledge of local validity, that is, knowledge about a particular domain of
phenomenon with explanatory and predictive power.
- Second, on its empirical side, modem science is characterized by its well-
controlled systematic experimentation which, by elaborating on the sensible data
and our perception of them, assure itself of keeping in touch with the
Environment, the supposed "Real World", but in an artificially, technically
controlled way.
- Third, there is a conscious checking of the correspondence between the rational
side and the empirical side in order to combine them into a coherent whole to
serve man’s objective in explaining and controlling the world. The rational side
of science builds up a theoretical vision of the world, while the empirical side
relates this vision to the scientist’ s sensible construction and controlling
experience of the world. Philosophical reflection, in checking the correspondence
between these two aspects, assures us of their coherence and unity.
Now, let us compare Confucianism with Western modem science. Apparently speaking,
Confucianism seemed to have emphasized the accumulation of empirical knowledge on
the one hand and their intelligible unity on the other. B. Schwartz is right when
he says,
To Confucius knowledge does begin with the empirical cumulative knowledge
of masses of particulars, . . . then includes the ability to link these
particulars first to one’s own experiences and ultimately with the underlying
unity that binds this thought together.20

This judgment is supported by texts where Confucius affirmed the necessity of

unifying diverse empirical knowledge. To his disciple Tzu Kung the Master put the
question: "You think, I believe, that my aim is to learn many things and retain
them in my memory?" Tzu Kung replied, "Is that not so?" The Master replied, "No,
there is an unity which binds it all together."21
Besides, Confucius seemed to affirm, as did Kant, the complementary interaction
between empirical data and thinking. He said, "He who learns without thought is
utterly confused. He who thinks without learning is in great danger."22 These
words of Confucius remind us of Kant’s proposition that sensibility without
concept is blind, whereas concept without sensibility is void. "I have spent,
elsewhere he said, a whole day without eating food and a whole night without
sleep, thinking. It was of no use. It is better to learn."23 So it seems that for
Confucius, learning, analogous to modem science, is a process of interaction
between empirical knowledge and their intelligible unity.
Unfortunately, further reflection shows that, first, the empirical knowledge in
Confucius was not technically controlled data collection; second, the ultimate
unity for him was not merely the logico-mathematically structured theories; and
finally the mode of interaction between the above two moments was not that of
deduction and falsification in Popper’s sense, or induction and verification in
Logical Empiricists’ sense or in other looser concepts such as testing and
confirmation. Let us explain this more explicitly in order to evaluate the
epistemological import of Confucianism.
First, concerning the empirical side of Confucian learning, Confucius did not have
in mind any sensible data gathered by technically controlled process. What he
stressed consisted rather in the concrete and factual knowledge of the
institutions, the code of behavior, the achievement of an idealized culture, that
of Chou dynasty for example, and the realities of our life environment. This
extended from knowledge in respect to the names of birds, animals, plants and
trees, to that of the meaning of a religious rite. This empirical knowledge
concerns mostly the meaningful world of human being, rather than with the savage
world of nature, which in Confucius’ eyes was to be constructed in terms of codes
congenial to human nature, not to be controlled by mere technical process. Even if
we take the broad concept of"technique" such as the one given by Weber, which
means the rule-governedness of reproducible behavior to which others can adapt
themselves in a calculative manner, we cannot say that empirical knowledge in the
Confucian sense is technically controlled. Perhaps it is for this reason that
Confucianism did not offer any method conducive to modem scientific development.
Second, concerning the rational side of Confucian learning, there seemed to be no
regard paid to the rigorous logico-mathematic structure of discourse. One thing
Confucius proposed which was connected with the rationality of discourse was his
emphasis on the correctness of names. This concerned mostly the use of language
and the relation of language to reality. In fact it was not proposed by Confucius
as a semantic theory, not to mention any concern for syntactical issues. It
concerned terms not in themselves, but as used in human speeches and actions.
Therefore it had some pragmatic significance determined in term of the social,
rather than theological. Confucius said:
Would it not be necessary to correct names? . . . If names are not correct
then one’s words will not be in accord [with one’s actions]. If words are not in
accord, then what is to be done cannot be [correctly] implemented! . . . Therefore
a noble man uses names only in their appropriate way, so that what he says can be
appropriately put into effect. A noble man in his speech leaves nothing to
chance.24

This text shows that the Confucian theory of language refers not to any observed
physical entity, but to modes of human behavior. Confucius never tried to
formulate any definition in the sense of Aristotelian logic. Neither did he
propose any semantic theory. What we can discern here is only an ethically
oriented pragmatic vision of language.
In the long history of Chinese science, mathematics was never considered by
Confucians as the measure of rationality, not to mention taking it as necessary
for structuring a meaningful discourse. The only exception was perhaps Shao Yung,
who gave a very high place to numbers, seen by him as the manifestation of Tao.
But this is a metaphysical rather than scientific thesis. Anyhow, mathematics was
not highly evaluated in itself. The priority of social and ethical concern in
Confucianism seems to explain this attitude. As Needham suggests,
Mathematics was essential, up to a certain point, for the planning and
control of the hydraulic engineering works, but those professing it were likely to
remain inferior of facials.25

This social and political reason given be Needham explains partly the unimportance
of mathematical discourse in Confucianism. A more internal reason might be that
mathematics was considered as technique of calculation and instrument of
organizing empirical data, not as the objective structure of reality and
discourse.
Third, concerning the mode of relation between empirical knowledge and the
intelligible ground of unity, Confucianism had not conceived of any interactive
relation in the mode of deduction/falsification, or induction/verification, or
testing/confirmation. The mode of unity was for Confucianism a kind of mental
integration in referring to the ultimate reality through the process of ethical
praxis. Here praxis or practical action was not interpreted as a kind of technical
application of theories to control concrete natural or social phenomena. It was
understood rather as an active involvement in the process of realizing what is
properly human in the life of the individual and that of the society. As to
science and technology, they are not to be ignored but must be reconsidered in the
context of this ethical praxis.
Marx Weber does not appreciate this integral Confucian humanism, which, compared
with Occidental natural science, fails in rationalistic ambition. He also believes
that Occidental natural science, with its mathematical foundation, is a
combination of rational form of thought grown on the soil of ancient philosophy
and the technical "experiment" originated on the soil of the Renaissance. The
"experimenting" great art of the Renaissance was considered by Weber as a unique
blend of two elements: the empirical skill of artists based on craftsmanship, and
their historically and socially determined rationalist ambition, while the
masterly refined Chinese art lacked all these understood incentives to rationalist
ambition.26
Although Weber’s judgment here is convincing to a certain degree, still we have to
distinguish what is rational from what is reasonable. To be "rational", as we have
said before, we have to control the gathering of empirical data through systematic
technical process, to formulate theories in a logico-mathematic manner, and to
establish their correspondence through an interactive checking process. On the
contrary, to be "reasonable", we have to refer to the totality of our existence
and to its meaningful interpretation by human life as a whole. Confucianism
endeavored to be reasonable, while neglecting its own rational potentiality.
Without scientific rationality, Confucianism did not produce modem science in the
long history of Chinese culture. But with its reasonableness, it can serve today
as remedy to modem science when the scientific rationality has brought humankind
to the impasse of the impoverishment of reason.
THE REASONABLE IN CONTRAST TO THE RATIONAL
In modem times, science and technology, characterized as problem solving
mechanisms, serve as the model of cultural rationalization and as the measure of
progress in the history of humanity. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism, Weber sees cultural rationalization in modem science and technology,
in autonomous art, and in a religiously anchored normative system (both ethical
and legal).27 Modem science, as theoretical knowledge expressed in logical
mathematic form and tested with the help of controlled experiments, represents in
an excellent way this phenomenon of rationalization. Weber designates as
"rationalization" every expansion of empirical knowledge, of predictive capacity,
of instrumental and organizational mastery of the empirical process. Modem science
not only concretizes this rationality in its logic of research, but also becomes
the leading factor of rationalization in the world history. This has two reasons.
First, modem science was institutionalized in university settings and other
research organizations, the university being regarded as the concrete image of
rationality. Second, in being applied to the process of industrialization, modem
science penetrated into the area of economic life.
In the latter sense, modem science and technology could also be seen by the
Marxists as a model of rationalization. Because, according to Marx, the
rationalization of society takes place in the development of productive forces,
that is, in the expansion of empirical knowledge, in the improvement of production
techniques and the increasingly effective mobilization, quantification and
organization of socially useful labor power.
This conception of modem science and technology as model of rationalization and
measure of progress could be traced back to the time of the Enlightenment. For
example, Condorcet had, under the influence of Turgot and d’Alembert, well
articulated this ideology in his famous Esquisse d ‘un tableau historique des
progres de l’esprit humain of 1794. The mathematical sciences of nature were seen
there as the model of rationality. Especially, Newtonian physics was taken as a
paradigm for knowledge in general. In his Tableau ge’nerale de la science qui a
pour object I ‘application du calcul aux sciences morales et politiques of 1793,
Condorcet took as examples the questions concerning demography, electoral
operations, the theory of value and that of prize. He took probability calculation
as technique indispensable for the progress of human spirit. With what he called
as "social mathematics", he hoped for the elimination of superstition and
skepticism, and for the possibility of relating humankind to reason. The
methodology of the natural sciences thereby was extended to the social sciences,
human sciences and even to the philosophical vision of history in general.
Habermas has well pointed out that this philosophy of progress has four basic
presuppositions.
- First, it interpreted the concept of perfection according to the model of
scientific progress and thus based a linear conception of progress on the
advancement of natural sciences.
- Second, it universalized the rationality represented by modem science which took
on the function of enlightenment and emancipation.
- Third, it connected the cognitive aspect of scientific progress with the moral-
practical aspect of the coming of age of mankind.
- Fourth, it based the progress of civilization on the progress of the human
spirit only by counting on the empirical efficacy of an ever-improving theoretical
knowledge. In other words, the progress of human spirit could also be measured by
laws of nature discovered by natural science.28
This positivist philosophy, with all its presuppositions, has long dominated our
visions of science, society and reality. It constitutes a dominant paradigm of
scientific research and social development in general . But recently, with the
fall of this dominant paradigm, we see quite clearly now that this conception of
rationality has many unacceptable implications.
It implies that, first, science and society follow a linear and irreversible way
of development. But in reality, it fails to recognize the fact that desired
changes in a few indices do not necessarily lead to overall development of the
society in question, and that growth rarely follows an irreversible, unilinear
path. It implies also an overemphasis on the rupture of the modern society with
traditional values and practices as a precondition to modernity. Tradition and
cultural values are viewed as obstacles to growth and have to be removed. This
tradition/modernity dichotomy leads to an erroneous assumption that there is only
one way to modernity which too can be manifested in but one single model. In
reality, new discoveries in science and technology must find support from the
existing cultural tradition before they can take hold in the system. Finally, on
the cognitive level, it implies a sort of domination of empirical data by
theories. On the social level, it implies also a strategy of domination of the
more developed over the less developed, and of the center over the periphery. To a
certain degree, we could say that scientific rationality means domination.
In contrast to the rationality of modern science, Confucianism is a system of
reasonable ideas which refers ultimately to the totality of human existence and
its realization as the horizon within which the meaning of human actions, and even
that of natural phenomena, is to be determined. Instead of thinking of explaining
natural phenomena by law-like theories and of my technical control over the world,
Confucianism thinks in terms of our relation to others, to Nature and even to the
transcendental. It thinks in the framework of the totality constituted of
Humanity, Nature and Heaven.
In the case of Classical Confucianism, as we have said, this system of ideas was
constituted essentially of Jen, Yi and Li. Jen could be seen as the dynamic
interconnectedness of one’s Self with others, with nature and even with Heaven,
seen as the ground of the transcendental dimension of existence. It is the
ultimate ground of cosmic harmony and the transcendental foundation of men’s
ethical life. It is our subjectivity as well as our intersubjectivity to be
manifested especially in and through our moral awareness.
From Jen, the Confucians would derive Yi, which represents respect of, and the
appropriate behaviors towards, others. From here emerge all moral norms, moral
obligations, moral judgments, our consciousness of these obligations and even the
virtue of acting always according to moral norms. From Yi, the Confucians would
derive Li which represents code of behavior, religious and political ceremonies
and social institutions.
Both Yi and Li represent the "ought to be" of human existence, whereas Jen
represents the Being of beings, natural, divine and especially human. The rule-
governedness of human nature is not to be understood in light of natural laws, or
to be reduced to them. On the contrary, it is to be understood in accordance with
the to be and the ought to be of human beings as expressed in the conceptual
framework of Jen, Yi and Li. Even the laws of nature have to be reinterpreted by,
and reintegrated into, the dignity of human existence and its transcendental
foundation. Arthur F. Wright seems to have grasped this reasonable system centered
around the human agent when he says:
Confucianism of all ages viewed the natural and human worlds as an organism made
up of multitudinous interconnected parts. When any one of the parts fell from its
place or was disrupted in its functioning, the harmony of the whole was impaired,
Heaven . . . presided over this organic whole and was a force for harmony and
balance. But man was the principle agent of both harmony and disharmony. Out of
ignorance or perversity, men could cause serious disruptions; by the application
of knowledge, wisdom, and discipline, men could restore harmony.29
Compared with the Western scientific rationality, the Confucian vision of
reasonableness has the following implications:
First, in place of the linear conception of progress presupposed by scientific
rationality, Confucianism proposes a creative movement which cherishes the
sedimentated traditional values while moving forward towards novelty. Confucianism
does not presuppose a linear and eschatological concept of time. In the Confucian
eyes, progress must not be an excuse for entering into the situation of
dependence. On the contrary, it must be an authentically creative act based on the
dynamism of each tradition.
Second, in place of a radical rupture from the past, Confucianism cherishes the
notion of continuity. In the Confucian eyes, "modernization" should not be
understood in rupture with tradition. On the contrary, it is but a modern manner
of interpreting traditional values and of forming a novel tradition according to
the demand of modern times.
Third, in place of the strategy of domination implicit in the scientific
rationality, Confucianism proposes a strategy of harmonious coordination. Science
and technology are not to be seen as instruments for domination over nature and
society. They are but knowledge of, and technique for, coordinating human being
and nature, individual and society.
In view of the above, even if Confucianism did not produce any science of the
modern Western type, it could have the following advantages in facing today the
challenge of science and in overcoming its malicious presuppositions and ill
effects.
On the theoretical level, Confucianism emphasizes the priority of human
subjectivity and intersubjectivity over logical and technological systems. In
other words, according to Confucianism, the human being has to be master and not
slave of science and technology. All development of the latter must be in the
service of the unfolding and realization of human potentiality. Confucianism also
accentuates the priority of the meaningfulness of human life over the rigor of
mathematical and experimental structures. In short, it emphasizes the
existentially meaningful, rather than the semantico-syntactic side of discourse.
Finally, it stresses the priority of the human and social sciences over the
natural sciences. Because human sciences concern mostly the ways through which
human beings understand themselves in history, rather than the mathematical
structure of natural laws in the case of natural sciences. They are characterized
by human being’s historicity and therefore cannot get rid of traditional values.
On the practical level, Confucianism would not favor modernity to the detriment of
tradition. On the contrary, it would try to adapt to the demands of modern world
on the basis of the dynamism and resources of the cultural tradition. All new
developments in the domain of science and technology are to be conceived in a way
to be absorbed into the cultural dynamism of each historical community. In short,
it prefers acculturation, rather than westernization. Finally, it would protest
against any policy of domination, but will agree with any policy of harmonious
coordination on both the national and on the international levels.
CONCLUDING REMARKS:
HOPING FOR A NEW SYNTHESIS
Today these Confucian principles have already proved their effectiveness in
promoting modernization on the societal and economic level. Herman Kahn affirms in
World Economic Development -- 1979 and Beyond:
In the Confucian hierarchic society, the emphasis is on cooperation among
complementary elements, much as in the family (which is in fact the usual paradigm
or model in a Confucian culture). The husband and wife work together and cooperate
in raising the children; each has different assigned duties and responsibilities,
as do the older and younger siblings and the grandparents. Synergism --
complementarity and cooperation among parts of a whole -- are emphasized, not
equality and interchangeability.30
As opposed to the earlier Protestant ethic, the modern Confucian ethic is
superbly designed to create and foster loyalty, dedication, responsibility, and
commitment and to intensify identification with the organization and one’s role in
the organization. All this makes the economy and society operate much more
smoothly than one whose principles of identification and association tend to lead
to egalitarianism, to disunity, to confrontation, and excessive compensation or
repression.31

The problem now is that mere economic development is not enough. There is no
modernity without science. The concept of modernization is inextricably bound up
with advancing modem science and technology. How could Confucianism, in mastering
the creative tensions between theoria and praxis, logical structure and empirical
data, the reasonable and the rational, produce novel development in science and
technology worthy of its noble principles and create thereby a new cultural
synthesis, this is still a task for those who are Confucian-minded in the days to
come.
But, on the other hand, when Western science is now more and more trapped in a
menacing scientific rationality, Confucian emphasis on reasonableness, on the
holistic relation of human beings to the Reality, can help us to redefine
science’s place in human existence as well as man’s place in the cosmos. In this
perspective, we need more a reasonable system of ideas such as the one offered by
Confucianism, rather than the modern Western science. Also Confucianism can help
humankind to think over the urgent problem of how to reintegrate science into the
context of human existence.
NOTES
1. Vincent Shen, Disenchantment of the World (Taipei: China Times Publishing Co.,
1984), pp. 31-37.
2. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 982b, 12-22.
3. Georg Picht, "Der Sinn der Unterscheidung von Theorie und Praxis in der
griechischen Philosophie," in Evangelishe Ethik (1964), pp. 321ff.
4. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 981b, 6-7.
5. Ibid., 982a 3-10, 20-23.
6. The Text of Yi Ching. Chinese original with English translation by Z.D.Sung
(Shanghai, 1935), p. 334.
7. Benjamin Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1985), p. 99.
8. Lun Yu, XIV 24, my translation.
9. Joseph, Needham, Science and Civilization in China (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press), Vol. II, p. 12.
10. Lun Yu, VI 20, tr. Legge, modified by myself.
11. Ibid., XI, 11, tr. Legge, modified by myself.
12. Max Weber, The Religion of China, tr. by H. Gerth (New York: The Free Press,
1964), p. 155.
13. Lun Yu, VII, 17.
14. Ibid., VII, 24.
15. Ibid., VII, 20.
16. Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, vol., pp. 26-29.
17. The Works of Hsun Tzu. Tr. Dubs (London: Probstain, 1928), p. 236.
18. Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, vol. II, pp. 493-495.
19. Ibid., p. 458.
20. Benjamin Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China, p. 89.
21. Lun Yu, XV 3. (tr. Waley).
22. Ibid., II 15.
23. Ibid., XV 30.
24. Ibid., XIII 3.
25. Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, vol. II, p. 30.
26. Max Weber, The Religion of China, trans. by H. Gerth, pp. 150-151.
27. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. T.
Parsons (New York: Charles Scribner’s Son, 1958), pp. 13-31.
28. Jurgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. I, trans. T.
McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), pp. 145-153.
29. Arthur F. Wright, ed., Confucianism and Chinese Civilization (California:
Stanford University Press, 1964), p. ix.
30. Herman Kahn, World Economic Development--1979 and Beyond (New York: Morrow
Quill Paperbacks, 1979), pp. 121-122.
31. Ibid., p. 122.
1. The Broken World, a Four Act Play by Gabriel Marcel, trans. by K.R. Hanley
(Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1998).
2. "Concrete Approaches to the Ontological Mystery", in Gabriel Marcel (Secaucus,
NJ: Citadel Press, 1980), pp. 9-46.
See also: Two Play, by Gabriel Marcel: "The Lantern" and "The Torch of Peace" plus
From Comic Theater to Musical Creation, a Previously Unpublished Essay, ed.
Katharine Rose Hanley (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988).
"The Dangerous Situation of Spiritual Values", in Home Viator, an Introduction to
a Metaphysic of Hope (Glouster, MA: Peter Smith, 1978); Katharine Rose Hanley,
Dramatic Approaches to Creative Fidelity: A Study in the Theater and Philosophy of
Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987), esp.
ch. VII, "Colombyre or the Torch of Peace: The Role of Person-Communities in
Living Creative Fidelity to Values", pp. 129-136.
***
http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-7a/chapter_x.htm
CHAPTER X
ON THE THEORY OF THE "ETHICAL CODE AND NATURE" IN WEI JIN METAPHYSICS
LOU YULIE
Inevitably every one lives in a web of social, economic, political and
human relations and must be restricted by his or her profession, social status,
law and morality. We are, therefore, social beings. On the other hand, everyone
has his or her own character, independent spiritual world, and free will. Hence,
we are also individual beings. Everyone has these two aspects which constitute
contradictory rela-tions in reality. Societies demand that individuals be
subordinated to the integral web of social relations, whereas individuals want to
act according to their independent character and wills. Sometimes so-ciety and
individuals in certain societies are unified, but in others they may strongly
contradict each other. Such contradiction between so-ciety and individuals has
been one of the most important problems with which Chinese and foreign
philosophers and thinkers have been mainly concerned throughout history.
One of the characteristics of Chinese philosophy is that it has paid
special attention to society, human life, and ethics, and that it has developed
many theses on the relations between societies and indivi-duals.
SUBORDINATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL TO SOCIETY
According to the classic Confucian idea, social beings were prior to
individual beings, and it was an unalterable principle that indi-viduals should be
subordinated to societies. This however, had many forms.
Confucians emphasized the duty or obligation of individuals to
societies. They considered that everyone who had a definite position in a society
certainly had a title suitable to his or her identity, and therefore should
implement this duty or obligation to society on the basis of his or her own
identity or title. If people did not carry out their appropriate duty or
obligation according to their identity, they would destroy the normal social
order, and bring about a confusion of society.
On this ground, Confucians demonstrated that everyone had the
possibility of cultivating his or her own morality and becoming a moral example,
thus that everyone had a conscious obligation to mo-rality. Hence, they advocated
that all should harmonize the relations between individual and societies on the
basis of the conscious prin-ciple of morality (Confucians seldom talked about
voluntary principle of morality). From a certain point of view, Confucianism also
attached im-portance to individuals, but in the sense that everyone raise their
own moral consciousness, and submit themselves to society. It is obvious that
Confucian theory is reasonable in sustaining social integrity, but Confucianism
went further to have individuals submit totally to social relations while
neglecting the function of their individual free will.
Legalists in the pre-Qin Dynasty also emphasized subordination of the
individuals to society, but their theory and practice differed greatly from that
of the Confucians. Where the Confucians advocated curbing self by moral
consciousness in order to submit to society, the Legalists did not believe that
men had such moral consciousness. Thinking that men had no moral sense at all,
they argued that human nature was so extremely selfish that only severe laws could
make people submit to integration into society. Thus, the Legalists went farther
in rejecting individuality than the Confucians, and their theory was the main
basis of the feudal monarchies.
Daoists in pre-Qin Dynasty, especially Zhuang Zi, developed ideas
contrary to both the Confucians and the Legalists. As they thought that the
individual was prior to the social, they condemned the varied limits societies put
upon individual persons and emphasized the importance of acting according to the
natural instincts of the individual. When people are too concerned with their
position and title, right and wrong, gains and losses, they lose their personal
freedom. Hence law systems and moral norms constructed by societies in order to
maintain varied kinds of human relations not only restrict individual persons, but
are the main sources of social unrest.
Daoism thought that Heaven and Earth should allow myriad things to
grow according to their nature and not disturb or limit their growth and
development; this is called the Dao of "acting naturally". Human societies should
not only consider nature as their example, but also follow the Dao of acting
naturally in not limiting and disturbing individuals’ actions, but allowing them
to develop on the basis of their natural instincts. Lao Zi thought that if a
society followed the Dao of acting naturally, people would regain their simple and
honest dis-position and lead peaceful lives; in this way societies would become
stable.
However, since as a matter of fact it was impossible for indiv-iduals
entirely to break away from the yoke of societies, they could not fully gain their
personal freedom. Zhuang Zi held that he was able to solve this problem by
adjustment of methods of recognition, that is to say, people were able to free
themselves from dependence on society and the trammels it put upon them; in this
way individuals could gain full freedom in their personal spiritual lives.
Obviously the Daoist theory is reasonable in emphasizing personal free will, but
it went to the other extreme by setting individuals totally against society and
hoping to free them completely from social relations.
The theory advocated by Confucians, which stressed that every-one’s
social duty or obligation was determined by his status and title, has been called
the "ethical code". The Daoist theory, which main-tained that people’s action
should conform to their personal nature, has been called "nature". The problem is
whether there is any pos-sibility of harmonizing these two kinds of theories and
transforming the relation between individuals and societies from one of tension or
an-tithesis to one of harmony. The metaphysicians during the Wei Jin Dynasty
inquired into this possibility.
WEI JIN METAPHYSICS ON THE RELATION
BETWEEN NATURE AND THE ETHICAL CODE
The Confucian theory of the "ethical code" played an important part in
social life during the Han Dynasties, especially the East Han Dynasty when it was
the main standard for appraising competency and selecting qualified personnel.
Later it resulted in abundant abuses at the end of Han Dynasty when the "ethical
code" became a useful tool not only of the rulers to oppress people, but also for
cunning persons to gain fame by deceiving the public. This destroyed the personal
character of human beings and corroded social morality. In order to correct the
social evils, Wei Jin Metaphysics praised highly the theory of "Nature" and
affirmed the essential and rational character of the natural instincts of
individuals. The metaphysicians thought that the "ethical code" was constructed on
the basis of the natural instincts of human beings that is, that the "ethical
code" originated or resulted from "Nature". "Nature" was the original substance;
the "Ethical Code" was its manifested function. They sharply criticized the theory
that rigidly adhered to the form of the "Ethical Code" but threw away the original
substance to retain only the manifested function. The main failure here was the
separation of the "Ethical Code" from the essence or basic spirit of human beings.
If their natural instincts were truly understood, if the basic spirit of "Ethical
Code" was truly grasped, the social norms of "Ethical Code" would be not in
conflict but in tune with people’s natural instincts.
Wang Bi (A.D.226-249), one of the main pioneers of Wei Jin
Metaphysics, was a talented thinker who died quite young. He ad-vo-cated that
"nothing was the origin" and the "sage could experience nothing", meaning that
people should follow the natural instincts of humans and things. He thought that
pleasure, anger, sorrow and joy were natural human instincts, but that the sages
could not have such feelings. For example, even though Confucius already had a
fairly good idea of Yan Hui’s moral character and talent, when Yan Hui came to him
and wanted to learn from him he could not help but feel de-lighted, and was filled
with deep sorrow when Yan Hui died at a young age. It can be seen from this
example that it is impossible for people to get rid of natural human instincts. He
pointed out that people’s moral actions were natural expressions of their nature:
for example, natural love for parents was a kind of expression of filial piety.
Social norms of morality (and rules) expressed varieties of natural feelings in
human nature, while giving full expression to men’s natural instincts. Thus, what
sages taught was also able to rouse people’s natural instincts.
Hence, Wang Bi argued that natural human instincts were the original
substance, while the "Ethical Code" was its manifested func-tion. But as people
had almost always given up the original sub-stance and looked for the manifested
function in social reality, they could not cling to "Nature’, but were anxious
vainly to pursue external reputa-tions by following moral norms. As a result, a
hypocritical mood pre-vailed throughout the country, which completely destroyed
the moral order. As these phenomena ran counter to the real intention of mo-
rality, in order to eliminate them Wang Bi wanted to establish new social rules on
the basis of folk customs. He suggested reviving in-nocent human nature to resist
the hypocritical mood. In brief, Wang Bi thought that the "Ethical Code" should be
controlled by "Nature", and that one should return to "Nature" on the basis of his
theory of the "Ethical Code" originating from "Nature". In this way, he wanted to
re-concile the differences between social ethical norms and the in-dividuals’
feelings and free will.
Ji Kang (A.D.210-263) and Ruan Ji (A.D.223-262), represented another
school of Wei Jin Metaphysics which further emphasized that "Nature" was the
original substance. They held that people should let natural instincts take their
own course and be rid of the trammels from the "Ethical Code". If people had no
intention of self-glorification, they would thoroughly break away from the yoke of
an "Ethical Code" and their natural instincts would develop fully.
Therefore, members of this school acted unconventionally and
unrestrainedly, paying much attention to the expression of the true feelings of
"Nature", and showing contempt for restrictions from the "Ethical Code". For
example, it was said that Ruan Ji was very filial to his parents. While he was
playing chess with his friend his mother passed away. The friend asked him to stop
playing, but he insisted on seeing who was the stronger. When his friend Pei Kai
came to express condolences on the death of his mother, he was sitting on the
ground with hair in disarray and legs stretched out straight. His eyes were
drunken and bleary, and fixed on his friend. Their thoughts and actions exerted
great influence on the society, and soon became so prevailing a social custom that
many celebrities tried to imitate Ji Kang’s and Ruan Ji’s self-will and
dissoluteness.
This went so far that it endangered ritual and law, which were
rudimentary in maintaining social order. The spreading of this social mood was
obviously inconsistent with the real intention of Wang Bi. It went to another
extreme, and caused many people much anxiety. A famous metaphysician, Yue Guang,
criticized the people who tried to please the public with claptrap and sought
fame. He said that since there was no lack of place in "Ethical Code" to express
the true feelings of "Nature", they did not have to be unruly and artificial. This
meant that it was unreasonable to completely scorn the "Ethical Code" and that
feelings that strayed from the norm of "Ethical Code" were bound to be unruly and
fantastic. Here Yue Guang restated Wang Bi’s theory advocating that "Nature" was
the original substance, and the "Ethical Code" its manifestation; both were
necessary.
Guo Xiang (about A.D.252-312), a famous thinker of Wei Jin
Metaphysics, pushed the theory of the metaphysics to a new level by enriching and
improving Wang Bi’s thought about the problem of the relations between Ethical
Code and Nature. We have been told that on the relations between original
substance and manifest function Wang Bi emphasized that the original substance
commanded the manifest functions, that is to say that "Nature" commanded the
Ethical Code, which then should return to "Nature".
There was more or less a vestige of separating the original substance
and the manifested function, nature and Ethical Code in Wang Bi’s thought. From
this there could arise a tendency to get rid of the Ethical Code in order to allow
Nature to express itself freely. Taking note of this problem Guo Xiang, who
emphasized the identity of the original substance and the manifest function, held
that the "Ethical Code" existed in men’s natural instincts and that the natural
ex-pression of men’s instincts was sure to be in keeping with the "Ethical Code".
Guo Xiang said that moral norms, such as "humanity and righteousness",
were complete human nature; we should allow them to unfold and reveal themselves
in life. He also held that it was un-necessary to think that "humanity and
righteousness" were not human nature at all. To illustrate that "humanity and
righteousness" existed in human instincts he noted that cattle did not refuse
having holes to pierce through their noses, nor did horses refuse to wear
harnesses. By these examples he suggested that the norms of the Ethical Code,
which seemingly resorted to external forces to establish themselves, actually
existed in men’s natural instincts. Therefore, to submit to the norms of Ethical
Code, such as "humanity and righteousness", cer-tainly conformed to the natural
instincts of human beings.
He further noted that humans and things had different natures from
birth, each with his or her own quality that neither could be got rid of nor
changed, just as natively clever people and fools could not be changed. He argued
that every human being or thing should be satis-fied with its own nature; demands
which go beyond their nature not only throw a society into conflict, but also do
harm to themselves. If people or things, no matter how great the differences
existing between them, were satisfied with the stipulations of their nature, what
they achieved would be the same without any differences.
Relations among men or things were no more than their acting according
to their nature; there were no other kinds of relations than this. It was like a
human body with a head at the top and feet below, the five internal organs within,
and fur without: all the parts of the body tried their best to do their duty to
construct the whole body. Beyond this one, there were special relations among
them. Hence, Guo Xiang declared that men’s social strata were determined by their
nature. If people were satisfied with their nature, the order of the Ethical Code
naturally would be stable.
In brief, Guo Xiang drew the conclusion that the "Ethical Code" was
natural from the thought that "Ethical Code" should be in accord with "nature".
Guo Xiang’s theory has been called the theory of the "Ethical Code and Nature". It
integrated the external norms of social morality with internal human nature in
such wise that the "Ethical Code" was a natural and rational form, and the
"Nature" was satisfied to some extent.
Wei Jin Metaphysics held that the Ethical Code originated from human
nature and thereby provided a foundation for freely observing the norms of social
morality. This was a supplement to classical Con-fucianism which had laid
particular stress on moral consciousness, but neglected the theory of moral
consciousness. Later the Song-Ming Confucians explained the "Ethical Code" as the
Heavenly Principle and considered it to originate from human nature by the theory
that "human nature was the Heavenly Principle". Obviously, the Song-Ming
Confucians were influenced by Wei Jin Metaphysics.
Tension between the individual and society will always exist, but its
content and form will change as time goes on. So it is necessary for us
continuously to seek new theories to harmonize this tension. The theory of
"Ethical Code and Nature", as harmonizing relations between individuals and
society, already has become a thing of the past, but it remains a useful reference
in seeking new theories to harmonize the tension between individuals and society.
Peking University Translated by Hu Jun
***
http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-1/chapter_xi.htm
CHAPTER XI
WESTERN AND CHINESE PHILOSOPHY
ON MAN AND NATURE
RICHARD T. DE GEORGE
Western philosophy differs significantly from traditional Chinese Philosophy and
Professor Chen Kuide's paper perceptively notes a number of the differences.
Western philosophy, with its roots in both Greek philosophy and the Hebraic
tradition developed a dualistic approach to reality, distinguishing man from
nature, subject from object, mind from matter. The Hebraic-Christian tradition
added the notion of transcendence, completing the ultimate separation--that of God
from this creation.
Chinese philosophy, by contrast, has from the start emphasized immanence and
unity. Where Western dualism led to an opposition of man and nature, Chinese
monism led to a harmony between the two.
The Western division led to considering nature as an object and its study as
science; whereas the study of the human subject or spirit led to logic, to
epistemology, and to the study of human psychology and freedom. By contrast the
Chinese emphasis on monism and harmony led to aesthetics more than to logic, to a
search for deeper meanings rather than for falsification or verification of
propositions. As a result Chinese philosophy has less tension in it then Western
philosophy. Where the contrasts present in the West were a source of dynamism, the
harmony of the Chinese view, the respect for tradition and the search for wisdom
led historically to a more static worldview.
These generalizations based on Professor Chen Kuide's paper are acute, plausible
and suggestive. His paper does more than just note them. He attempts to account
for the differences and argues that a number of important contemporary
philosophers and scientists find the insights of Chinese monism more compatible
than Western dualism and transcendence with the theories to which they are being
led by the internal logic of their research and thought.
Suggestive though they be, Professor Chen Kuide's paper and his explanatory
hypothesis are not convincing as they stand. To criticize them is to exemplify the
concern with logical argument, analysis, and the truth and falsity of propositions
that he correctly notes are typical of Western philosophy.
Professor Chen Kuide traces Western philosophy back to its Greek and Hebraic
roots. He explains the Greek contrast between man and nature, subject and object
as resulting from Greek environmental conditions, and the Hebrew notion of
transcendence as resulting from the difficulties of the Israelites. Although there
may be some link between a country's physical environment and the thought
developed there, any serious attempt to demonstrate that link must show how the
thought comes from the environment. We cannot simply take what we know of Greek,
Israeli, and Chinese environmental and historical conditions and claim that these
determined what we know their thought to have been. Explanations require that the
causal links be found and demonstrated.
Nevertheless, suppose that together with Professor Chen Kuide we believe that
conditions determine (in some sense of that term) the thought or world view of a
society. A difficulty then arises in explaining why and how the Greek and Hebraic
traditions were successfully transported out of Greece and Israel and why they
were accepted and developed in Europe, Great Britain, and the New World. The many
Western societies that are so greatly influenced by Greek and Hebraic thought are
very different environmentally from the conditions of Greece and Israel.
Agriculture was the backbone of Western Europe, just as it was the backbone of
China. Why did the Greco-Hebraic tradition, rather than something like the Chinese
view, take root and survive in these lands?
It is clear that natural environmental conditions are insufficient by themselves
to determine thought. It is also clear that origins are different from validity
and the one is not sufficient to explain the other.
If the environmental thesis were accurate, we would expect different philosophies
to have developed originally in what is now France, Germany, Great Britain and
America than that in Greece. Since Greek thought influenced and to some extent was
adopted by the Romans, it must have had something to recommend it over the
indigenous philosophical counterpart. Similarly, for Christianity to have
triumphed in the Roman Empire requires more of an explanation than can be provided
by environment and the hardships of the Israelites. Chinese thought may be traced
to its original roots and the influence of tradition may there be used to explain
later Chinese thought. Original roots might help explain later Greek thought in
Greece. But it does not easily explain why Greek thought was adopted by the
countries to which it was transported, where it was partially lost and then
rediscovered.
Moreover, Greece gave rise to both Plato's rationalism and to his pupil's,
Aristotle's, empiricism. They do not share a similar view of the relation of man
and nature although they grew from the same society, the same geographical
environment. Both exerted a strong impact on Western thought.
Why they dominated Western European thought arguably has to do with their
comprehensiveness, logical consistency, coherence, and their power in making sense
of human experience in comparison to the other available worldviews. Neither
environmental nor historical conditions by themselves are adequate to explain
either the specific views or their continuing power. If worldviews as a whole are
not true or false, they are more or less adequate to experience, more or less
fruitful. They can be and are evaluated, changed, discarded or exchanged for other
views, as the history of Western thought demonstrates.
The development and power of Christianity and of the Judeo-Christian traditions is
also difficult to explain only in terms of environment and socio-cultural
conditions. The rapid rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire from the status of
a slave religion to the religion of the Empire requires more than geographical and
cultural causes. The Judeo-Christian notion of transcendence was joined to an
ethic that had, and continues to have, strong human appeal, both logically and
emotionally.
Professor Chen Kuide's paper, as well as a common view of comparative East-West
philosophy, presents a picture of a dynamic West and a static East. But the
picture is not entirely accurate. China developed many inventions before the West.
At least until the 16th Century China was more inventive than the West. If the
traditions were the same in China for 2,500 years and in the West for 2,500 years,
how do we explain the change as of 500 years ago when the West started to develop
science and technology in a way China did not? There may be something in the claim
that Western thought with its subject-object dichotomy lent itself more easily to
the scientific study of nature than did the Chinese view of harmony with nature.
But that is not even plausibly the whole story.
The Chinese inventions discovered and borrowed by the West were made by Chinese
who viewed man and nature in harmony. That harmony did not in itself preclude
inventiveness and in some sense for a time fostered it. Why and how it did, and
why it failed to continue to do so are questions that deserve investigation. But
the historical facts indicate that the answer cannot be obtained by looking only
at a society's view of the relation of nature and man. Western culture for many
centuries did not produce as much in the way of inventions as did Chinese culture.
Western Europe experienced "dark ages" that China did not. The rediscovery of
Greek thought in the West in the late Middle Ages helped bring about the
Renaissance and the rise of modern science, which the Greeks had not themselves
developed. Clearly the story of the development of science is a complicated one
and we should not place too much weight on oversimplifications.
Professor Chen Kuide notes that advanced Western philosophers and scientists are
learning from Chinese thought and that they quote Chinese monistic views
favorably. What we are to make of this is not clear. If it is that Chinese monism
is more favorable to the findings of contemporary science than Western
philosophical views, it is puzzling why the Western rather than the Chinese views
have led to the developments of contemporary science. There is, of course, a
monistic line of thought in the West--the Greek atomists, Spinoza, the
materialists of modern European philosophy from Hobbes to Marx. Did modern science
in fact develop from Western monism rather than from Western dualism? Is the
source of Western dynamism less monism or dualism than the tension between
different views, e.g., between monism and dualism, idealism and materialism? What
is the attraction of some contemporary philosophers and scientists to Chinese
thought? These are questions that call for detailed examination and explanation.
Whether in fact the best--whatever that may be--of both Eastern and Western
thought can be combined is yet to be decided.
If the claim that Western thought is built on dualism and transcendence is
correct, are they compatible with Chinese monism and immanence? If the dynamism of
the West is due to dualism (of many sorts) and transcendence, should they be given
up? If monism and dualism, transcendence and immanence are opposites, then they
cannot be held simultaneously. If Western dualism and transcendence are really at
the base of Western scientific development, then the argument from the success of
the West in developing science and technology is a reason for not giving up
dualism and transcendence. If one places dualism and transcendence at the heart of
Western thought and then claims them false or mistaken or misleading, one is
forced to hold that error is more fruitful than truth or that misleading notions
are better than correct ones--views that seem both to be implausible and to be
contradicted by the advances of science.
We are thus lead to reconsider the accuracy of the claim both that dualism and
transcendence are at the heart of Western thought and that they are the reasons
for the dynamism of the West, especially since the Renaissance. No doubt it helps
to study nature if it is seen as an object, as Western science views it.
Transcendence, it might be argued, led to Western philosophers placing emphasis on
subjectivity, spirit, and freedom. A combination of human freedom, of intellectual
curiosity, logical thought, and an approach to nature as an object to be
investigated are probably necessary to the development of science as we find it in
the West.
The rise of modern science went hand in hand with the rise of modern economics,
which required a degree of political freedom. It is not clear that we can separate
science from economics from politics. The development of science may well require
not only a view of nature as object but also a degree of human freedom which
requires a view of man as subject. The latter, in turn, has developed together
with the notion of human beings as moral persons with human rights. Whether the
pieces can be separated, whether science can develop without freedom, and
intellectual freedom flourish without political freedom are empirical, as well as
logical questions. Historically we find them together; logically we can
distinguish them. Whether Western and Chinese views of nature and man can be
combined, and if so how, are questions of both logic and experience.
The introduction of Marxism into China, which might be seen as an attempt at
integrating Western and Chinese thought, also poses a special puzzle. Marxism is
thoroughly Western in its origin and in its original development. It had no
Chinese roots, yet it has been widely adopted in China. Ironically, Marxism has
long been criticized in the West for its inability to explain Asiatic development
as clearly as Western development and for its Western bias. Marx studied primarily
Western bourgeois capitalist society and its development. He saw industrialization
and the development of productive forces necessary for the development of the
post-capitalist phase, which he called socialism. Yet we find a version of Marxism
strong in China, which is still heavily agricultural, while Marxism does not
flourish in the Western industrial countries about which Marx wrote.
This paradox raises the question of the compatibility of Marxism and traditional
Chinese thought. Marxism claims to be monistic and lacks the notion of
transcendence, yet it is Western and claims to be scientific. Its monism is not
Chinese monism and it emphasizes contradiction as the heart of reality rather than
harmony. Despite its claims to being scientific, the natural sciences arguably
continue to develop more fruitfully in the West than in countries that have
adopted Marxism as their ideology.
All this implies that although Chen Kuide's paper is suggestive, it may be more
fruitful to ask where it is incomplete, misleading, or incorrect than in simply
agreeing with its undoubted insights. This is, in fact, an essential part of
Western method. Popper has argued that in physical science we look for
falsifications. The same is true in Western philosophy: we are clearer and surer
about what is false than we are about what is true. A pragmatic stream of Western
science and philosophy seeks for fruitfulness. In the approach to the relation of
man and nature Western philosophers seek fruitfulness as well. Some Western
thinkers are attracted by the traditional Chinese view of the harmony of man and
nature. Whether it can be integrated fruitfully with Western views we can
determine only by trying. So far the attempts have been few and the fruits
minimal.
In the East the attempt is to learn the science of the West while avoiding the
many pitfalls of Western development. The practical Chinese adoption of Western
science is further advanced than either the reconciliation of the Western
scientific view with the traditional Chinese views of nature and man, or the
intellectual task of attempting to combine the best of the Chinese and Western
views. The hope of many is that the best of Chinese thought can be preserved and
that it can assimilate Western science. The success so far is also minimal.
Nonetheless there is reason to believe that both China and the West can learn from
each other's traditions in rethinking a relation of man and nature that is
appropriate and that will be fruitful for our respective societies. Such
rethinking need not lead to identical views, unless one believes there is only one
proper relation between man and nature. History provides a basis for arguing that
this is not the case.
Although physical, social, and economic conditions are not the sole determining
factors of thought, they undoubtedly exert an influence. The present growing
interdependence and interconnection of East and West thus provide both the impetus
and the general ambience for seeking new, fruitful, and mutually compatible views
of the relation of man and nature. The growing interrelation of peoples demands a
reconciliation of differing views as the interaction of one society with nature
impacts on other societies, e.g., through failure to control the pollution it
generates. Yet here, too, practice demands compatibility, not identity of views.
Mutual learning is the ideal, rather than dominance by any view or forced
conversion, both of which would lead to the loss of the best in each tradition.
The intellectual task of combining the best of Chinese and Western thought on the
relation of man and nature, is a task still to be done. It is clearly one worth
attempting.
University of Kansas
Lawrence, Kansas, U.S.A.
****
CHAPTER XII
CULTURAL DIVERSITY AND
A PATH TOWARD WISDOM:
Perspectives of Gabriel Marcel
K.R. HANLEY
To appreciate storytelling as a way of communicating wisdom consider the stories
about the Buddha and Mohammed and the parables of Jesus. Gabriel Marcel uses this
approach as an introduction to philosophic reflection that can lead to wisdom.
A Parable of Unity and Conflict
In The Broken World,1 one of Gabriel Marcel’s strongest and most important plays,
we encounter concretely a dramatic portrayal of our situation, namely, that of
living in a broken world.
Christiane evokes the following situation in Act I, Scene Four. We are fragmented
and dispersed. We live superficially and try to lose ourselves in overworking,
business, productivity, diversions. If asked who we are, or if we try to estimate
our worth before others and even ourselves, we articulate our identity as a bundle
of functions and roles. Yet in this we suffer a sense of metaphysical uneasiness.
We have lost our center and feel alienated from ourselves, from others and from
God.
This impression of living in a broken world is perhaps even more vivid today than
at the time Marcel wrote the play, i.e. 1932. In a philosophic reflection that
accompanied the publication of The Broken World, "Position and Concrete Approaches
to the Ontological Mystery",2 Marcel pointed out that we live in a world riddled
with problems but devoid of mystery. We have become so fascinated with technical
knowledge that we have let our sense of wonder atrophy. And while we can
scientifically accomplish any task we set before ourselves, we no longer have the
wisdom to know what projects are worth doing. We no longer know who we really are,
nor do we know the value and purpose of life.
Philosophic Reflection
Marcel’s philosophic reflection in "On the Ontological Mystery", opened a path for
rediscovering the perspectives of wisdom. He distinguished between problems that
are exterior to us and to be solved scientifically, and mysteries that include us
vitally. The latter are part of our being, and can only be experienced and
clarified if we accept their presence and reflectively clarify them as they affect
our being. Marcel affirms that while certain issues are adequately dealt with by
problem solving approaches, some realities can be studied adequately only through
reflection on mystery.
For example, consider friendship: two persons meet and become friends. A problem
approach takes into account economic, sociological and psychological factors and
explains that these two individuals were in the same place at the same time, e.g.
a health spa or a ski resort, because they come from the same socio-economic
bracket and share the same illness or philosophic or sporting interest. Still an
encounter, a meeting that has left a deep and lasting trace upon my life, requires
another type of reflective analysis that draws on my recollecting the experience
and clarifying how it affects me in my subjectivity or personhood and what
conditions were required for this to happen. An encounter, and then a friendship,
develops through a dialogue of freedoms involving an appeal, a response and, if
freely affirmed, a gratuitous gift to be with and for one another. It is
specifically in this manner that an I-Thou relation is constituted.
The first part of Marcel’s essay addresses the question: "Who am I?", which he
asserts cannot be separated arbitrarily from its counterpart: "Is Being empty or
full?" It reminds us that metaphysics is the logic of freedom. Varying attitudes
and stances will produce different interpretations of the meaning of life and of
human dignity, both individual and familial. So the attitude or mode of presence I
freely adopt toward the world, will influence the response I evolve to the
questions Who am I? Is Being empty or full?
Presence to the world in an attitude of "having" leaves one dissatisfied and
uneasy. What one "has" remains always exterior to oneself, so one is never
fulfilled interiorly or deeply satisfied by mere "having". Moreover, one is always
covetous and threatened because one’s possessions can be stolen or overshadowed by
someone else’s even greater collection. One has no true sense of self worth
because worth is defined only exteriorly and precariously on the basis of
quantifiable and horizontally comparable possession of things, prestige or power.
By contrast, through the authentic attitude of "being" one is open and available
to unite with realities encountered. One who is capable of admiration can be
enriched and uplifted by the presence of excellence wherever it occurs. An
attitude of "being" lets one participate in the enriching gift of presence -- of
objects, of persons and of the Transcendent.
The second part of "The Ontological Mystery" establishes how each of us can
illumine the mystery of who we are by reflectively clarifying our experience of
being. As we saw earlier Marcel distinguishes between problem and mystery, and
welcomes the presence of life-enhancing mysteries. Recollection enables one to
gather within one’s reflective experience those things which are part of one’s
life and which affect who one is. One can then discriminate what attitudes freely
adopted allow one to participate in the life enhancing gift(s) offered by being.
Recollection is an act whereby I gather myself and also that which is other and
more than myself, yet this hold or grasp upon myself is also relaxation and
abandon.
Marcel’s own answer to the questions "Who am I?" and "Is being empty or full?"
comes in terms of fulfilling encounters one can have in the regions of objects,
persons, and Transcendence. One can find fulfillment by participating in the
material world as an extension or enrichment of one’s embodied subjectivity. One
finds fulfillment in the gratuitous gifts of loving communion with family and
friends, the enrichment of one’s subjectivity by the uplifting and life enhancing
presence of another in a communion of love. Ultimate fulfillment can be found in
experiencing that grounding and personalizing force of a Transcendent Absolute
Thou or Sacred Other. Only the most patient probative searching unearths this
dimension of reality as a trans-subjective source radiating a light of wisdom
inseparable from love.
The third moment of his essay illumines who I am called to be if I strive
authentically to fulfill my highest human possibilities as a person of hope. This
means being available to, with and for others; it means welcoming life not as a
series of events and objects to be possessed, but rather as a presence that
reveals itself and invites me to become myself as gift. My response must be one of
creative fidelity to an abiding, yet ever freshly renewed call, revealed to me
through others. It is in such personalist terms that Marcel clarifies what it
means to be in a free and authentic manner.
In a comedy, Colombyre or the Torch of Peace, Marcel portrays a peace commune
gathered in the high Swiss alps in the summer of 1937. The pretention was to be a
refuge of peace, yet there was so much selfishness and chauvinism that the so-
called haven of peace became a hotbed of war. In the end the chalet explodes and
the experiment fails utterly.
The play is a farcical satire, but it portrays the erroneous attitudes that doom
the project from its outset. It raises the question of whether people of different
nationalities, religions and cultures can ever live together in peace and harmony.
Discovering Human Meaning
Marcel addressed those questions in an essay, "The Dangerous Situation of Ethical
Values", stating that what is at stake is the survival of human life itself. Each
of us is in danger of death because we are separated from other members of the
human family; we are in danger of death also because we are uprooted from the
natural foundations of wisdom and virtue.
If values are to survive it must be in the context of a community, a human family.
With his friend, Max Scheler, he remarked poignantly that values are not mere
concepts. they are real when carried on the backs of human actions. They then
become the life-enhancing qualities of human relations.
Whereas the play characterizes attitudes that undermine and destroy community,
philosophic reflection critically clarifies issues to be resolved and the
requisite attitudes in order for any life with dignity to survive.
First, can we do anything to preserve and communicate values? He recognizes that
it is divisive to separate those who believe in values and those who do not. He is
aware that cooperating with groups that have different philosophies and purposes
-- some selfish and limited, others focused on the sacred dignity of persons --
entails a danger of being compromised and exploited. Yet a failure to cooperate,
i.e. not to promote values concretely and in cooperation with others, is to
abandon the values we profess to cherish.
How can values be communicated and shared? To pretend that our knowledge should
inform the ignorant, or to pretend that from our wealth we will remedy the other’s
poverty, are erroneous and harmful approaches. Attitudes of the haves dealing with
the have-nots only incite anti-religious resentment. Besides, faith, spirituality
or values are not something we "have", they are genuine only on the condition
these gifts radiate through us as grace.
We cannot provide for the survival and growth of values by instructing the
ignorant, by doles to the "have-nots". Marcel suggests rather that we address the
other person with deep respect and a love of his or her sacred uniqueness. Marcel
goes so far as to say that we address that unique act of adoration which is owed
to the divine reality to the particle of the divine that is this other person. In
this manner one does not pretend to instruct or give to another; one merely
awakens the other’s awareness of his or her divine filiation. This approach Marcel
calls a kind of maieutic in that it brings to birth the other’s sense of their
sacred dignity and worth.
With this model of how values may survive and grow, we can imagine a different
development of the story of the international colony at Colombyre. Each one of us
seeks, or at least needs to strengthen our grasp and deepen our rootedness in
values. When others invite me to reflect on the values I cherish, and encourage me
to share the ways in which these values are expressed in the particular cultural
rituals or traditions with which I am familiar, I deepen and enrich my celebration
of these values. As I recollect my values and my culture’s way of observing them,
that in turn encourages and enables others reflectively to clarify their own
experience of values and the cultural traditions they use to communicate them.
As we encourage one another to come more fully in touch with our true selves, and
the values we personally love and want to live for, we can help one another to
find new and fresh ways of incorporating our values and traditions into the
changing circumstances of our lives. Marcel calls this effort to find fresh ways
to carry forward our revered and cherished values creative fidelity.
For example, the growth in popularity of the martial arts T’ai Chi ch’uan, Aikido,
Tae Kwon Do, and Karate, has done to lead new generations of young people into a
disciplined, meditative and noble spiritual way of life. For example, the recent
concern for physical fitness has done much to revive the ancient art of T’ai Chi
Ch’un, introducing many to its graceful philosophy of life. Many Western young
people have been drawn to the meditative techniques and the ways of wisdom of Zen,
Buddhism, and Yoga. Children from ghettos and suburbs find discipline and dignity
through such programs. Some of the traditions of Islam also have brought a renewal
of respect for woman and family to many in the United States through Black Islam.
Marcel saw hope for the survival and growth of values as many small group
communities emerge with humble beginnings and modest goals. The one-to-one
relations of members of these communities are characterized by a spirit of light
and love which comes to them from above. The spirit animating their community
extends beyond their members and shines through their use of natural resources and
of the physical things they own. Without the development of such small groups
striving in creative fidelity to preserve and promote the spiritual values they
cherish, the masses will fall into infra-human levels of behavior precipitating an
apocalyptic destruction whose terrible first symptoms we are now witnessing. The
key to the survival of values lies in the quality of interpersonal relations that
characterize a community, viz., an attitude and regard of love, a profound respect
that quickens the other’s sense of his or her own sacred dignity and worth.
Social transformation and/or cultural tradition always require personal
conversion, an encounter with truth as a personal presence. One’s personal witness
and interpersonal testimony is a requisite occasion for another’s personal
discovery of, or growth in, wisdom. Individuals experience this when they are
inclined to go beyond scientific knowledge of techniques to open onto the
mysterious dimensions of life which can be enlightened by wisdom’s compassion and
love. In turn, however, any introduction to wisdom’s truth as a personal presence
must always be mediated by the witness or testimony of a loving mentor, teacher,
friend or family member.
NOTES
1. The Broken World, a Four Act Play by Gabriel Marcel, trans. by K.R. Hanley
(Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1998).
2. "Concrete Approaches to the Ontological Mystery", in Gabriel Marcel (Secaucus,
NJ: Citadel Press, 1980), pp. 9-46.
See also: Two Play, by Gabriel Marcel: "The Lantern" and "The Torch of Peace" plus
From Comic Theater to Musical Creation, a Previously Unpublished Essay, ed.
Katharine Rose Hanley (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988).
"The Dangerous Situation of Spiritual Values", in Home Viator, an Introduction to
a Metaphysic of Hope (Glouster, MA: Peter Smith, 1978); Katharine Rose Hanley,
Dramatic Approaches to Creative Fidelity: A Study in the Theater and Philosophy of
Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987), esp.
ch. VII, "Colombyre or the Torch of Peace: The Role of Person-Communities in
Living Creative Fidelity to Values", pp. 129-136.
****
http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-7/chapter_xiii.htm
CHAPTER XIII
TEACHING VALUES
IN THE NATURAL AND PHYSICAL
SCIENCES IN THE PHILIPPINE
SERAFIN D. TALISAYON
This paper is based on three assumptions:
First, the values that must be taught in schools are (1) those specified in the
Constitution and (2) those indigenous Filipino values in harmony with the first.
We shall call or define them as socially-desirable values. Second, science and
technology are not value free.
Third, in case of conflict, the values inherent in science and technology must be
subordinated to those values we deem socially desirable. "We" refers to us
Filipinos. However in case of conflict in facts or empirically testable
statements, the methods of science must prevail.
SOCIALLY-DESIRABLE VALUES
The 1987 Constitution is a formal document embodying social values deemed
desirable for the nation. It has been claimed that the Philippine Constitution is
the only constitution in the world which mentions the two words `God' and `love'.
The Preamble states:
We, the sovereign Filipino people, imploring the aid of Almighty God, in order to
build a just and humane society and establish a Government that shall embody our
ideals and aspirations, promote the common good, conserve and develop our
patrimony, and secure to ourselves and our posterity the blessings of independence
and democracy under the rule of law and the regime of truth, justice, freedom,
love, equality, and peace, do ordain and promulgate this Constitution.
This is consistent with the "maka-Diyos" and "maka-tao" elements of some
indigenous Filipino millenarian movements which were adopted into the Filipino
ideology during the previous regime. Article XIV, Section 3 echoes the importance
of ethical and spiritual values, good moral character and personal discipline.
Other values in the 1987 Constitution are:
(1) national self-reliance and an independent foreign policy (Article II, Sections
7 and 19; Article XII, Section 12);
(2) recognition of the role of women (Article II, Section 14; Article XIII,
Section 14) and the rights of the indigenous cultural communities (Article II,
Section 22; Article X, Section 15);
(3) free enterprise (Article II, Section 20);
(4) ecological balance (Article II, Section 16);
(5) negative values are placed on war, nuclear weapons, military supremacy,
degrading and inhuman punishment, political dynasties, graft and corruption,
monopolies and social inequities (Article II, Sections 2, 3, 8, 26 and 27; Article
III, Section 19; Article XI; Article XII, Section 19; Article XIII);
(6) democratic values, and human values in the Bill of Rights, social justice
(Article XIII);
(7) patriotism and nationalism, love and humanity, respect for human rights,
appreciation of the role of national heroes (Article XIV, Section 3.2); and
(8) critical and creative thinking, invention and innovation, scientific and
technological self-reliance, and vocational efficiency (Article XIV, Section 3.2
and Section 10).
From the way the 1987 Constitution underscores science and technology, it may be
gathered that the implicit aim is not science and technology itself, but its role
in serving such national goals as self-reliance and development.
FILIPINO VALUES
There have been numerous studies on Filipino values, ranging from scientific
surveys and tests to essays of personal opinions and anecdotes (Church 1986).
The most accurate indicator of social values is spontaneous mass behavior. In this
regard, perhaps the best example of mass spontaneous behavior is the People Power
Revolution of February, 1986. This action on a rare scale of magnitude could only
reflect the common denominators in the traits of its millions of participants. It
spawned a number of descriptions of the Filipino character. One writer (Hornedo
1988) summarized his observations of this social phenomenon as follows:
The authentic and truly classic EDSA people power was therefore: (1) popular and
cutting across socio-economic lines; spontaneous and therefore unstructured, (2)
joyful and humanitarian, (3) religious in temperament and persuasion, (4) pacifist
and conciliatory, (5) non-confrontational as the third party go-between or
namamagitan of traditional Filipino society and culture, and by this fact (6)
rooted in the Filipino national consciousness and soul . . . (it was also) (7)
pro-freedom.
Nationwide surveys conducted by the Bishops-Businessmen Conference and the Ateneo
Social Weather Station suggest the following elements of the Filipino character
and value system: pessimism concerning the present but optimism concerning the
future, care and concern for others, hospitality and friendship, respect,
religiosity and fear of God, respect for women, a pro-American attitude, and a
dislike for cheats and thieves.
After reviewing the literature on Filipino values, I have proposed a schema
(Diagram 1) for visualizing the clustering, linkages, and internal coherence among
these values (Talisayon, S. 1988). The core values found are also those studied by
the leading researchers in this field: family solidarity and economic security
(Bulatao 1973), personalism and small-group orientation (Jocano), smooth
interpersonal relations (S.I.R. of Lynch 1973), "loob" (Mercado 1974),
"pakikiramdam" and "pakikipagkapwatao" (Enriquez 1977). Five macroclusters were
identified in their order of strength: the relationship cluster, social cluster,
livelihood cluster, inwardness cluster, and optimism cluster.
TEACHING VALUES THROUGH SCIENCE
The importance of science and technology, and the teaching of both, are recognized
by the Constitution. The operative question before us is this: how do we teach the
natural and physical sciences so as to develop in students socially-desirable
values? Note that the issue we are addressing here is not "how to teach science"
but "how to teach values through science". The teaching of science can be viewed
as an end in itself, but for the purposes of this Seminar, we are viewing it as a
means to social ends.
Values enter into the teaching of science in three ways: (1) values inherent in
the subject matter or content of science and technology, (2) values developed in
learning the processes and methods of science, and (3) values related to the
benefit or harm generated by the application of science and technology.
Values Inherent in Science
Values in this category are few. The reason is that science and technology provide
man with excellent answers to questions of means, but often they cannot provide
him with satisfactory answers to questions of ends. Science can tell man how to
make fire or start a nuclear reaction. But it is not science that can tell him
whether to use the fire to cook his
food or burn his neighbor's house, and whether to use atomic energy to power
industry or to destroy millions of people.
Scientists limit themselves to what they, using present means, can observe with
their known senses. As a result science and technology conduces to values that
tend to be focused on the material, sensate world.
The scientific method, as now understood and taught, is conducive to logical
positivist, quantitative, and basically impersonal ways of thinking. In this sense
science itself as we know it today is not value free. If not disciplined to serve
man and his nobler purposes, science and technology have the capacity to insinuate
these materialist values despite the avowed objectivity of science and its
methods.
This can be dangerous because, if we examine the Filipino value system, its merits
and strengths appear to be almost polar opposites to the values inherent in
science and its present methods, to wit:
VALUES INHERENT FILIPINO
IN SCIENCE VALUES
Sensate (attention to ------> <------ loob complex or
external environment) interiority; `pakiramdam'
matter orientation ------> <------ spiritual orientation
impersonal ------> <------ personalism
attention to ------> <------ attention to
physical phenomena social phenomena
If Filipino teachers of science and technology are not aware and careful, their
very success may be equivalent to the elimination of core values in our culture
and their replacement with those Western values tending to materialism, sensate
orientation, and impersonality. This is particularly true in the teaching of the
physical sciences such as physics, chemistry and geology. The success of
eliminating superstitions and erroneous beliefs may, unless guarded against, be
sadly accompanied by the loss of socially desirable values. Awareness on the part
of the teacher is a necessary antidote because admittedly science teaching is a
form of enculturation.
Fortunately, there are branches of study in the natural sciences which, if
properly handled, can avoid this outcome and even achieve desirable reinforcement
of socially desirable values. Ecology is one of them. I say "properly handled"
because teaching values always involves intelligent selection by the teacher of
the value to be taught.
In terms of inherent value content, ecology is perhaps the richest among the
natural sciences. Ecology is the exception to the rule that science and technology
provide man with answers largely to questions of means and not of ends. Although
the teacher will exercise some judgement in selecting which social values to
emphasize on the basis of ecological facts and principles, the job of teaching
socially-desirable values is easy while teaching ecology. Some examples are the
following:
1. Interrelatedness of nature, that what happens in a part of the web of nature
ultimately affects every other part, thereby leading to
2. Systemic and holistic thinking;
3. Man is part of nature, that hurting the natural ecosystem will eventually hurt
man, and that man is a part of the cycles of nature; thereby leading to
4. Respect for, or responsibility towards, nature; and the reality that this
responsibility, to be effective, must be socially shared rather than pursued by
only a few individuals in a society; that the more valid attitude towards nature
is harmony and balance, rather than conquest;
5. Diversity of species leads to stability; monocultures lead to vulnerability;
6. Global and internationalist values from the biophysical ecological web that
ties every man to every other man; and from the common threat to mankind posed by
harming the biosphere (greenhouse effect from carbon dioxide and deforestation,
thinning of ozone from use of flourohydrocarbons, nuclear winter from global
nuclear war, irretrievable loss of species, etc.);
7. Conservation, from the physical limits placed by non-renewable and slowly-
renewable natural resources.
Consequently, there is a school of thought that a moral system can be derived from
ecology, or biology in general. In other words, science by itself can be used to
derive a bioethics. However, science alone cannot be the basis even for a
bioethics because certain biological principles and applications have either an
ambiguous, controversial, or perhaps even socially undesirable implications.
Examples are competition and survival of the fittest, population control,
surrogate motherhood, vegetarianism, artificial insemination, and eugenics.
Certain topics of science must be treated with care when taught to certain
cultural communities. For example, using pigs and dogs as textbook examples or
laboratory subjects is abhorrent to Muslim students. Scientific study of the moon
may also present some problems. Certain forms of birth control are unacceptable to
conservative Catholics. According to our definition, as long as there is no clear
consensus among most Filipinos on a particular value, we cannot claim that value
to be socially-desirable.
Geography is a branch of science where the linkages between natural and social
phenomena are delineated. When applied to the study of Philippine geography,
values can be taught thereby, such as appreciation of other ethnic and cultural
groups, understanding of certain regional idiosyncrasies, and pride in the natural
endowments and unique assets of the nation. Unfortunately geography is no longer
taught as a separate course in the primary and secondary levels.
In the physical sciences, certain principles may be construed to have value
implications, although their conformity with our Filipino definition of socially-
desirable values is either an open issue or subject to question. Some physicists
have waxed philosophical and written metaphysical discourses after contemplating
these principles:
1. Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: the process of observation inevitably
disturbs that which is being observed;
2. Quantum mechanics: nature behaves in a probabilistic fashion;
3. Theory of Relativity: matter and energy are equivalent; time intervals and
distances depend on the velocity of the observer; the universe is curved and thus
it is boundless but limited; and
4. Mathematics underlies the physical behavior of the universe.
Values from Learning Scientific Processes
The scientific method demands personal discipline; science itself is a form of
personal discipline. It may not be explicitly taught as such, but nevertheless
effects the student.
Certain values and personality traits can be taught through the practice of the
scientific method. Values derivable from learning scientific methods and processes
offer a wider field of action to the science teacher.
The pursuit of the scientific method carries certain rather difficult attitudinal
and behavioral demands on the researcher, among them:
1. Honesty and accuracy in recording and reporting observations; avoiding
shortcuts that compromise honesty and accuracy;
2. Ability to suspend judgement whenever warranted; the ability to prevent one's
personal preferences from affecting observations and results;
3. Willingness to admit error and to change views when confronted with data to the
contrary;
4. Giving credit to another author for using his idea; or never claiming somebody
else's idea as his own;
5. Resourcefulness and creativity in formulating a problem, developing a new
method or theory, or finding new applications;
6. Persistence and patience while preparing and waiting to produce results;
7. Sensitivity to social needs in selecting a research topic and in testing
applications of a principle;
8. A sense of appropriateness and proportion in matching research technique to
research problem, deciding the level of precision, or seeking a trade-off between
scope and cost; and
9. Skepticism unless sufficient and relevant data supports a hypothesis.
In ancient Japan, an iemoto is a traditional school where students place
themselves under the tutelage of a Master in a skill specific to the school. The
skill may be flower arrangement, the tea ceremony, kendo (a form of
swordsmanship), koto (a guitar-like instrument) playing, calligraphy, or some
handicraft. In an iemoto, the values pursued are practice and learning, obedience
to the Master, loyalty to the school, and of course, perfection in the skill
according to the specific tradition of the iemoto. In this setting, learning
embraces more than content and process. It includes a third and most important
consideration: internal discipline.
In the West, sportsmen and athletes are beginning to discover--while aiming to run
the fastest, jump the highest, or play ball best--the extent to which perfection
is greatly influenced by the state of mind. It is quite conceivable for an athlete
to train and perform, not only to win, but to achieve internal discipline and to
develop one's character.
A similar viewpoint could be held as far as learning the scientific method is
concerned. Using and teaching science and its methods as a personal discipline,
over and above the usual considerations of content and process, is a rather Asian
way of viewing science. After all, the separation between the scientific method
and the scientist is only an artifice and it may serve both better if the
scientist admits and manages the intimate linkage between the two. This proposal
could be more feasible among more mature graduate students, especially in the
social and behavioral sciences. In graduate school, there is a close relationship
between the graduate adviser and the graduate student which can be handled from
the triple criteria of content, process, and internal discipline.
A value mentioned in several places in the 1987 Constitution is creativity, and
the related values of innovation, invention, and technological self-reliance. From
a review of the Constitution, the members of the Constitutional Commission appear
to have decided to emphasize scientific creativity and technological innovation
and invention, knowing that they contribute to national self-reliance.
Unfortunately, creativity as an educational objective and process is among the
least understood and attended to elements in our school system. The great majority
of the subjects taught in our school system train children to understand,
remember, and apply rules in order to obtain the single correct answer--in short,
they are trained largely in convergent thinking. Learning in school is a
continuous process of eroding and narrowing a child's conception of what things
are possible. As a result, creativity and open-mindedness appear to vary inversely
with age. According to John Nuveen, "You can judge your age by the amount of pain
you feel when you come in contact with a new idea."
Divergent thinking is a component of creativity, and is called into action when
the mind is confronted with a problem which can have many possible solutions. It
comes into the picture at two points in the scientific research process: at the
beginning and at the end. Divergent thinking is required in defining a research
problem, including formulating the hypotheses. Divergent thinking is again
required in seeking useful applications of the findings or conclusions. In
between, convergent thinking is, of course, required if the classical scientific
method is to be correctly followed.
If we are to encourage more children to be creative, and if we are to aim to
develop more Filipino innovators and inventors, programmatic efforts must be made
to develop scientific creativity and inventiveness.
Related closely to creativity and inventiveness is entrepreneurship. Science and
mathematics can be taught to secondary students in such a manner as to teach also
creativity and entrepreneurship. (Talisayon, S. 1986).
Values Related to Consequences of Technology
This third avenue for teaching values offers rich possibilities.
Values that motivate the use of technology. The beneficial and harmful
consequences of producing and using technology can be dramatic, such as putting
men on the moon, destroying two Japanese cities, transplanting a human heart,
storing an encyclopedia inside a desktop computer, mercury pollution, and
commercial travel at speeds exceeding that of sound. The credit or blame, of
course, cannot be placed on technology, but on the motives and values behind the
producers and users of technology. Technology merely amplifies the power of man
for good or for evil. Hence, teaching the consequences of technology can be an
indirect, but effective way of highlighting the consequences of those motives and
values behind the user of technology. This avenue is indirect because it does not
teach values, but teaches about values and their consequences.
A powerful social value which can be taught is the proper use of technology to
alleviate poverty and pain. The process of teaching certain technologies can be so
planned as to convey and reinforce this socially, desirable value, in addition to
the primary aim of teaching the technology itself. This approach can be employed
in teaching the following technology courses: appropriate technologies for rural
applications, medical technologies, livelihood skills and technologies, medicinal
plants, and food processing.
A related value implicit in the Constitution and very relevant to Philippine
conditions is that technology must be made maximally relevant to the improvement
of livelihood. The concern to link the teaching of science, technology and
vocational skills to gaining a livelihood is old and well-recognized. What remains
is the issue of how best to make this linkage more direct and efficient. The
following are some suggestions, some of which have been tried:
1. To the extent feasible, select and design lessons and school projects so that
outputs are marketable and use income from sales as the basis for grading;
2. Make use of successful skilled workers, craftsmen, and entrepreneurs in the
locality as resource persons;
3. If accessible to the school, arrange to visit and talk with a successful
Filipino inventor and make a tour of his workshop;
4. Conduct a practicum on vocational subjects taught through short-term secondment
of a student to a local factory, cottage industry, store, shop or farm;
5. Develop or adapt curriculum materials from agencies dealing with livelihood-
oriented technology transfer such as the Technology Resource Center,
Nonconventional Technology Resources, Department of the Bureau of Energy
Development, UP Los Baños for agricultural technologies and UP Visayas for
fisheries and marine technologies, Department of Science and Technology and its
regional offices, Livelihood Corporation, Bureau of Animal Industry, Bureau of
Plant Industry, NACIDA, etc.
Values resulting from the use of technology. By itself, technology can shape
values. It can affect our value system by making certain choices easier. For
example, the invention of contraceptives makes sexual promiscuity safer.
Toothpaste and mouthwash make bad breath a social offense. Ladies make-up,
orthodontal braces, and nose lifting influence our conceptions of beauty. The
pocket watch and wristwatch can impose personal discipline, but also can kill
spontaneity. The automobile can make people lazy. It can also spawn entire
lifestyles in the same way that the automobile shaped the American way of life:
drive-in movies and drive-in churches, interstate highways, parking meters and
parking tickets, mobile homes, trailers, hitch-hiking, and so on--all in the name
of "service to mankind". This phenomenon, where technology results in
unanticipated or unplanned cultural changes and in rearrangements of social
relations, is very common.
Hence, how technology itself can shape values should also be taught. However, this
requires cross-disciplinary expertise on the part of the teacher, which is rare,
or else a multi-disciplinary team of teachers, which is expensive. The solution is
often an inter-departmental program at the tertiary level. Academic programs
relating science and technology to society thus have become popular in university
campuses since it started in the United States and Europe. The utility of such
programs can be extended to the secondary level by developing enrichment materials
or by their incorporation into integrated science courses or social science
courses.
Again, this avenue does not teach values directly, but teaches about values
resulting from technology. Teaching about values is inferior to teaching values
because the former can get bogged down in the conceptual level without reaching
the affective and behavioral levels. It is appropriate to university-level
students and to more mature students at the secondary level. It can be recommended
above all for college and graduate students majoring in education.
Community-based teaching of science. A third avenue for teaching values is through
the "community-based" teaching of science. The U.P. Institute for Science and
Mathematics Education has been experimenting for some time now with the
"community-based" teaching of biology, chemistry, and physics (Talisayon, S.
1986).
In this approach, the starting point is not a science principle or lesson, but the
community and its needs. The essence of the approach is two-fold: (1) the
selection, design and implementation of lessons most relevant to the needs and
conditions of the community where the student lives, and (2) the use of community
resources and expertise in the teaching-learning process.
Technology is heavily culture-bound. The effectiveness of technology generally
changes when it is transferred from a source culture to a recipient culture. Thus
a modern digital wristwatch is very useful or even essential in an urban setting
like Metro Manila for keeping track of time appointments in that fast-paced,
highly organized and formalized working environment. But when the user visits
remote rural areas the same device becomes useless for there are no precise
schedules to keep, any appointment is treated flexibly, and there is no pressing
need to know the exact time. Transported into a rural environment, the utility of
this technology is drastically reduced.
A microcomputer in the hands of upland forest dwellers is not technology at all,
but becomes a piece of junk. Transported into a frontier environment, the utility
of this technology becomes zero. We can see clearly that technology is such
because it is useful to the user.
This should be true also of educational technology, including transfers from urban
to rural and frontier cultures in the same country, especially a multi-ethnic
country like the Philippines. What is useful to a Japanese pupil in a Tokyo school
may not be useful to a Bilaan pupil in a mountain school in Cotabato. Not all
experiments and laboratory equipment prescribed in textbooks developed in Metro
Manila have equal relevance and meaning in the context of a rural or frontier
community. This approach places societal needs before technology, and consciously
reverses the usual process in which technology modifies society--which is
precisely the philosophy behind the "appropriate technology" movement. It places
technology where it should be all along--as servant to man.
Local resources and expertise are usually available in a rural community for
science teaching. For example, physics concepts can be usefully and meaningfully
learned by visiting a local baker, an auto mechanic, or a radio-TV repair shop.
The practical experiences and techniques employed by these people are largely
unrecognized resources for teaching science and technology. Even self-made
technicians in small vulcanizing shops can be assets to a creative and well-
prepared teacher. There is nothing `high brow' about technology.
CONCLUDING SUMMARY
The science teacher must recognize that science teaching is an enculturation
process. Values are learned in the process. Values can therefore be taught through
science teaching. Some guidelines that may be adopted in planning this process
follow:
(1) Scientific principles in geography, physics, and especially ecology provide
bases for teaching many desirable social values.
(2) The scientific method can also be viewed as a basis for teaching many
desirable personal disciplines.
(3) A trait recognized as desirable in the 1987 Constitution is creativity and
inventiveness. The teaching of creativity in connection with teaching science and
technology may have to be given more emphasis than it is receiving at present.
(4) Teaching the consequences of the use or misuse of science and technology is a
fertile avenue for teaching values. Seeking beneficial applications in alleviating
poverty and pain, in improving livelihoods, and in developing communities are
processes which can be used to develop positive values about the use of
technology. So-called "community-based" teaching of science and technology is a
useful method for teaching socially-desirable values.
(5) Educational technology, like technology in general, is culture-bound.
Therefore, the teacher needs to exercise care in adopting educational technologies
from cultural contexts alien to that of the students.
University of the Philippines
Manila
REFERENCES
Church, A.T. Filipino Personality: A Review of Research and Writings. (Monograph
Series No. 6.) De La Salle University Press, 1986.
Bulatao, Jaime. "The Manileños' Mainsprings", in Frank Lynch, and Alfonso de
Guzman II, eds., Four Readings on Philippine Values. Fourth edition revised.
Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1973.
Enriquez, Virgilio G. Filipino Philosophy in the Third World. Quezon City:
Philippine Psychology Research House, 1977.
Hornedo, Florentino. "People Power As The Traditional Filipino Go Between," in
Pantas: A Journal for Higher Education. Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1987, Ateneo de
Manila University.
Lynch, Frank and Alfonso de Guzman II, eds. Four Reading on Philippine Values.
Fourth edition, revised. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1973.
Mercado, Leonardo N. Elements of Filipino Philosophy. Tacloban City: Divine Word
University Publications, 1974.
Talisayon, Serafin. "Decomposition of `Entrepreneurial Skills' into Unit Skills".
U.P. Institute for Science and Mathematics Education Development, January 1986.
"Filipino Values: A Determinant of Philippine Future". Paper submitted to the
Economic Development Foundation, December, 1988.
Talisayon, Vivien, Joel Koren, and Bal Krishna. Teacher-Training Material on Using
Community Resources in Teaching Physics. UNESCO Regional Workshop on the Training
of Physics Teachers. Quezon City, Philippines, 18-28 November, 1986.
****
http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-10/chapter_xiv.htm
CHAPTER XIV
THE CONFUCIAN JEN,
A CRITICAL HERMENEUTICS
MANUEL B. DY JR.
Jen is a central concept in Confucian philosophy. Its philosophy of
the person is built on the man of jen; "Humanity (jen) is the distinguishing
characteristic of man. . . ."1 It is also the principal virtue of Confucian
ethics,2 and the ethos of its social philosophy and metaphysics. No doubt,
Confucianism would not be what it purports to be without jen.
The aim of this paper is to subject Confucian jen to a critical
hermeneutics as understood by Jürgen Habermas and inspired by his debate with Hans
Georg Gadamer. The basis for such an ap-plication is the similarity of Habermas’s
emphasis on the link of knowledge and human interests with the Confucian unity of
know-ledge and action. A parallelism can also be noted between Ha-bermas’s three
processes of symbolic reproduction of the human species: cultural transmission,
social integration, and socialization, and Confucius’s three goals of life and
thought: to transmit the Chou culture, to reform society, and to educate the
people.
JEN AND ITS EVOLUTION3
The richness of the notion of jen is manifest in the diversity of its
translations. It has been translated as benevolence, com-passion, magnanimity,
goodness, love, human-heartedness, hu-maneness, humanity, true manhood, manhood at
its best, kind-ness, charity, perfect virtue, and man-to-manness.4 The character
jen is a composite of two characters: jen meaning "man", and erh meaning "two".
Thus, jen has come to mean the virtue or principle governing the relationship of
man and fellowman.

Confucius: Jen as Responsibility to Self and Others

Confucius is reputed to be the first to make jen a general virtue,
whereas before him jen was simply a particular virtue, the kindness of a ruler to
his people. When asked by his disciple Fan Chih for the meaning of jen, Confucius
replied, "It is to love men."5 And this love extends to all, though more
intimately with men of jen.6
As a general virtue, jen is the principal virtue that unites all
others.7 It is "to master oneself and return to propriety";8 so without jen,
propriety does not make sense.9 If jen is to love man, wisdom is "to know man".10
"The man of wisdom cultivates jen for its advantage."11 As the central virtue, jen
frees man from evil,12 and is above everything else,13 even one’s life.14
Confucius describes the man of jen in many ways. He can endure
prosperity and adversity for long;15 he is "strong, resolute, simple, and slow to
speak;"16 he is earnest, liberal, truthful, diligent and resolute;17 he studies
extensively, is steadfast in his purpose, inquires earnestly, and reflects on what
he can put into practice.18 In himself he is respectful in private life; in
relation to things he is serious in handling affairs; and in relating with other
human beings he is loyal.19 These descriptions of the man of jen show the equal
emphasis that Confucius places on personal cultivation and social responsibility.
These two poles of responsibility (to oneself and to others) form the
thread that runs through all of Confucius’s sayings. "The moral way . . . is none
other than conscientiousness (chung) and altruism (shu)."20 Chung and shu are the
two aspects of jen. Both characters are written with the character hsin at the
bottom. Hsin literally means "heart" and denotes many things: intentions, feel-
ings, cognitive and evaluative activity.21 Hsin means the very core of man, the
heart-mind; in phenomenological terms it is human subjectivity, in Philippine it
is the persons’ kalooban.
Shu, translated inadequately as "altruism", has the character ju
above, meaning "just as". Shu thus means "do or act just as the heart dictates,"
or in other words the Golden Rule, "Do not do unto others what you do not want
others to do unto you."22 Lest Con-fucius’s Golden Rule be compared as negative to
Christ’s as positive, let us cite one positive formulation of the Golden Rule by
Confucius:23
A man of humanity (jen), wishing to establish his own character, also establishes
the character of others, and wishing to be prominent himself also helps others to
be prominent. To be able to judge others by what is near to otherselves may be
called the method of realizing humanity (jen).
On the other hand, chung, translated also inadequately as
"conscientiousness", has for its character "above" or chung, meaning "center" or
"middle". Together with the character for "be-low" or hsin, chung literally means
"to put one’s heart in the center of whatever you are doing"; this means wanting
what you really want, being true to yourself.
Chung and shu are inseparable, and are but two aspects of jen. Chung
is fidelity to oneself, our duty to ourselves; shu is our duty to others. To
separate the two would be to open the Golden Rule of Confucius to Kant’s objection
that it is hypothetical rather than categorical as his Categorical Imperative.24
In any case, jen is primarily responsibility, rather than assertion of one’s
rights.
As responsibility, then, jen for Confucius is responsibility for man,
both self and others. Jen is love of the humanity in man; love is man’s nature
itself, for "by nature all men are alike; though in practice they have grown
apart."25 In jen, all men "within the four seas (the world) are brothers.26 When a
certain stable was burned down, Confucius asked, `was any man hurt?’ He did not
ask about the horses."27 And again, Confucius says, "One cannot herd with birds
and beasts. If I do not associate with mankind, with whom shall I associate?"28
Being grounded on human nature, it follows that jen is within one’s
reach. Confucius says, "Is jen far away? As soon as I want it, then it is right by
me."29 To practice jen depends on oneself, not on others.30
Nevertheless, Confucius placed the practice of jen heavily on the
shoulders of those in positions of leadership: "his burden is heavy and his curse
is long. He has taken humanity to be his own burden. . . . Only with death does
his course stop."31 This is because "the character of a ruler is like wind and
that of the people is like grass. In whatever direction the wind blows, the grass
always bends."32 "The common people may be made to follow it (the Way), but cannot
be made to understand it."33 Confucius promoted a government or leadership by
example. He said, "To govern is to rectify. If you lead the people by being
rectified yourself, who will dare not be rectified?"34 "If a ruler does not set
himself right, even his commands will not be obeyed."35 Leadership by good example
secures the confidence of the people, which for Confucius is the most important
element in government.36
Tze-kung asked about government. Confucius said, "Sufficient food, sufficient
armament, and sufficient confidence of the people." Tze-kung said, "Forced to give
up one of these, which would you abandon first?" Confucius said, "I would abandon
armament." Tze-kung said, "Forced to give up one of the remaining two, which would
you abandon first?" Confucius said, "I would abandon food. There have been deaths
from time immemorial, but no state can exist without the confidence of the
people."
Although the practice of jen rests more heavily on the official, every-one must
practice this especially to one’s teacher.37 Uni-versal as it is, the practice of
jen admits of gradation. One should start with the family, with filial piety and
brotherly respect, the roots of jen.38 Love begins at home, with those nearest to
one in time and space. Filial piety entails service and reverence. Confucius said,
"In serving his parents, a son may gently remonstrate with them. When he sees that
they are not inclined to listen to him, he should resume an attitude of reverence
and not abandon his effort to serve them. He many feel worried, but does not
complain."39 And when told by the Duke of She that in his country there is an
upright man named Kung who, when his father stole a sheep, bore witness against
him. Confucius replied, "The upright men in my community are different from this.
The father conceals the misconduct of the son and the son conceals the misconduct
of the father. Uprightness is to be found in this."40
Mencius: Jen as Responsibility
Confucius’s teaching of jen as graded was further elaborated by his
follower, Mencius, a hundred years later who paired jen with i, "Righteousness is
his straight path."41 and again, "Jen is the peaceful abode of man and
righteousness is his straight path."42 A path implies priorities, and priorities
involve gradation and dis-tinction.43 Righteousness is the virtue that naturally
makes dis-tinctions in jen as responsibility and love. One cannot love every-body
equally, although love by nature is all-embracing. By res-pecting the elders in my
family, I can by extension also treat with respect the elders in other families.
"Treat with tenderness the young in my own family, and then by extension, also the
young in other families."44 It is unnatural for man to love all alike and to the
same degree. The application of jen springs from within man, man’s nature; it is
man’s nature to love. Mencius said, "Jen is the dis-tinguishing characteristic of
the human when embodied in human conduct; it is the Way."45
Mencius’s greatest contribution to Confucianism is, of course, his
doctrine of the innate goodness of man, that human nature is originally good. One
of his famous arguments is the in-tuitive appeal to the experience of the
"instinct" in man to save a child about to fall into a well.46 The feeling of
commiseration is the beginning of jen, and all have this basic feeling.47 This
feeling of commiseration forms the basis for a benevolent or compassionate
government that cannot bear to see others suffer.48 The benevolent ruler
institutes socio-economic measures (agrarian reforms, the green revolution, the
establishment of schools) because, just as he cannot stand to see an ox being led
to be slaughtered, so he cannot bear to see his people suffer.49 By extending his
innate goodness, his filial piety and brotherly respect from those he loves to
those he does not love (with affection)50 he becomes a parent to his people.
The benevolent ruler gains the confidence of his people, the mandate
of the people, which is synonymous with the Mandate of Heaven. "Heaven sees as my
people see; Heaven hears as my people hear."51 For Mencius, following his master
Confucius, the confidence of the people is the most important element of a
state.52 And the way to gain the hearts of the people is "to collect for them what
they like and do not do to them what they do not like. . . . The people turn to
the humanity of the ruler as water flows downward and as beasts run to the
wilderness."53
Mencius’s understanding of "nature" (hsin) paves the way for the
metaphysical basis for the innate goodness of the human heart. Going beyond his
opponent’s, Kao Tzu’s, understanding of nature as simply "what is inborn,"54
Mencius said that nature is "what Hea-ven has endowed."55 Therefore "he who exerts
his mind (heart) to the utmost knows his nature. He who knows his nature knows
Hea-ven. To preserve one’s mind (heart) and to nourish one’s nature is the way to
serve Heaven."56 The person of jen by loving his family and extending that love to
others knows his nature. Knowing one’s nature, thus serves Heaven by cultivating
the nobility of Heaven.
The harmony in human nature of man, nature, and Heaven finds
expression in the Confucian classic The Doctrine of the Mean. Here jen, humanity,
is jen, man. The government is compared to a fast growing plant, and the conduct
of government depends upon men. "The right men are obtained by the ruler’s
personal character. The cultivation of the person is to be done through the Way,
and the cultivation of the Way is to be done through humanity (jen)."57
Therefore the ruler must not fail to cultivate his personal life. Wishing to
cultivate his personal life, he must not fail to serve his parents. Wishing to
serve his parents, he must not fail to know man. Wishing to know man, he must not
fail to know Heaven.
The practical program for the application of jen is explicated succinctly in The
General Learning through the three items of manifesting a clear character, loving
the people and abiding in the highest good, and through the eight steps of in-
vestigation of things: extension of knowledge, sin-cerity of the will,
rectification of the mind (heart), cultivation of personal life, regulation of
family, na-tional order and world peace.58
When things are investigated, knowledge is extended; when know-ledge is extended,
the will becomes sincere; when the will becomes sincere, the mind is rectified;
when the personal life is cultivated, the family is regulated; when the family is
regulated, the state will be in order; and when the state is in order, there will
be peace throughout the world.
Jen in Taoism and Buddhism
After Mencius, the concept of jen evolved to include the in-fluences
of Taoism and Buddhism. Chu Hsi (1130-1200) is the great synthesizer of the neo-
Confucian understanding of jen. His classic saying on jen is his interpretation of
Chang Tsai’s (1020-1077) short essay, the Western Inscription:59
There is nothing in the entire realm of creatures that does not regard Heaven as
the father and Earth as the mother. This means that the principle is one. . . .
Each regards his parents as his own parents and his son as his own son. This being
the case, how can principle not be manifested as many? . . . When the intense
affection for parents is extended to broaden the impartiality that knows no ego,
and when sincerity in serving one’s parents leads to the understanding of the way
to serve Heaven, then everywhere it happens that principle is one but its
manifestations are many.
"The principle (li) is one but its manifestations are many" becomes
the metaphysical basis of jen in Chu Hsi’s philosophy. He identifies jen with
nature, it is one; but as function, it is many.60 Jen’s manifestations are many,
but they are all one because they partake of one principle, that of Heaven and
Earth. Now, this principle is identical with the Mind of Heaven and Earth61 which,
in turn, is to produce things.62 Jen being the Mind of Heaven and Earth, it
follows that jen is also the process of production and reproduction; "In man, it
is the mind to love people gently and to benefit things."63
Chu Hsi’s antagonist, Wang Yang-ming (1472-1529),64 ex-tends this
creative character of jen in his insight of "forming one body with the universe."
Because of the characteristic of jen to grow and produce, the man of jen forms one
body with the universe:
The great man regards Heaven and Earth and the myriad things as one body. . . .
That the great man can regard Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things as one body is
not because he deliberately wants to do so, but because it is natural to the human
nature of his mind that he does so. . . . Therefore when he sees a child about to
fall into a well, he cannot help a feeling of alarm and commiseration. This shows
that his humanity forms one body with the child. . . . When he sees tiles and
stones shattered and crushed, he cannot help a feeling of regret. This shows that
his humanity forms one body with tiles and stones. This means that even the mind
of the small man necessarily has the humanity that forms one body with all.
Wang Yang-ming sees the creativity of jen as gradual:65
The process is like that of a tree which originally appears as a shoot, . . . the
trunk follows, . . . and from the trunk emerge the twigs and branches. Below the
shoot, moreover, must be a root which can grow. In the root is life; without the
root the tree would die. Love between parents and children, and mutual regard
between brothers are the first beginnings of humanity, and are analogous to the
young shoots of the vegetable world. These first awakenings of love will later
extend to embrace the love of all one’s fellow creatures, who are, as it were, the
twigs and branches.
The neo-Confucian contribution to the understanding of jen is in its
metaphysical dimension: jen taken as the nature of mind (heart) and the principle
of love, as the process of production and reproduction, as impartiality in one’s
extension of love, and as forming one body with the universe. The Confucian unity
with the universe is different from the Taoist unity with the universe: while the
latter is strictly individualistic and quietistic, the former is essentially
social and active.66
THE CRITICAL HERMENEUTICS OF HABERMAS
Habermas’s critical hermeneutics can be better understood as based on
his notion of three basic human interests--technical, practical and emancipatory67
-- and seen in the light of his debate with Gadamer on the issue of critique of
ideology.
For Habermas, there are three specific viewpoints from which we
apprehend reality, three general cognitive strategies, that he calls human
interests. Although these interests are cognitive, they have their basis in the
natural history of man and in the socio-cultural evolution of the human species.
Technical interest refers to the human drive for instrumental action
to master and control nature. Instrumental action here is purposive-rational, a
means-end rationality whose aim is the ex-ploitation of the world. The empirical-
analytical sciences corres-pond to this interest.
Practical interest refers to human symbolic interaction in cultural
tradition(s), to the human need for interpersonal com-munication. While technical
interest is born from the need of man to work in order to survive in a material
world, practical or com-municative interest answers an equally important need to
relate intersubjectively in ordinary language communication. Interaction here is
governed by binding consensual norms, based on mutual understanding of intentions
and secured by general recognition of obligation. Understanding takes place in
ordinary language com-munication, in the interpretation of traditional texts, and
in the internalization of norms which institutionalize social roles. The "his-
torical-hermeneutic sciences" correspond to this interest.
In terms of these two types of interests and action, we can
distinguish in a society the institutional framework or socio-cultural lifeworld
that guides symbolic interaction and subsystems (or social systems of purposive-
rational action, such as the economic system and the state apparatus.68
Emancipatory interest criticizes the ideological tendencies of the
first two interests. The action here is one of unmasking the forces of domination,
dogmatism, and repression lying behind the reproduction of labor and the
institutionally secured forms of ge-neral and public communication. Emancipatory
interest seeks to break the barriers to open communication between social groups
and persons, raising their self-consciousness "to the point where it has attained
the level of critique and freed itself from all ideological delusions."69 Both the
technical and practical technical interest of self-preservation cannot be
segregated from the cultural conditions of human life; social persons must first
interpret what they consider as life. And these symbolic interpretations must
likewise be given for evaluation to the ideas of the good life or "the criterion
of what a society intends for itself as the good life."70 The critical sciences,
philosophy and psychoanalysis, correspond to this interest.
It is within the emancipatory interest that Habermas criticizes the
hermeneutics of Gadamer as not going far enough. Gadamer had argued that in the
interpretation of text (and text here refers to anything that is the work of man)
one cannot escape the his-toricality of consciousness. To express, to explain, and
to interpret (the three functions of hermeneutics) all involve language con-ceived
not so much as a system of signs, but as a discourse in which we participate, a
dialectical event. As an event, interpretation takes place in time; to interpret
is always to understand from a certain standpoint or from a certain horizon, for
an historical distance exists between the text and the interpreter. In inter-
pretative understanding this distance is bridged by tradition. Lan-guage is the
reservoir and communication medium of tradition, which hides itself in language.
In hermeneutic understanding, a dialectic exists between one’s own horizon and
that of tradition.71 Habermas criticizes this high regard of Gadamer for tradition
and participation. For Habermas, it is not enough to interpret; what is developed
in understanding is the power of reflection to criticize.
Hermeneutic understanding must be conjoined with a critique of
ideology. Habermas refers to ideology in the Marxian and Freudian terminology as
false consciousness, including science and technology insofar as they distort
reality. Ideology consists of a type of communication that affects the capacity of
a society to arrive at a consensus concerning common problems. In other words,
ideology distorts communication, hampers the free flow of communication because of
pre-existing dominant patterns of thought and action that are accepted
uncritically as givens. Lan-guage can also be a medium of domination and of social
power and can serve to legitimize relations of organized force.72 Tradition can
reveal and express realities, but it can also conceal and distort the social,
political, economic conditions of life, especially those that are injust. What is
needed, therefore, is self-awareness, a critique of one’s own beliefs, values, and
behavior.
A critique of ideology requires, according to Habermas, a system of
reference that goes beyond tradition and systems that have to do with the mode of
production and power relations.73 Her-meneutic understanding must be conjoined
with analysis of social systems, through which tradition can be criticized and a
res-tructuring of world views can be initiated. This would require in turn a
philosophy of history, a certain vision of the future of society, of what mankind
ought to be. Any account of the past implicitly presupposes a projection of a
future which the interpreter can work to bring about.
A CRITICAL REINTERPRETATION OF JEN
We have already mentioned at the start of this paper the si-milarity
of the Confucian unity of knowledge and action with Ha-bermas’s notion of human
interest. For the Confucianist, know-ledge is never for knowledge’s sake, but
rather for praxis, which is ethical action. Similarly, Habermas looks at cognitive
activities as governed by deep-seated human interests that are natural to the
human in his evolution and need to be actualized. Moreover, jen as the principal
virtue of Confucian ethics is also the outstanding characteristic of good
government. Jen is both a personal and social moral standard. In the Confucian
system, ethics is syno-nymous with politics. This is also similar to one of the
attempts of Habermas to go back to the ancient Greek paradigm of the triad of
theoria, praxis and techne where the practical is synonymous with the political,
after criticizing the modern ideological tendency of science and technology where
the practical has been identified with the technical, the theoretical with the
scientific, and the political has been freed of any normative considerations.
Notwithstanding the similarity of Confucius and Habermas in the unity
of knowledge and action and in the continuity of ethics and politics, there is a
conflation of jen in the Confucian system with the other spheres of life. This can
lead either to the neglect of the instrumental reason that characterized the
technical interest of man, as was the case in the early period of modernization
period of China, or to the intrusion and predominance of interpersonal har-mony in
the economic and state subsystems. The neo-Confucian notion of jen as forming one
body with the universe, including phy-sical nature, has to be reformulated to mean
forming one body with the human world, because in the modern scientific and
techno-logical age what is of nature or natural is no longer what is inborn or
endowed by Heaven and therefore sacred. Nor is it that which is the object of
human reflection and contemplation, but that which is subjected to technology. For
modern man, nature is the primitive, to be tamed and harnessed for the human goals
of civilization. There is merit, of course, to the Taoist insight of harmony with
nature and respect for its rhythm, if only to correct the abuses that modern man
has inflicted on the ecology. But harmony with one’s fellowman is different from
that with physical nature which is characterized by a different kind of
rationality, namely, one that is purposive.
The intrusion of jen into the sphere of the technical runs the risk of
subverting the practical and communicative under technical interest for survival.
In such a case, jen becomes a matter of good public relations, a technical "how-
to-win-friends-and-influence-people," a tactical diplomacy in order to secure
one’s own position or gain material or political advantage. Persons and peoples
are then treated simply as means (rather than as ends) to serve one’s own personal
or group interests.
Group interests refers naturally to the family. Filial piety and
brotherly respect as the root of jen has led to over-emphasis on the family. The
result is clannishness in society, competition among clans, family-run business
empires and monopolies, and nepotism in government. Filial piety has indeed
ensured the personal care of parents in their old age, rather than confining them
to institutions; but in the modern context, this has come to mean treating
children as investments, the more children the greater the chances of the parents
being taken care of. Brotherly respect has not been ex-tended beyond that of the
clan. And when it comes to a conflict between the good of the family and that of
the community or so-ciety, the family interest comes first.
In this regard, filial piety and brotherly respect need to be
reinterpreted as the mutual love and respect of the person of both parent and
child (not only of the parent), and of one’s fellow humans outside of the clan.
The family-centeredness of jen must be made centrifugal, the closed family
transformed into an open one.
As graded love jen has made the Confucian society hie-rarchical and
its benevolent government into an autocratic or pa-ternalistic state. Each has a
role in the family and society with its corresponding duties and obligations, and
fidelity and loyalty to the superior is a virtue to cultivate. Organizations are
formed more in a vertical, than in an horizontal order. Greater responsibility
falls on one in authority who has the trust and respect of his followers by virtue
of age, lineage, and sometimes wisdom and experience. Power is centered on the
leader, and any reform must come from the top, which, of course, is a carry-over
from the feudal society of Confucius’s time. Though Mencius’s notion of the
benevolent government with the people as its most important element may have made
him the first democratic thinker in the history of philo-sophy, nevertheless, this
kind of democracy is authoritative.
How effective and relevant is authoritative democracy today? It has
been noticed that one common trait of the new "small dragons" (Taiwan, South
Korea, Singapore) is that they all have a more central or maximum government,
where the populace instinc-tively appeals to the government for solutions to its
problems.74 The agrarian reform programs emanating from Tokyo and Taipei were
successful because they were initiated and implemented under authoritarian rule.
Is Mencius’s benevolent government indeed the East Asian kind of democracy? If we
were simply to apply the technical and practical interests of Habermas, the answer
would be in the affirmative. But under the emancipatory interest, one must ask
whether the wealthy, cultivated, cultured person under a benevolent but despotic
ruler is truly free?
The person of jen is the one who cultivates him or herself in order to
be of service to others. The Confucian emphasis on ob-ligation and duties has led
to a neglect of rights. The jen-ethic is communitarian, not individualistic. This
is not to say that Confucius disregarded personal cultivation; after all, jen has
two aspects: chung (conscientiousness) and shu (Golden Rule). But chung is still a
duty, and not a right, albeit a duty to oneself. A duty is only a duty because
there is a right. My duty to you is your right, and your right to me is my duty.
For modern institutions and structures jen has to be reformulated to mean also a
right, e.g. my right vis-a-vis society to be educated, to be cultivated.
Now jen, when paired with i (righteousness) as a graded and
prioritized responsibility, has given rise to hierarchical distinctions in
responsibilities. As a result, the boundaries of responsibility are clearly
delineated. If we were to reformulate jen as a right and not only as a duty, then
we would have to extend these boundaries of responsibility to include those rights
that are inherent in the person, regardless of whether or not they are related to
me by blood or position. In the modern world where mass media has made the world
truly global, linking man to man from all over, jen must mean that I am
responsible for the right of any other person in the world to live humanly.
Chung, the Golden Rule which is the other aspect of jen, also needs to
be reinterpreted in the context of a global humanity. There is a point to Kant’s
objection to the Golden Rule as being hypo-thetical ("if you do not want this to
be done to you, do not do it to others") should be based on one’s nature. The
benevolent govern-ment of Mencius is based too on the innate natural goodness of
hu-man nature, one that is endowed by Heaven. Thus, there is some-thing sacred in
the Golden Rule. In Habermas’s proposal for the rationalization of the lifeworld
to counteract the ideological ten-dency of the rationality of technical interests,
one of the require-ments is the "linguistification of the sacred." This is the
ration-alization of world views, in some contrast to their religious pre-
judgmental character. The Golden Rule can be reformulated in Ha-bermas’s logic of
practical discourse: the claim to what is right is justified in terms of the
principle of universalizability:75 what is right is what can be universalized.
Here the focal point is not just the individual "I", but the person that every
human being is.
Finally, jen is to be critiqued as an ideology. There have been moves
in some countries to promote the Confucian ethics of jen, making a fine
distinction between Confucianism as a personal ethic and Confucianism as a
political ideology. Habermas, however, in-sists that culture cannot be
administered. To impose jen on the people is tantamount to making it ideological
and therefore re-pressive. The harmony of jen as falling under the practical
interest has to be re-interpreted as a harmony arrived at from consensus and not
from coercion.76 In the light of the emancipatory interest, the benevolent
government of Mencius that is authoritarian needs to be reinterpreted as a
participative kind of democracy, where each citizen has a right and duty to
participate in what constitutes the good life of man.
CONCLUSION: PERSON AND SOCIETY
We have critically interpreted jen in the light of Habermas’s
framework of the three cognitive interests (technical, practical and
emancipatory), following his proposal for a critique of tradition. It seems,
however, that our critique of jen in the context of modernity boils down to the
failure of the Confucian system to distinguish (not necessarily to separate) in
the human being the person and the individual. It would seem that Confucian
thought lacks the notion of person.
To borrow Max Scheler’s insight,77 the person is more than an
individual. For a human being to be considered a moral person, he or she must
possess a sound mind, be in the process of becoming (maturity), have control over
his or her lived body, and not be objectifiable. The last point is important for
the person is not a substance, a thing. A person is a unity of different acts; he
or she exists or is present in every act but is not exhausted by any one of them.
One of the distinguishing acts of the person is the act of loving; as such the
person is also a social person with social acts. To know another person as person
is to know him or her as a unique being, which entails co-acting with them, for
they are present only in their acts. This is possible because in loving we
participate in the Absolute Person of God in whom the individual and social
coincide. The solidarity of persons is founded ultimately in the personhood of
God.
Following Scheler’s insight, we may say that the human being as an
individual is indeed subordinate to the state or society, and that the state
therefore has the right to oblige one to subordinate one’s individual interests
for the good of society as a whole. But as person, unique, non-objectifiable,
irreducible and unrepeatable, the human being rises above the state which exists
so that the person may grow as a unique being. Nevertheless, the human being can
grow to become a person only by participating and by responding to the value of
others in a community. The paradox of this unity of personal cultivation and
community growth can be reconciled only if we admit of a relationship with an
Absolute Person that grounds the solidarity of moral persons.
NOTES
1. Mencius VII B:16. The Doctrine of the Mean, ch. 20. Translation by
Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1963).
2. The other virtues are chih (wisdom), i (righteousness), and li
(propriety).
3. I am indebted for this part of the paper to Wing-tsit Chan, "The
Evolution of the Confucian Concept Jen," Philosophy East and West, 4, (1955), 155
295-319.
4. Ibid., p. 195.
5. Analects XII, 22
6. Ibid., i, 6.
7. Wing-tsit Chan, op. cit., p. 296.
8. Analects XII, 1.
9. Ibid., III, 3.
10. Ibid., XII, 22.
11. Ibid., IV, 2.
12. Ibid., IV, 4.
13. Ibid., IV, 6.
14. Ibid., XV, 8.
15. Ibid., IV, 2.
16. Ibid., XIII, 27.
17. Ibid., XVII, 6.
18. Ibid., XIX, 6.
19. Ibid., XIII, 19.
20. Ibid., IV, 15.
21. Donald J. Munro, The Concept of Man in Early China (Stanford,
California: Stanford University Press, 1969), pp. 50-51.
22. Analects XII, 2.
23. Ibid., VII, 28.
24. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. by
H.J. Paton (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1964), p. 97 footnote.
25. Analects XVII, 2.
26. Ibid., XII, 5.
27. Ibid., X, 12.
28. Ibid., XVIII, 6.
29. Ibid., VII, 29.
30. Ibid., XII, 1.
31. Ibid., VIII, 7.
32. Ibid., XII, 19.
33. Ibid., VIII, 12.
34. Ibid., XII, 17.
35. Ibid., XIII, 6.
36. Ibid., XII, 7.
37. Ibid., XV, 35.
38. Ibid., I, 2.
39. Ibid., IV, 18.
40. Ibid., IV, 18.
41. Mencius VI A:11.
42. Ibid., IV A:10.
43. Wing-tsit Chang, "Evolution of . . . Jen," p. 302.
44. Mencius I A:7.
45. Ibid., VII B:16.
46. Ibid., II A:6.
47. Ibid., VI A:6, II A:6.
48. Ibid., II A: 6.
49. Ibid., I A:7.
 50. Ibid., VII B:1.
51. Ibid., V A:5.
52. Ibid., I B:7.
53. Ibid., IV A:9.
54. Ibid., IV A:3.
55. Ibid., IV A:15.
56. Ibid., VII A:1.
57. The Doctrine of the Mean, ch. 20.
58. The Great Learning, trans. by Wing-tsit Chan.
59. Wing-tsit Chan, Source Book, pp. 499-500.
60. Ibid., "Evolution of . . . Jen," p. 316.
61. Source Book, p. 642.
62 Chu Hsi, "Treatise on Jen," in Wing-tsit Chan, Source Book, p. 593.
63. Ibid., p. 595.
64. Wang Yang-ming, "Inquiry on the Great Learning," in Instructions
for Practical Living, trans. by Wing-tsit Chan (New York: Columbia, 1963), p. 272.
65. Ibid., sec. 93.
66. Wing-tsit Chan, "Evolution of . . . Jen," p. 309.
67. Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1971).
68. Jürgen Habermas, Towards a Rational Society (Boston: Beacon Press,
1970), pp. 92-94.
69. Thomas McCarthy, The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1978), p. 88.
70. Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, p. 313.
71. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Crossroad, 1982).
72. Jürgen Habermas, "A Review of Gadamer’s Truth and Method," in Fred
R. Dallmayr and Thomas McCarthy (eds.), Understanding and Social Inquiry (South
Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame, 1977), p. 365.
73. Ibid., pp. 358, 361.
74. Lynn Pann, "Playing the Identity Card," Far Eastern Economic
Review (February 8, 1989), p. 31.
75. Thomas McCarthy, op. cit., p. 313.
76. Cf. Tran van Doan, "Confucius and Habermas on Politics," The Asian
Journal of Philosophy, 1 (1987), 101-130.
77. Max Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-formal Ethics of Values,
trans. by Manfred Frings and Roger L. Funk (Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 1973), pp. 476-501.
****
http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-1/chapter_xv.htm
CHAPTER XV
THE CONCEPT OF AN ECO-ETHICS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF MORAL THOUGHT
TOMONOBU IMAMICHI
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NOTION OF VIRTUE
Semantic Transposition
The history of moral philosophy is the history of the development of virtue
through a series of dramatic changes. "Virtue" derives from the Latin word
"virtus," which means "to be strong". It suggests the ideal situation of the male
as posssessing the strength to combat uncivilized enemies in defense of his family
or society. This original sense of the word did not express a transexual moral
quality or general human virtue. In the course of time, however, with the
development of human culture and changes in the environment the daily physical
struggle for which virile and even savage strength was needed become no longer
necessary. Thus, the ideal situation of being human changed into today's
transsexual notion of virtue.
This semantic transposition of the moral concept is clearly manifest regarding the
Greek word areté, virtue in classical times meant virtue. In the text of Homer
this meant only a military strength for battle. From the time of the tragic poets
to that of the classical philosophers, however, the semantic sense of areté
changed. In uncivilized times persons needed physical strength to fight for the
protection of the community. Bodily strength was important, admired and aspired to
as the ideal; physical force was an ethical virtue. By the time of Socrates,
however, virtue no longer had a functional sense, but had developed a more
spiritual or moral meaning.
The concept andreía, which long had meant courage or audacity, is an almost
parallel case. This notion derived from the word aner in the sense of a virile
male and had the same meaning as virtue. In the classical Platonic texts, however,
it signified no longer only strength for battle against the enemy, but also human
courage in general. Andreia as spiritual audacity or bravery thus became
established in moral philosophy through the creativity of Socrates.
In Chinese culture, too, one finds a parallel phenomenon regarding the notion of
audacity (bravery or boldness). In uncivilized times when men needed physical
strength for battle this effort was considered a moral virtue. Emphasis upon being
strong which was expressed by the addition of the sign ( ) to the ideogram for man
( ) to signify a developed strength so that the ideogram ( ) meant audacity as
andreía or virtue. Through the creativity of Confucius (552-479 B.C.) that notion
of virility was deepened morally to become an interior force correlative to the
virtue of responsibility which appears in the Lun-yu (dialogue between Confucius
and his disciples) 1.1.14, "when one sees his responsibility and does not act
responsibly he lacks andreía (audacity)." Boldness as andreia or virtue in
Confucius also changed from a masculine to a transexual or general human virtue in
a manner parallel to that of Socrates. Both were sensitive to changes in the human
social environment from a village situated in nature to a cultured city, and this
provided the basic motivation for their projects of ethical renewal.
Objective Development
Beyond the semantic transposition of virtue, its sociological renovation was
taking place on the phenomenal level. For example, loyalty as fidelity of the
nation to the king and of the citizenry to the city differ in their objects, but
are entirely identical in their moral essence as fidelity. This transposition in
the object of the virtue of fidelity constitutes a new discovery in moral virtue.
Cicero in antiquity or Mencius in the classical Chinese texts perhaps first
presented civic virtue as a new form of the fundamental virtue of fidelity.
The above two types of changes, namely of virtue, namely of virtue from a physical
to a spirital meaning and of loyalty from allegiance to a king to concern for a
city, are not identical. The first is a semantic universalization of moral
meaning, whereas the second is a specific determination in the object of a
fundamental virtue. In both cases the renewal of virtue was carried out by
philosophers sensitive to an ethical change; the theoretical clarification of such
changes always has been one of the duties of philosophers.
Ethical crises are signs of critical points in human history. In our epoch the
environment is structured not solely by geography and human culture, but also by a
universal scientific technology; this calls for a further development of moral
philosophy for which the two above-mentioned factors, namely, semantic
transposition and the objective modification, do not seem to suffice. A
technological society so different from the past requires that we show that there
is such a thing as the radical innovation of a virtue entirely unknown in the
past.
Moral Innovation as Discovery of New Virtue
The history of humanity contains one not merely renewal as semantic transposition
and objective modification, but also the invention of radically new virtue
absolutely unknown in the past. One example is the virtue of tapeinophrosyné,
which literally is the attitude of the beggar or mendiant, namely, modesty. The
word in question is not found in classical Greek, but was constructed by a
Christian in the second part of the first century where it appears first of all in
the Didache and the letter to the Ephesians. Totally unknown in Western antiquity,
this virtue of modesty undoubtedly found its origin in the precept of Christ:
"With perfect humility . . . bearing with one another lovingly" (Eph. 4:2).
The mendiant as symbol of virtue is an invention of Christ. As the truly poor
mendiant extends his or her hands for alms and accepts modestly whatever is given,
the one whose heart is poor, like the beggar, extends his or her hand to God in
order modestly to accept whatever difficult destiny is given. For such a person
there is no discontent, grief or dissatisfaction. As a lessening of one's personal
demands, modesty was unknown as a moral virtue to classical Western philosophers.
Indeed Socrates felt at home at the table of Plytaneion; according to Aristotle
megalopsychia as self-aggrandizement, the antithesis of tapeinophrosyne, and the
pride of self-love were the virtues of a citizen of the city. Thus, at least once
in human history there has beem discovered a new virtue which contradicted earlier
axiology; modesty as tapeinophrosyne symbolizes of the possibility of moral
discovery. This third type of moral renewal, namely, the creative discovery of
moral virtue, is our moral task in these difficult times.
But is it possible to invent a virtue in a modern intensively developed society?
This can be answered affirmatively by showing the historical fact of the invention
in modern times of the virtue of responsibility--a neologism in the context of
18th century social contact theories. As I have shown in Betrachtungen über des
Eine (1968) and Studia Comparata de Aesthetica (1976), that term is not found in
any classical Greek or Latin text of antiquity or the Middle Ages; but appears
first in French in 1787 in places where the English word "responsibility" was
used. Its content, however, was not always precise. In John Stuart Mill, for
example, responsibility signified accountability understood as a justification or
apology for one's self. In German the corresponding term, Verantwortlichkeit,
appeared for the first time at the end of the 19th century. As the virtue of
responsibility is essential to a contractual society it was invented only in
modern times.
The historical fact of the invention of a new virtue in modern times can be
established then, and the history of philosophic reflection in morals is the
history of the three types of innovation of virtue: (1) the semantic transposition
of traditional virtue, (2) the objective modification of traditional virtue, and
(3) the invention of new virtue.
THE PRACTICAL SYLLOGISM: A SEMANTIC TRANSPOSITION OF TRADITIONAL VIRTUE
In response to the present crisis of morals it is necessary to develop an
appropriate ethic for our technological society. This is not a sociological
compromise with technology or a psychological accommodation to our situation as a
modern society, but a development of the moral horizons of humanity. Sociological
compromise and psychological accommodations remain on the animal level; ethics as
the morals of humanity is the self-establishment of the human spirit as conscious
of its duty before the moral dilemmas of a technological society. We shall
consider this development of ethics in relation to the three types of innovation
of virtue.
It is necessary to distinguish act from action: action is the physical movement of
a person without regard to their human interiority; act is action in view of a
personal decision made from within. For example: A runs towards a station at the
speed of 13 seconds per one-hundred meters; B and C also run towards the same
station at the rate of 13 seconds per hundred meters. Thus the action of A, B and
C are the same. However, A is fleeing prison, B pursues A in order to arrest him,
and C follows in order to impede B. In these circumstances although the actions
are parallel, the acts differ entirely one from another: that of A is resistance
against militarism, that of B is obedience to the system, while that of C is
friendship for A. Despite the identity of the actions as physical movements, the
human acts as personal decisions and interior practical thoughts differ one from
another. Whether theoretical or practical, conscious or not, however, human
thought must be structured logically because, as decisive, an act is not a mere
reaction bereft of thought.
As the structure of human thought is a syllogism, there must be a practical
syllogism for decisive practical thought. The classical formulation of this
practical syllogism is found in Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics:
A) A is desirable
But p, q, r and s realize the A desired.
Therefore, for some reason, I choose p as the means to achieve the A desired.
In this practical syllogism the minor is the horizon of the freedom of choice, the
object of which is a means to achieve the end or goal; thus, the end as ideal is
prior to the choice of an effective means. This primacy of finality or goal
orientation has made possible rapid progress of the technology of these means.
Now, however, the effectiveness of the means, has taken a qualitative leap as the
technical world has moved from heteronomous instruments to autonomous technology.
As power now assumes an absolute primacy over the goal, and means over end, in the
realm of all human acts the structure of the classical practical syllogism becomes
problematic. Power in the form of systemic, atomic and electro-magnetic energy, or
capital in the economic order, invert the order of premises of the practical
syllogism in the following manner:
(B) We have means P.
But, P can realize a, b, c and d as goals.
Therefore we choose A, for some reason, as the
goal of these acquired means.
The minor remains the horizon of our freedom of choice: its object, however, is
not the means but the goal to be realized. Further, the goal in question is not a
transcendent ideal--an end which the human spirit spontaneously desires--but only
the natural outcome of technological power. Thus, the means controls the ends by
determining which end will be realized. Technological power as means assumes
priority over the end which becomes one of its consequences. Though the human
spirit chooses one of the outcomes of that technological power, the choice no
longer reflects spontaneous desire.
This control by technological power considerably influences the problems of modern
ethics. First of all, there is a change of grammatical subject between Aristotle's
practical syllogisms and that of our technological age which substitutes the
subject "we" for Aristotle's "I." This reflects a transposition of the earlier
ethics of the individual into one of committee. In our technological society there
remains a moral dimension in which the Aristotelian practical syllogism of the
individual is necessary, but at the level of public interaction the individual is
only a small part of large technologically organized whole which only committees
acting in terms of "we" can manage effectively.
Thus a semantic transposition of the virtue of responsibility takes place, from
personal responsibility to that of a committee or of solidarity. Because
responsibility is grounded ontologically in the person it should be especially
individual, but in technical interaction responsible decisions are made by
committees because technical power has become a public or common good. Hence,
there is need to develop an ethic of solidarity or of committee for the virtue of
responsibility. For example, when a person resigns from a committee which does not
work well he or she may be psychologically purified, but such a solution remains
on the level of personal responsibility. It is necessary to discover how to
integrate this personal morality into the new social reality by a semantic
transposition of the virtue of responsibility from that of an the individual to
that of the committee or of solidarity. This is not a sociological or political
science problem; it is one of eco-ethics.
Information and Communication
as Objective Modifications of Values
The major of the contemporary practical syllogism is not a statement of a desired
end, but the confirmation of technological power as a gigantic means which can
serve for or against humanity. That the human spirit must accept the evident
reality of this power as the situation of its actions means that the technological
complex now is our environment. When this had been solely nature, prior to moral
acts one needed only common information and good sense--for example, about which
mushrooms are poisonous and which are edible, or about the power of water, fire,
wind, etc. Now that our modern environment is no longer solely one of nature but
also of technical interaction, however, we must obtain at least enough information
to be able to make sense of it, e.g., some basic knowledge of electricity, bio-
chemistry, bio-technology and atomic physics. As sciences in their own domain
these are not easy, but education in science should not be directed only towards
the preparation of future specialists. Everyone needs at least basic scientific
information regarding such basic aspects of our environment, for just as the study
of classics is necessary for culture, the study of technology and scientific
information is necessary for modern civilization. Similarly, just as some
information and interpretation of the nation's history is a duty and hence a
social virtue of the cultivated citizen, today an amateur's ordinary knowledge of
technology also is a duty and thus a social virtue.
To climb a tree or swim in water are sports with a touch of gymnastics; though not
specifically ethical they enable one to aid a drowning person or one who wants to
pick fruit: strength and gymnastic capabilities serve the ethical by making it
active. This approximates an ethical virtue or at least can be transformed into
ethical virtue. In a parallel manner in a technological society driving a car,
steering a boat and managing a computer might be called gymnomechanics for they
enable one to help many people. In effect, learning at least one machine
technology in the modern world has become an ethical virtue.
Information supposes communication which in specific domains entails the
abbreviation of terminology and thus the use of jargon. This results in mutual
alienation between specialists in different public domains. Naturally specialists
must use scientific and technological abbreviations not mastered by the general
public. For interdisciplinary exchange of exact information some control of jargon
is a professional virtue.
Further, for linguistic information in a technological world a new intellectual
virtue is required of every citizen, namely, the acquisition of an appropriate
language. Modern technology has so advanced the possibility of international
travel and correspondence that as a technological unit today's society is
characterized by mobility and communication; it constitutes a vast meeting place
for the whole world, either by chance or by necessity. Because to communicate
effectively with others one needs to know at least one foreign language, the
atmosphere of the contemporary technological unity is entirely bilingual. This
does not imply a disregard of the capacity to read texts in the esoteric language
of the elite of one's society, but the need to speak effectively in today's mobile
world means that learning a foreign language is a virtue for international
friendship.
Tolerance: An Objective Modification
of the Traditional Virtue
Having become a technopolis, the megalopolis is now one of the most important
bases of international transportation and great cities have become meeting places
for people of all nationalities. Their meeting is not only temporary, as with
tourism, but also permanent because the megalopolis is able to provide job
opportunities for foreigners due to the new primacy of sign over language and of
universal technology over historical specificity. This means that the person in
the technopolis as a factor in the technological effort can obtain citizenship in
the megalopolis. For this only an ability for mechanical work is required; it does
not include one's religious or cultural outlook.
Tolerance as generosity of thought now becomes the first condition of such
coexistence. Whereas the classical virtue of tolerance meant patience with another
person who caused embarrassment, in our technological society tolerance implies
the generosity to allow for the validity of other ideas or religious systems. In a
technological age public professional interaction requires neutrality of thought
for effective collaboration and political coexistence. As an administrative
attitude neutrality differs from tolerance which is an ethical virtue; but
neutrality in the professional sphere is implied and included within the ethical
virtue of tolerance. Note that this objective modification of the virtue of
tolerance, from patience in regard to other persons' defective acts to permission
of different types of activity, is an objective modification of virtue in our
technological society.
Progressively modern technology so expands the impact of machine efficiency that
daily appliances can be run by remote control. When a citizen of Tokyo can
telephone a person in Paris without difficulty they become technological
neighbors. This technological relationship, however, is entirely different from
classical relations in which neighbors are spatially close to one another, speak
face-to-face, are mutually visible and limited in number. In modern technological
structures one interacts with an unlimited number of persons while all remain
mutually invisible. Due to distance one does not see directly the situation of
one's indetermined and unknown interlocutors, and under cover of the technological
apparatus one can forget shame and embarrassment. At midnight by telephone one can
more easily engage an unknown person in a distant city than knock at the door of
one's neighbor. Willingness to commit massive homicide by a bomb is made possible
by the technological means which enable one to ignore those whom one attacks. One
would have to imagine the suffering of unknown, undetermined and distant people in
order to evoke the direct sympathy involved in a face-to-face meeting. To render
moral our actions in technological structures it is necessary to cultivate the
imagination through aesthetic activity in art, the learning of which becomes a
propedeutic for eco-ethics in a technological civilization: aesthetics has become
a necessary discipline for morality.
In any case, the content of the virtue of love of neighbor has been modified
effectively through contemporary technological structures which free one's outlook
on love of neighbor from the limited surroundings of one's residence, opening it
to the vast horizon of humanity, now and in coming generations. This, too, is an
objective modification of virtue.
The Invention of New Virtues
First, in a technological context any delay through defects or errors in the
operation of a machine becomes important inasmuch as such work requires
punctuality. In the past this was not numbered among the virtues, but regarded as
the sign of a narrow spirit, whereas generosity which did not attend to minor
matters was a sign of the greatness of the person. While generosity remains one of
the most important virtues, in the present technological society punctuality has
become a new virtue.
Second, as the technological horizon is also international, alongside national
loyalty one must be international and world brotherhood has replaced feudal
loyalties.
Third, the need to limit population makes control of birth and Malthusianism
necessary, and there are many new means for this. Sexual relations without
generation are counseled so universally in married life that in this perspective
the principle goal of sexual relations could become, not the birth of an infant,
but sexual pleasure. As this would raise a question regarding restriction of
sexual relations to marriage, an eco-ethics must discuss the problem of sexuality.
Scriptures of the traditional religions concerned with the well-being of humanity
which have viewed marriage as engendering many children begin to be out of harmony
with ethical opinion confronting the present crisis of humanity. Such eco-ethical
problems must be thought through for the future of humanity.
Finally, technology has transformed men into bio-mechanisms for whom death becomes
ever less necessary. Must one always extend one's life despite the misgivings of
one's conscience in view of degenerating health? Can one not say that there is
reason to die as well as to live? Thus, euthanasia becomes a topic for
contemporary ethics.
The research atmosphere for such an eco-ethics must be interdisciplinary. Eco-
ethics itself, however, is not a collective study, but must be constructed and
systematized by each person thinking philosophically. It is, nevertheless, a
discipline for humanity in its technological context.
Broadening the Horizons of Moral Thought
We have cited the Lun-yu text of Confucius on the dynamic of the notion of virtue
and used the word "responsibility." But that is a modernized interpretation of the
ancient Chinese text, for the word "responsibility" originated in the modern
European tradition. This suggests the need to broaden one's historical and
philosophical horizon in order to think, not at a provincial level, but at the
level of humanism.
In the orient where society traditionally does not sufficiently appreciate the
individual and overestimates inter-personal relations the outlook of traditional
virtue differs from the West. In Confucius's ethical system charity and
responsibility are the most important virtues. The Chinese word to which we apply
the term "responsibility," Y, signifies idiogramatically the situation in which I
take on my shoulders the lamb for sacrifice. That is to say, I must be responsible
vertically to God and horizontally to members of my society. Y expresses
responsibility as correspondence between two things, as for example between a
signification and its word.
This broadened reflection on the virtue of responsibility teaches us that
innovations in virtue within a philosophic tradition is not new within the
extended context of human culture. For the innovation in moral virtue required for
spiritual progress a comparative study of philosophy is very important. It becomes
a phase of eco-ethics as the human environment broadens into a generalized
technological world and life in society comes to depend upon world information.
This change of human environment demands international communication between
different civilizations and thus knowledge of the ethics of other civilizations,
not only in order to listen to others, but to be integrated with them.
Finally, ethical innovation is not limited to the realm of virtue, but extends
also to the ontology of human acts. Without the concepts of person and personality
one cannot speak in a sufficiently philosophical manner of freedom or
responsibility. In this sense Christianity has endowed humanity with a great
ethical innovation. In the East where the Christian tradition is not truly rooted,
the concept of responsibility still has not affected the notion of the person. At
the end of the 17th century Wang Yang Min taught the notion Rientse, which meant
conscience as the subject of knowledge (Gewissen); this perhaps is close to the
notion of person. But in the East, as the ontological notion of person has not
been distinguished from the historical notion of personality, the ontological
notion of the dignity of the individual has remained confused with personal honor
as an historical concern.
University of Tokyo
Tokyo, Japan
****
http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-11/chapter_xvi.htm
CHAPTER XVI
CONFUCIAN HARMONY AND
TECHNICAL PROGRESS:
Suggestions from Kant
GEORGE F. McLEAN
In 1919 it was suggested -- indeed vehemently declared -- that in order for Mr.
Science and Mr. Democracy to be introduced to the history of China it would be
necessary for Confucius to bow out. This paper explores the opposite thesis,
namely, that in order for Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy to be introduced,
Confucius is needed as their host.
In the context of the search for modernization and for appropriate standing among
the nations of the world there seems to be not doubt that science is needed.
Certainly, necessary and universal laws have made it possible to interpret and
predict natural forces, and the development of an objective and mathematical
spirit has enabled humankind to manage the forces of nature. Together these have
provided the ability to project and realize the great accomplishments needed in
order to support the quantity and enhance the quality of human life -- and, by
implication, that of nature as a whole.
Much -- very much -- has been accomplished in this direction; but there are
reasons to fear that these accomplishments have been so single-minded as to place
in question the broader context of human life, its meaning and dignity.
THE PROBLEM
In the history of philosophy brilliant new creative openings often degenerate into
reductivist efforts to absorb all other meaning. This perverse dynamism is found
in no less central a personage than Plato who inverted Parmenides’ relation of
thought to being into a reduction of reality to what was clear to the human mind.
Thus, he invited the mind to soar, but where it met his limits -- as in taking
account of concrete realities and the exercise of human freedom -- he generated
the classic blueprint for a suppressive communal state.
Such temptations of all-controlling reason are characteristic as well of modern
times, beginning from Descartes’ requirements of clarity and distinctness for the
work of reason. The effect in his own philosophy was to split the human person
between the extended substance or body and the nonextended substance or spirit.
Much as he tried for a unity of these in the human person, this could not be done
in the clear and distinct terms he required. As a result philosophers and then
whole cultures proceeded according to either body or spirit, and modern thought
polarized between the atomism of discrete sensations and the ever greater unities
perceived by spirit.
What is particularly frightening is the way in which theoretical philosophical
experiments in either of these isolates were carried out by a fairly mechanical
pattern of reason and then translated into public policy. It is fine for a thinker
to give free range to the constructive possibilities of his or her mind by saying
with Hobbes: let’s suppose that all are isolated singles in search of survival and
then see what compromises and what rules will make survival possible. Over time we
may have become so accustomed to that game that we have forgotten Hobbes’s
identification of the wolflike basic instincts by which it is played, but we
should listen to others from all parts of the Southern hemisphere when they
perceive the resulting system as predatory, brutish and mean.
Similarly, it could be helpful for a thinker to hypothesize that all is matter and
then see how its laws can shed light on the process of human history. But when
this was done by Marx and Lenin society began to repress the life of the spirit
and term irrational everything except scientific historicism; the freedom of
individuals and of peoples was suppressed and creativity died.
Both are parallel cases of theoretical axioms becoming metaphysical totalities
even while, or perhaps especially due to, denying such a thing as metaphysics. It
is not surprising that the result for this century was a bipolar world armed to
the hilt and subsisting by a reign of mutual terror. What is surprising is that
the internal collapse of Eastern Europe in 1989 should have given popular
credibility to the notion that the parallel road taken by the other partner,
namely, the West, can be followed now without fear -- that the wolf has been
transformed into a lamb for lack of a mirror in which to observe the effects of
its own root problems.
This suggests that it is necessary to look for additional dimensions of science
beyond reductive analysis and universal and necessary laws. While there is much to
be discovered here which will be, and indeed has been, very helpful, it is
important to recognize not only what is common but what is unique and distinctive
in reality. Though true that without the necessary and the universal life would be
chaotic, it is no less true that without the unique and different there would be
neither life nor progress: all would be static, rather than emergent.
In this world logos must be realized in the concrete and unique. This points to
events with their radical novelty. In human life this is the reality of promise
and creativity, of uniqueness and freedom, of sharing and love. Surprisingly
perhaps, it may be Confucius who can help to see how these can be not only
juxtaposed to science and its offspring, technology, but enable technology to be
integrated into Chinese culture and receive thereby the full force of this
culture’s creative power. For Confucius to help it is necessary that technology
and culture not be placed on the same level or considered as alternatives one to
the other. To see how they can be positively related, indeed how Confucius is
needed for the introduction of science and the technological transformation of
China, the threefold structure of Kant’s critiques can be instructive
KANT’S RESPONSE
The Critique of Pure Reason
Kant provides an example of the requirement to move beyond an atomic reductionism
in the direction of synthesis in his first and third critiques. In the former his
problem is how, in the face of Hume’s empiricism science could have universal and
necessary laws.
It is unfortunate that the range of Kant’s work has been so little appreciated.
Until recently, the rationalist impact of Descartes directed almost exclusive
attention to the first of Kant’s critiques, The Critique of Pure Reason, which
concerned the conditions of possibility of the physical sciences. Its rejection of
metaphysics as a science was warmly greeted in materialist, empiricist and
positivist circles as a dispensation from the need for any search beyond what was
reductively sensible and phenomenal in the sense of being inherently spatial
and/or temporal.
Kant himself, however, quite insisted upon going further. If the terms of the
sciences were inherently phenomenal, then his justifi-cation of the sciences was
precisely to identify and to justify, through metaphysical and transcendental
deductions respectively, the sets of categories which enable the phenomenal world
to have intelligibility and scientific meaning. Since sense experience is always
limited and partial, the universality and necessity of the laws of science must
come from the human mind. Such a priori categories belong properly to the subject
inasmuch as it is not material.
We are here at the essential turning point for the modern mind, where Kant takes a
definitive step in identifying the subject as more than a wayfarer in a given
world to which one can but react. He shows rather that the subject is an active
force engaged in the creation even of the empirical world in which one lives. The
meaning or intelligible order of things is due not only to their creation
according to a divine intellect, but also to the work of the human intellect and
its categories. If, however, human beings are to have such a central role in the
constitution of their world, then certain elements will be required, and this
requirement itself will be their justification.
First, there must be an imagination which can bring together the flow of disparate
sensations. This plays a reproductive role which consists in the empirical and
psychological activity by which it reproduces within the mind the amorphous data
received from without, according to the forms of space and time. This merely
reproductive role is by no means sufficient, however, for since the received data
is amorphous, any mere reproduction would lack coherence and generate a chaotic
world: it would be "a blind play of representations less even than a dream".1
Hence, the imagination must have also a productive dimension which enables the
multiple empirical intuitions to achieve some unity. This is ruled by "the
principle of the unity of apperception" (understanding or intellection), namely,
"that all appearances without exception, must so enter the mind or be apprehended,
that they conform to the unity of apperception."2 This is done according to the
abstract categories and concepts of the intellect, such as cause, substance and
the like, which rule the work of the imagination at this level in accord with the
principle of the unity of apperception.
Second, this process of association must have some foundation in order that the
multiple sensations be related or even relatable one to another and, hence, enter
into the same unity of apperception. There must be some objective affinity of the
multiple found in past experience -- an "affinity of appearances" -- in order for
the reproductive or associative work of the imagination to be possible. However,
this unity does not exist, as such, in past experiences. Rather, the unitive rule
or principle of the reproductive activity of the imagination is its reproductive
or transcendental work as "a spontaneous faculty not dependent upon empirical laws
but rather constitutive of them and, hence, constitutive of empirical objects."3
That is, though the unity is not in the disparate phenomena, nevertheless they can
be brought together by the imagination to form a unity only in certain particular
manners, if they are to be informed by the categories of the intellect.
Kant illustrates this by comparing the examples of perceiving a house and
perceiving a boat receding downstream.4 The parts of the house can be intuited
successively in any order (door-roof-stairs or stairs-door-roof), but my judgment
must be of the house as having all of its parts simultaneously. Similarly, the
boat is intuited successively as moving downstream. However, though I must judge
its actual motion in that order of succession, I could imagine the contrary.
Hence, the imagination, in bringing together the many intuitions goes beyond the
simple order of appearances and unifies phenomenal objects in an order to which
concepts can be applied. "Objectivity is a product of cognition, not of
apprehension,"5 for, though we can apprehend appearances in any sequence, they can
be unified and, hence, thought only in certain orders as ruled by the categories
of the mind.
In sum, it is the task of the reproductive imagination to bring together the
multiple elements of sense intuition in a unity or order capable of being informed
by concepts or categories of the intellect with a view to making a judgment. On
the part of the subject, the imagination here is active, authentically one’s own
and creative. Ultimately, however, its work is not free, but necessitated by the
categories or concepts as integral to the work of sciences which are characterized
by necessity and universality.
The Critique of Practical Reason
In his second Critique, that of practical reason Kant proceeded to recognize and
provide a separate basis for human freedom. But how realistic is this talk about
freedom? Do we really have the choice of which so much is said in the West? On the
one hand, we are structured in a set of circumstances which circumscribe, develop
and direct our actions. This is the actual experience of people which Marx and
Hegel articulate when they note the importance of knowledge of the underlying
pattern of necessity and make freedom consist in conforming thereto.
On the other hand, we learn also from our experience that we do have a special
responsibility in this world to work with the circumstances of nature, to harness
and channel these forces toward greater harmony and human goals. A flood which
kills thousands is not an occasion for murdering more, but for mobilizing to
protect as many as possible, for determining what flood control projects need to
be instituted for the future, and even for learning how to so construct them so
that they also can generate electricity for power and irrigation for crops. All of
this is properly the work of the human spirit which emerges therein. Similarly, in
facing a trying day, I eat a larger breakfast rather than cut out part of my
schedule; instead of ignoring the circumstances and laws of my physical being, I
coordinate these and direct them for my human purposes.
This much can be said by pragmatism. But it leaves unclear whether humans remain
merely instruments of physical progress and, hence, whether their powers remain a
function of matter. This is where Kant takes a decisive step in his second
Critique.
For if the above were the total explanation of science one might claim to explain
necessary and universal laws, but this would not explain its creative dimension.
On the contrary, human creativity would be suppressed in the search for the laws
of necessity: freedom would be unwelcome, initiative would be suppressed and
stagnation would follow.
The Critique of Aesthetic Judgment
It was well along in the so-called "critical decade’ in which Kant wrote his three
critiques, and only after writing the first two, that Kant was in position to
discover -- indeed, was forced to recognize -- what at the beginning of that
decade he had not thought possible. Whereas he had once looked upon the human
spirit only in order to uncover the universal and necessary laws at work therein,
and considered the imagination only instrumentally as the power for reproducing in
an ordered manner what was perceived, he now became aware of a new, productive,
indeed creative function of the imagination.
It is in the third Critique of the Faculty of Judgment that Kant provides the
needed context for such uniqueness and creativity,6 and thus approaches the
aesthetic sensibility of Confucius in articulating the cosmic significance of
freedom. Kant is intent not merely upon uncovering the fact of freedom, as in his
second critique of practical reason, but upon protecting and promoting it. He
faces squarely modern man’s most urgent question: how can this newly uncovered
freedom survive when confronted with the necessity and universality of the realm
of science as understood in his first Critique of Pure Reason? Will the scientific
interpretation of nature restrict freedom to the inner realm of each person’s
heart, where it is reduced at best to good intentions or to feelings towards
others?
When we attempt to act in this world or to reach out to others, must all our
categories be universal and hence insensitive to that which marks others as unique
and personal? Must they be necessary, and, hence, leave no room for creative
freedom, which would be entrapped and then entombed in the human mind? If so, then
public life can be only impersonal, necessitated, repetitive and stagnant. Must
the human spirit be reduced to the sterile content of empirical facts or to the
necessitated modes of scientific laws? If so, then philosophers cannot escape
forcing upon wisdom a suicidal choice between either being traffic directors in
the jungle of unfettered competition or being tragically complicit in setting a
predetermined order for the human spirit. Freedom would, indeed, have been killed;
it would pulse no more as the heart of humankind.
Before these alternatives, Kant’s answer is a resounding No! Taking as his basis
the reality of freedom -- so passionately and often tragically affirmed in our
lifetime by such revered figures as Ghandi and Martin Luther King -- Kant
proceeded to develop his third Critique of the Faculty of Judgment as a context
within which freedom and scientific necessity could coexist, indeed, in which
necessity would be the support and instrument of freedom. Recently, this has
become more manifest as human sensibilities have opened to the significance of
culture and to awareness that being itself is emergent in time through the human
spirit.
To provide for this context, Kant found it necessary to distinguish two issues as
reflected in the two parts of his third Critique. In the "Critique of Teleological
Judgment",7 he acknowledges that nature and all reality must be teleological. For
if there is to be room for human freedom in a cosmos in which man can make use of
necessary laws, if science is to contribute to the exercise of human freedom, then
nature too must be directed toward a transcendent goal; it must manifest
throughout a teleology within which free human purpose can be integrated. In these
terms, nature, even in its necessary and universal laws, is no longer alien to
freedom, but expresses divine freedom and is conciliable with human freedom. The
structure of his first Critique will not allow Kant to affirm the metaphysical
character of the teleology or its absolute and self-sufficient basis, but he
recognizes that we must proceed "as if" all reality is teleological precisely
because of the undeniable reality of human freedom in an ordered universe.
If, however, in principle teleology provides the needed space, there remains a
second issue regarding how freedom is exercised, namely, what mediates it to the
necessary and universal laws of science? This is the task of his "Critique of the
Aesthetic Judgment",8 and it is here that the imagination reemerges to play its
key integrating role in human life. From the point of view of the human person,
the task is to explain how one can live in freedom with nature for which the first
critique had discovered only universal and necessary laws. How can a free person
relate to an order of nature and to structures of society in a way that is neither
necessitated nor necessitating?
There is something similar here to the Critique of Pure Reason. In both, the work
of the imagination in assembling the phenomena is not simply to register, but to
produce the objective order. As in the first critique, the approach is not from a
set of a priori principles which are clear all by themselves and used in order to
bind the multiple phenomena into a unity. Rather, under the rule of unity, the
imagination orders and reorders the multiple phenomena until they are ready to be
informed by a unifying principle whose appropriateness emerges from the reordering
carried out by the productive imagination.
In the first Critique, however, the productive work was done in relation to the
abstract and universal categories of the intellect and carried out under a law
which dictated that phenomena must form a unity. The Critique of Pure Reason saw
the work of the imagination in assembling the phenomena as not simply registering,
but producing the objective order. The approach was not from a priori principles
which are clear all by themselves and are used to bind the multiple phenomena into
a unity. Rather, in the first Critique, under the rule of unity the imagination
moves to order and reorder the multiple phenomena until they are ready to be
informed by a unifying principle on the part of the intellect, the appropriateness
of which emerges from the reordering carried out by the reproductive imagination.
Nevertheless, this reproductive work of the first Critique took place in relation
to the abstract and universal categories of the intellect and was carried out
under a law of unity which dictated that such phenomena as a house or a receding
boat must form a unity -- and which they could do only if assembled in a certain
order. Hence, although it was a human product, the objective order was universal
and necessary and the related sciences were valid both for all things and for all
people.9
Here in The Critique of the Aesthetic Judgment, the imagination has a similar task
of constructing the object, but not in a manner necessitated by universal
categories or concepts. In contrast, here in working toward an integrating unity,
the imagination is not confined by the necessitating structures of categories and
concepts, but ranges freely over the full sweep of reality in all its dimensions
to see whether and wherein relatedness and purposiveness or teleology can emerge
and the world and our personal and social life can achieve its meaning and value.
Hence, in standing before a work of nature or of art, the imagination might focus
upon light or form, sound or word, economic or interpersonal relations -- or,
indeed, upon any combination of these in a natural environment or a society,
whether encountered concretely or expressed in symbols.
Throughout all of this the ordering and reordering by the imagination can bring
about numberless unities. Unrestricted by any a priori categories, indeed it can
integrate necessary dialectical patterns within its own free and therefore
creative production, and scientific universals within its unique concrete
harmonies. This work is properly creative. More than merely evaluating all
according to a set pattern in one’s culture, it chooses the values and on that
basis orders reality. This is the very constitution of the culture itself.
It is the productive, rather than merely the reproductive, work of the human
person as living in his or her physical world. Here, I use the possessive form
advisedly. Without this capacity the human person would exist as another object in
the physical universe, not only subject to its laws but restricted and possessed
by them. He/she would be not a free citizen of the material world, but a mere
function or servant. In his third Critique Kant unfolds how one can truly be
master of his/her life in this world, not in an arbitrary and destructive manner,
but precisely as creative artists bringing being to new realization in ways which
make possible new growth in freedom.
In the third Critique, the productive imagination constructs a true unity by
bringing the elements into an authentic harmony. This cannot be identified through
reference to a category, because freedom then would be restricted within the laws
of necessity of the first Critique; rather, it must be recognizable by something
free. In order for the realm of human freedom to be extended to the whole of
reality, this harmony must be able to be appreciated not purely intellectually in
relation to a concept (for again we would be reduced to the universal and
necessary as in the first Critique), but aesthetically, by the pleasure or
displeasure of the free response it generates. It is our contemplation or
reflection upon this which shows whether a proper and authentic ordering has or
has not been achieved. This is not a concept,10 but the pleasure or displeasure,
the elation at the beautiful and sublime or the disgust at the ugly and revolting,
which flows from our contemplation or reflection.
CONFUCIAN HARMONY AND
THE DISTINCTIVELY CHINESE INTEGRATION
OF TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS
One could miss the integrating character of this pleasure or displeasure and its
related judgment of taste11 by looking at it ideologically, as simply a repetition
of past tastes in order to promote stability. Or one might see it reductively as a
merely interior and purely private matter at a level of consciousness available
only to an elite class and related only to an esoteric band of reality. That would
ignore the structure which Kant laid out at length in his first "Introduction" to
his third Critique12 which he conceived not as merely juxtaposed to the first two
Critiques of pure and practical reason, but as integrating both in a richer whole.
Developing the level of aesthetic sensitivity enables one to take into account
ever greater dimensions of reality and creativity and to imagine responses which
are more rich in purpose, more adapted to present circumstances and more creative
in promise for the future. This is manifest in a good leader such as a Churchill
or Roosevelt -- and, supereminently, in a Confucius or Christ. Their power to
mobilize a people lies especially in their rare ability to assess the overall
situation, to express it in a manner which rings true to the great variety of
persons, and, thereby, to evoke appropriate and varied responses from each
according to his or her capabilities. The danger is that the example of such
genius will be reduced to formulae, and thereby become an ideology that excludes
innovation. In reality, as personable, free and creative, and understood as the
work of aesthetic judgment, their example was inclusive in content and application
as well as in the new responses it continually evokes.
When aesthetic experiences are passed on as part of a tradition, gradually they
come to build a culture. Some thinkers, such as William James and Jürgen
Habermas,13 fearing that attending to these free creations of a cultural tradition
might distract from the concrete contemporary needs of the people, have urged a
turn rather to the social sciences for social analysis and critique as a means to
identify pragmatic responses. But these point back to the necessary laws of the
first Critique; in many countries now engaging in reforms, such past "scientific"
laws of history were found to have stifled creativity and paralyzed the populace.
Kant’s third Critique points in another direction. Though it integrates
scientifically universal and necessary social relations, it does not focus upon
them, nor does it focus directly upon the beauty or ugliness of concrete
relations, or even directly upon beauty or ugliness in themselves. Its focus is
rather upon our contemplation of the integrating images of these which we
imaginatively create, that is, our culture as manifesting the many facets of
beauty and ugliness, actual and potential. In turn, we evaluate these in terms of
the free and integrating response of pleasure or displeasure, the enjoyment or
revulsion they generate most deeply within our whole person.
Confucius probably would feel very comfortable with this if structured in terms of
an appreciation or feeling of harmony. In this way, he could see freedom itself at
the height of its sensibility, not merely as an instrument of a moral life, but as
serving through the imagination as a lens or means for presenting the richness of
reality in varied and intensified ways. Freedom, thus understood, is both
spectroscope and kaleidoscope of being. As spectroscope it unfolds the full range
of the possibilities of human freedom, so that all can be examined, evaluated and
admired. As kaleidoscope, it continually works out the endless combinations and
patterns of reality so that the beauty of each can be examined, reflected upon and
chosen when desired. Freely, purposively and creatively, imagination weaves
through reality, focusing now upon certain dimensions, now reversing its flow, now
making new connections and interrelations. In the process the creative human
freedom of a person or people manifests not only the scientific forms and
technological possibilities of the first critique and the potential forms of
social and democratic interrelations of the second critique, but their
interrelation in way that evoke our free response of love and admiration or
rejection in hate and disgust.
In this manner freedom becomes at once the creative source, the manifestation, the
evaluation and the arbiter of all that imaginatively we can propose. It is goal,
namely to realize life as rational and free in this world; it is creative source,
for with the imagination it unfolds the endless possibilities for human
expression; it is manifestation, because it presents these to our consciousness in
ways appropriate to our capabilities for knowledge of limited realities and
relates these to the circumstances of our life; it is criterion, because its
response manifests a possible mode of action to be variously desirable or not in
terms of a total personal response of pleasure or displeasure, enjoyment or
revulsion; and it is arbiter, because it provides the basis upon which our freedom
chooses to affirm or reject, realize or avoid this way of self-realization. In
this way, freedom emerges as the dynamic center of our human existence.
There is much in the above which evokes the deep Confucian sense of harmony and
the role of the gentleman in unfolding its implications for daily life. This
uncovers new significance in the thought of Confucius for the work of
implementing, in a mutually fruitful manner, Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy in our
times. Looking to the aesthetic sense of harmony as a context for uniting both
ancient capabilities in agriculture with new technology and industrialization and
for applying these to the work of building a democratic nation is a task, not only
for an isolated individual, but for an entire people. Over time, a people develops
its own specific sensibilities and through the ages forms a culture and a
tradition which, in turn, constitute the human capital for such a project. In this
sense, one can look to the Confucian cultural heritage for its aesthetic sense of
harmony as a way to carry forward technological development for the authentic
progress of the Chinese people in our day.
The Confucian sense of harmony is not a rationalist law whose unfolding would
suggest an attempt to read all in an a priori and necessitarian manner. Its sense
of life and progress is not that of a scientific view of history after the
dialectic of Hegel and Marx. Rather, Confucianism understands humans as bringing
their lives together in relation to other persons and in the concrete
circumstances of everyday life. In this sense, it is not massively programmatic in
the sense of a rationalist scientific theory of history. This may be very much to
the good, for it protects against efforts after the manner of an ideology to
define and delimit all beforehand -- which indeed surpasses human capacities.
Further, one must not underestimate the cumulative power which the Confucian sense
of harmony and resonance can have when it brings together creatively the many
persons with knowledge of their circumstances in an effort to provide for life in
its many modes. This extends from those farmers who know and love their land
intimately and are committed to its rich potentialities (and analogously for all
phases of productive economic life), to family members and villagers who love
their kin and neighbors, to citizens who are willing to work ardently for the
welfare of their people and nation. If the exercise of freedom is a concrete and
unique expression of the distinctive reality of its authors, then the task is not
how to define these by abstractive and universal laws which stifle personal
initiative, but how to enliven all persons actively to engage the new technology
and scientific structures in the multiple dimensions of their lives.
In this context, the philosophical importance of the Confucian attitude becomes
more evident. For if harmony and resonance enable a more adapted and fruitful mode
of realization for the human being, then the identity and truth, dynamism and
goodness of being are thereby made manifest and proclaimed. In this light, the
laws of nature and the technology they enable emerge, not as desiccated universals
best read negatively as prohibitions or intrusive machines, but as rich and
unfolding modes of being and actualization best read through an appreciation of
the concrete harmony and beauty of their active development. This, rather than the
details of etiquette, is the deeper Confucian sense of the gentleman and sage; it
can be grasped and exercised only with a corresponding aesthetic, rather than the
merely scientific or pragmatic sensibilities.
Nor is this beyond people’s experience. Few can carry out the precise process of
conceptualization and definition required for the technical dialectics of Platonic
and Aristotelian reasoning. But all share an overall sensibility to situations as
pleasing and attractive or as generating unease or even revulsion. Inevitably, in
earlier times, the aesthetic Confucian mode lacked the scientific precision which
is now available regarding surface characteristics of physical phenomena or the
technological prowess this makes available. But, in its sense of harmony, it
possessed the deep human sensibility and ability to take into account and
integrate all aspects of its object. This is essential for the contemporary
humanization of our technical capabilities for the physical and social
implementation of our world.
This is foundational for integrating with this scientific and technological age
the democratic practice and cultural traditions without which the creative life
atrophies and progress ceases and dies. A strong indication of the importance of
this, and of the fact that its principles are found in the Confucian tradition is
that without physical resources Japan has become so great a world productive and
economic power. If in China the problem is not with willingness to change and
initiative, but with how to harness the needed technology so that progress can be
not only rapid, but authentically Chinese, then the Confucian sense of aesthetic
harmony endows it with the crucial means for integrating and implementing the
needed technological means. It is with -- not without -- Confucius as host that
Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy can enter and truly help.
NOTES
1. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N.K. Smith (London: Macmillan,
1929), A 112; cf. A 121.
2. Ibid., A 121.
3. Donald W. Crawford, Kant’s Aesthetic Theory (Madison: University of Wisconsin,
1974), pp. 87-90.
4. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 192-93.
5. Crawford, pp. 83-84.
6. Cf. Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Crossroads, 1982), Part I,
pp. 1-2, pp. 39-73; and W. Crawford, espec. Ch. 4.
7. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. J.H. Bernard (New York: Hafner,
1968), pp. 205-339.
8. Ibid., pp. 37-200.
9. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N.K. Smith (London: Macmillan,
1929), A112, 121, 192-193. Crawford, pp. 83-84, 87-90.
10. See Kant’s development and solution to the autonomy of taste, Critique of
Judgment, nn. 57-58, pp. 182-192, where he treats the need for a concept;
Crawford, pp. 63-66.
11. See the paper of Wilhelm S. Wurzer "On the Art of Moral Imagination" in G.
McLean, ed., Moral Imagination and Charac-ter Development (Washington: The Council
for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1998) for an elaboration of the essential
notions of the beautiful, the sublime and taste in Kant’s aesthetic theory.
12. Immanuel Kant, First Introduction to the Critique of Judgment, trans. J. Haden
(New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965).
13. William James, Pragmatism (New York: Washington Square, 1963), Ch. I, pp. 3-
40. For notes on the critical hermeneutics of J. Habermas see G. McLean, "Cultural
Heritage, Social Critique and Future Construction" in Culture, Human Rights and
Peace in Central America, R. Molina, T. Readdy and G. McLean, eds. (Washington:
Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1988), Ch. I. Critical distance is
an essential element and requires analysis by the social sciences of the
historical social structures as a basis for liberation from determination and
dependence upon unjust interests. The concrete psycho- and socio-pathology
deriving from such dependencies and the corresponding steps toward liberation are
the subject of the chapters by J. Loiacono and H. Ferrand de Piazza in The Social
Context and Values: Perspectives of the Americas, G. McLean and O. Pegoraro, eds.
(Washington: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1988), Chs. III and
IV.
*****
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CHAPTER XVIII
THE CONFLICT OF VALUES:
The Contemporary
Transformation
of Values in China
CHEN GENFA
To a great extent, a change of mind is represented as a difference in ideas. But
for the direction of human life, values act as paradigms in the spiritual and
actual life of people, determine the goals of action, the end of life and the mode
of behavior of people. For this reason, any reform of society is concerned with a
reform of values.
However, a reform of values requires a division and reorganization in which
traditional values come into conflict with new ones. In China, the center of
traditional values is Confucianism, which is characterized by an emphasis upon
righteousness and a belittling of interests; in contrast, Western values emphasize
individuals and interests. Since the reform and opening of China these two values
have been in conflict.
Conflicts now emerge in Chinese values: between righteousness and interests,
between egoism and altruism, and between collectivism and individualism. All these
conflicts are manifest in the orientation of the values of human life; in the end
they influence moral ideas and modes of thought and behavior. When their influence
becomes too great the social structure changes and the individual must readjust
his or her place in society.
THE CONFLICT BETWEEN
RIGHTEOUSNESS AND INTERESTS
The conflict between righteousness and interests emerged long ago. Even in times
of extreme collectivism this conflict did not disappear completely, but continued
in hidden forms.
As early as before the Qing dynasty, Confucius said: "The gentleman understands
what is right, the cad understands what will pay." In the Chinese moral
dictionary, righteousness and interests constitute a pair of irreconcilable
contradictions. Some Chinese who maintain the doctrine of the mean are at a loss
as to what to do in confronting the choice between righteousness and interest,
because many see only two such kinds of people: the gentleman who emphasizes
righteousness and belittles interests and the cad who forgets righteousness when
he or she perceives interests. Therefore, when anyone made a choice between
righteousness and interests, one faced a dichotomous moral evaluation: either the
good name of the gentleman or the bad name of the cad. Such judgements about
righteousness and interests have been the subject of Chinese culture and the
backbone of the Chinese moral system.
It often asked why market economics has not developed in China for over two
thousands years. A simple and immediate answer is that the Confucianist values,
which held the central place in China and determined the Chinese national
character, emphasized righteousness and belittled interests. To some extent this
answer is reasonable, but it is unsatisfactory because as long as they did not
become an extreme monasticism Confucianist values would not hinder the development
of a Chinese market economy; on the contrary, they would promote standardization
and order. Although many Chinese persons like to connect the merchant with
treacherousness, whence appears the concept of the "treacherous merchant", there
exist maxims useful for a market economy such as "Good-naturedness leads to wealth
in business", "There still exists good will even when business is unsuccessful",
"Buying and selling at reasonable prices", etc. All these maxims manifest the
Confucian spirit and the principle of placing righteousness above interests.
In a broad sense, keeping one’s word, an important principle for the development
of a market economy, is part of Confucianist righteousness. Just as any game is
impossible without its rules, society would fall into disorder and disaster were
there not the principle of righteousness ruling one’s behavior in searching for
interests. In this sense, righteousness and interests can be unified. Because of
this some scholars consider Japanese capitalism to be Confucian.
But now, some younger Chinese experience the conflict between righteousness and
interests much more than in the past. On the one hand, the Confucian principle in
which their fathers believed has lost its authority. Some people are bent solely
on profit and see all social relations in terms of profit-making so that one
worries whether "China will become more capitalist than capitalism". At present,
there are no healthy values appropriate for the market economy in China; often it
is noted that some people are corrupt, steal and loot in self-interest. This
phenomena is not much more serious than in Western countries, but it lies heavily
upon the Chinese mind and society so that many feel distressed about these immoral
phenomena.
On the other hand, there still exists a moral mechanism which limits materialism
in China. It is characteristic of Chinese society that relations among people are
harmonized not by law, but by morality -- for which reason there were no police in
China for over two thousand years. The Chinese crowd around the scene of an
accident to judge between the right and wrong because they think of themselves as
moral observers and judges. Hence, the Chinese pay special attention to the
other’s evaluation of themselves. Although the force of moral evaluation is
decreasing and the force of law is increasing in Chinese social life, the value of
putting righteousness above interests still holds a central place in Chinese
society.
THE CONFLICT BETWEEN EGOISM AND ALTRUISM
In May 1980, the magazine Chinese Youth published a letter from a young man named
Pan Xiao: "The creative person is for oneself subjectively and for others
objectively. . . . Perhaps this is the law of human beings and of the evolution of
life."
Pan Xiao’s letter evoked great repercussions among the young and led to a
prolonged debate which centered on the problem of life values, especially the
proposition "to be for oneself subjectively and to be for others objectively."
This debate represents the conflict between two values faced by Chinese youth
after the reform and opening of China, namely, the conflict between egoism and
altruism. Although we may not be able to say whether such action is for ourselves
or for others, we find that there are two types of tendencies in the actual life
of the Chinese people. On the one hand, individuals in China were subordinated and
attached to the collective. Almost everyone recognizes the social evils brought
about by extreme collectivism and it’s harm to one’s sense of person. On the other
hand, some people believe in the principle "everyone for oneself and the devil
take the hindmost". They harm other’s interest when there is a conflict between
their own and other’s interests. The whole society could descend to a state in
which everyone is like a wolf to every other member of society and would harm the
other for oneself.
Certainly, as the relation between self and other is very complex, it is difficult
to judge whether a kind of action is moral or not by the standard of "either for
oneself or for others". Spencer remarked, if the maxim "to live for oneself" is
wrong, the maxim "to live for others" also is wrong. So, a conciliatory attitude
is the only possibility; for the evolution of human beings it is necessary to
reconcile "for oneself" and "for others".
However, we must consider some possible extreme case. For example, when a boat on
which there are many women and children is sinking, the children in the boat
cannot flee for their life. Thus, there have been heroic paeans for men who give
up their chance for life to women and children. Altruism is an important means for
maintaining affinity and the integrity of society. Heroism exists because there is
altruism to the extent of offering love and life. If everyone indulged his
interests, heroism would be impossible and the spiritual force maintaining social
justice would disappear.
In China now one finds that when a boy falls into the water some are not willing
to rescue him, while others do their best to rescue him even at risk to their
lives. A student named Zhang Hua died a martyr in rescuing a farmer who had fallen
into a manure pit. Some persons said Zhang Hua’s action was unwise because Zhang
Hua was a highly educated young man who would be able to contribute a great deal
to the society. Obviously, this is an utilitarian value according to which we must
calculate the amount of the value of an action to the society or individual before
we take a certain moral action. But if so, there would be such absurd phenomena as
not rescuing an idiot or an old man because they are burdens to society.
In the above-mentioned case, if Zhang Hua did not go to the rescue of the farmer,
still we could not say that he was an egoist, for in Chinese to be an egoist means
"to use public office for private gain" or "to injure the public interest to
benefit one’s private interests." In law Zhang Hua was not obligated to rescue the
farmer, but moral nobility consists in the spirit of devotion of a person
precisely when he is not responsible. Zhang Hua’s death confirms the greatness of
morality and the nobility of the devotion which strongly influences our society
and inspires us all. If every member of society saw someone in mortal danger
without lifting a finger to save him, what would happen to our society?
Obviously, "to be for oneself subjectively and to be for others objectively" is
not feasible for the simple reason that "to be for oneself subjectively" does not
necessarily mean "to be for others objectively". On the contrary, there are
conflicts between "for one-self" and "for others" in many cases. "For oneself" is
impossible if there is no person willing to be for others subjectively. So, "to be
for oneself subjectively and to be for others objectively" is not a useful
solution to the conflicts between "for oneself" and "for others".
THE CONFLICT BETWEEN
COLLECTIVISM AND INDIVIDUALISM
There are traditions by which collectivism is upheld in Eastern nations, but
because of the different cultural traditions and the different levels of
development the collectivism of these nations plays different parts in social
life. With the fusion of the Eastern and Western cultures collectivism in the
traditional sense practically disappeared.
The Chinese people upheld an extreme collectivism with a taint of puritanism for
the last several decades. The whole society was understood as a machine of which
everyone was a part. "Everyone is a screw never getting rusty" was a vivid note in
that extreme collectivism. During the period called "eating food in the
collective", the collective spirit entered every aspect of the social life. The
collective was seen as a mechanical accumulation of individuals so that the
relation between the collective and the individual seemed to be a relation between
a bag and potatoes. This extreme collectivism necessarily led to the extreme
egalitarianism whose result was that individualism is a false egalitarianism
because it does not recognize the difference in ability among individuals.
For this reason, a movement of liberation in thought arose in China after the
policy of reform and opening. Some outdated Western trends of thought were very
welcome and were studied by Chinese youth with great eagerness. Philosophies which
emphasized the liberation of individuality did away with the earlier blind faith
in collectivism and propagated the idea of freedom. With the rapid development of
Chinese market economics young Chinese longed for self-realization, self-
determination and self-struggle.
Too great an emphasis on individual value causes extreme individualism, so that
some persons denied community concerns in general and not only extreme puritanical
collectivism. Some who understood freedom as doing whatever one likes without
limit of law, only asked for rights but would not perform obligations. Hedonism
and a worship of money led young people to commit crimes. Now, when individual
interests conflict with collective interests, some put their own interests above
community ones. To quote Sartre some even think that "the other is hell".
Like the extreme collectivism, extreme individualism is not useful to the healthy
development of our society. If extreme collectivism sacrificed individuality and
strangled human creativity, then extreme individualism would break down social
harmony and lead to a hostile state among people. In China there is an historical
tradition which emphasizes community and underestimates individuals. This must be
reformed gradually. But without community concern China would cease to be China,
and the East would cease to be the East. As long as this does not sink into racism
and extreme nationalism, as long as it can develop individual activity and
creativity, concern for the community is helpful to individuals, society and human
civilization.
***
http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-16/chapter_xvii.htm
CHAPTER XVII
CHANGES OF VALUES DURING THE RENOVATION PERIOD
IN VIETNAM
NGUYEN TRONG CHUAN
PREFACE
The world is changing and Vietnam also is changing very rapidly. From a
subsidiary, bureaucratic and concentrated economy, Vietnam is shifting to a market
economy, industrializing, modernizing and integrating into the world. From a
philosophical point of view, this is not only a socio-economic change, but also a
change in value standards. This entails a search for new value standards that are
more general, more suitable and able to serve better the progress of the entire
society as well as each human individual. It must be suitable for an era of
development and the trend toward globalization and multi-faceted international
relations. In the course of this change a number of issues emerge, such as how to
define real, fundamental values; what are the counter-values; how to maintain good
traditional values and keep them from sinking into oblivion; which values should
be received, and more importantly how to orient values, especially in term of the
younger generation.
Through reviewing Vietnam’s recent situation this study would hope to contribute
to the clarification of these issues.
DEFINITIONS
The concept, "value", is used widely in many different scientific branches such
as: philosophy, psychology, ethics, sociology, aesthetics, etc., and with
different content. As it is difficult to have a reasonable definition which can be
accepted by everybody, it is necessary to determine firstly the inner content of
the definition to be used here. When speaking of value it is necessary to attend
to the concrete socio-historico-practical aspects, namely, to its applicability
and capability for promoting human behavior by obtaining, maintaining and
protecting it. At the same time, though it is not necessary to moralize all
values, in speaking of value we want to reaffirm its positive character as
attached to the right, the good, the interesting and the beautiful.
On the other hand, values have objectivity because objects, processes and
relations themselves include the ability to satisfy multi-faceted human demands,
bringing multiple benefits to humans. At the same time, human groups express their
attitude, point of view and evaluation of those abilities, as well as the level
they can accept. However, human demands and benefits are extremely varied and
diversified, — even extremely complicated. Hence, things that create value through
their ability to satisfy the demands of most human beings have a definite
stability.
When people choose some value as essential or fundamental, or say that a value
comprises material and spiritual dimensions, or is of high quality, they are
talking about a system of values. In this way we see that some values are common
for humankind, while others characterize a nation or a community (village,
commune). Some values are long-standing and respected and inherited through
generations; but the impact, scale and time of others may be shorter. Some values
will fade or even disappear completely when the historical situation changes, and
newly formed values will replace them. The scale of values used by a nation,
community, group or individual in the conduct of its behavior serves in effect as
a measure for surveying values.
The attitude, arrangement and selection of material or spiritual values to be
pursued, believed in, and followed as a duty is the orientation of value. Such
value orientation is a very important factor in forming and confirming
personality, helping an individual to find meaningful things, to avoid what is
meaningless for oneself and harmful to the community, to be firmly targeted on
ideals, to stimulate personal demand and interest, to adjust behavior and to
motivate action. Obviously, beside its moral and aesthetic character, value
orientation also is closely allied to awareness, feelings, emotion, will and
desire.
In terms of nations as human communities traditional values have an extremely
important role. Tradition includes the composition of the ideology, emotions,
customs, habits, lifestyle, ways of behavior, and the will of the human community.
Formed in history this becomes stabilized and is transferable from generation to
generation. Hence traditional values concern what is considered the active, and
typical of the national culture which should be maintained, protected, and
promoted. The content of tradition is very diversified and varied, but can contain
positive and negatives aspects simultaneously. Hence, from traditional values one
must extract the positive, the good, the beneficial for the life of the entire
nation today and tomorrow, as well as for the international community of which the
nation is a member.
CHANGES OF VALUES DURING THE RENOVATION PERIOD IN VIETNAM
The Diversification of Vietnam’s Traditional Values
Vietnam’s traditional values originate from traditions formed a thousand years ago
under multiple influences: the natural environment and geographical conditions,
labor production and socio-economic structures, historical circumstances and the
international and regional cultural environment. That includes the traditions of a
community with the spirit of solidarity and mutual help, whether in peace or in
war or other difficult times; traditions of village demo-cracy whose clearest
symbol is the right to select a representative to control the works of the village
or commune; and the tradition of standing firm in difficulty, hard work, love of
children and respect for the aged.
Thanks to the contact with China and especially the reception of Confucianism with
India and the reception of Buddhism, and with French culture Vietnam has
traditions of love of learning, respect for titles like being a mandarin,
altruism, leniency, as well as of freedom, equality and fraternity.
However, Vietnam’s traditional values have been formed mainly on the basis of the
Vietnamese nation. Being a small country and experiencing too many wars of
national defense the features highlighted in Vietnam’s tradition are patriotism,
nationalism independence and self-reliance. Although Confucianism has been studied
and many things learned therefrom, its great moral system does not touch
patriotism. On the contrary, for the Vietnamese people patriotism is a value,
indeed a spiritual motive for which many generations have sacrificed, and thanks
to which they have won. Through struggle against extremely severe natural
conditions and foreign invasions the tradition of flexible behavior, quick
adaptation and easy adaption to existing conditions has been formed. All those
good traditions form values which have been preserved by the Vietnamese.
Beside that positive, good side, the prolonged existence over many centuries and
even until today of the small peasant economy also contributes to forming
traditions which are not so good. These include being unfamiliar with economic
accounting, carelessness, distraction, lack of tight discipline, sectionalism,
localism, egalitarianism, low aspirations, and dislike of being surpassed by
others. Those features have created negative aspects in the Vietnamese tradition.
Great Changes in the Socio-economy and Their Impact on the System of Traditional
Values
Vietnam’s renovation since 1986 has been in all fields: economic, political,
social, cultural and external relations. In the economic field the shift from a
concentrated, bureaucratic, subsidiary structure to a market economic structure
has quickly changed the face of socio-economic life, created the existing economy,
led to rapid growth, and patently improved peoples’ standard of life in almost
every field of activity. Many traditional professions have been restored and many
new jobs created. The way of earning money to become rich also has changed and
been diversified. The expansion of external relations also has created big changes
in many influencing the outlook, the way of thinking, the attitudes and behavior
of people, especially the young.
However, these changes have given birth to not a few com-plicated social issues
and negative phenomena. The major concerns are the great difference between the
poor and the rich which risks becoming conflictual, disrespect for tradition, and
looking down on public opinion and law. Along with that, many social evils and
crimes which had disappeared for many years or been greatly reduced now rise
again.
In fact, those changes have impact on the system of traditional values, though
estimates of the level of that impact are not quite in agreement. A few people
consider that under the big changes in the economy not a few traditional values
have been inverted, fallen into crisis or even into oblivion. In contrast to the
past, economic, material values now carry more weight than spiritual ones;
personal benefit is a stronger motivation than collective benefit. However, as
confirmed by many researchers, seen calmly and with vigilant precautions, this
phenomenon is obviously a necessary adjustment. If in previous times spiritual
collective values were highly considered, material values were forgotten;
readjusting the balance is quite reasonable, and should not be a matter of
concern.
This adjustment itself has its positive side in that it promotes self-control and
the ability for self-improvement; it stimulates independence and creativity. This
overcomes passivity and reliance on the state and the collective in order to seek
a better material and spiritual life for oneself on the basis of an assured
material life. Instead of relying on the collective, society, and the state,
people have recognized that they need to be active, to calculate economic results,
and to improve their knowledge so as not to fail in the severe competition of the
market economy.
However, extremism is also a reality in present day Vietnamese society. This trend
threatens the traditional values mentioned above. It rates highly a comfortable
material life, looking down upon altruism and not paying attention to other
people. It honors technique while disregarding human beings. It blindly follows
Western and foreign values. It looks only to oneself, forgetting the collective
and the community which long have been precious traditions of the nation. Although
these trends are not dominant it is necessary to recognize them in order to take
measures of prevention and to avoid the extreme turns which cause harm to the
society.
Trends in Value Changes: the Statistics
Many sociological surveys have been conducted regarding changes in the value
outlook caused by changing historical circum-stances. Among 20 values commonly
popular, the Vietnamese polled indicated the following ten as leading values:
1. Peace: 86.0%
2. Freedom: 76.8%
3. Health: 72.6%
4. Employment: 64.9%
5. Justice: 64.4%
6. Education: 62.0%
7. Family: 57.3%
8. Belief: 57.3%
9. Security: 56.0%
10. Profession: 52.9%
From this the following conclusions can be drawn:
- The high percentage of people who chose peace reflects the sincere aspiration of
a nation that has lost too much to war. The high rank of this value probably
corresponds to other nations all over the world. That value has power to gather
and unify all nations, North and South, East or West, whether developing or
developed. It is a common value of humankind without which such other aspirations
as wealth, strength, happiness and development cannot be realized. Peace is a key
to independence, freedom and employment.
- Other values such as health, education, justice, belief, family and security
remain traditional values which are highly appreciated.
- Survey results show that the values of one’s profession are in the greatest need
of change. Above we have commented that in the Vietnamese tradition the weak point
is economic accounting for fear that one’s neighbors will consider one to be rich.
However, this tradition of egalitarianism is rapidly weakening. People turn to a
number of values which motivate people to enrich both them selves and the country
according to the motto: "A rich people, in a strong country, with an equal and
civil society."
It has been more than ten years of renewal, and the way of getting rich and
choosing an occupation have changed greatly. Seventeen percent of the people chose
an occupation with high income despite difficulty, while only a few people chose
an easy job with low income. Interestingly people preferred a practical occupation
with high income, but one that did not harm the community and family
responsibilities. Concretely, 64.2 percent chose occupations which enabled them to
take care of their family and 57.8 percent chose jobs that could help others.
People seem not to pay great attention to the economic sector or office where they
will work: working for the state or for private or foreign companies all are
acceptable, provided the job is suitable and renders high income.
This is a remarkable change in the Vietnamese psychology and value-orientation.
However, the point is that when people become accustomed to change they do not
lose their traditional values, but still stay close to family and community. This
is easy to understand because to the Vietnamese people’s mind, if the family is
happy and stable the community (village, commune and the entire society) will be
stable and peaceful, and people will be able to face the great waves of
difficulties in life. Maintaining family values is a firm guarantee in the
struggle against the merciless, cold-blooded competition of the market structure.
This has the following implications:
- As becoming rich is a popular value, the older mandarin values of respect for
titles and positions now lessen remarkably.
- Traditional values continue strong while at the same time bearing new content.
For example, if in the past the value of "freedom" meant mainly freedom for the
entire nation or national independence, nowadays it means also freedom in
business, work, learning, improving knowledge and selecting one’s private
activities in fields not prohibited by the laws. Such freedom is close to the
individual and his or her improvement.
- Some values which in the past were quite ordinary now have become urgent, for
example, employment. This value can be found in all nations, but now in Vietnam it
is urgent because of the shift in the economic structure. It is certain that not
only in the present, but also in the future employment and profession will remain
leading values, especially for young people and particularly in countries with
high populations.
- Further, the survey results identify some spiritual values which people honor,
praise and consider highly such as: creativity, love, justice, beauty. Many
Vietnamese now value these only to a middle level, some grade them below other
values. This is obviously the "negative" side of present value orientations.
Probably it reflects also that in a life full of difficulties the Vietnamese must
first solve their urgent problems, rather than dealing with other values.
CONCLUSION
Life is changing very fast and human awareness too does not stop at any one point.
The above survey results are only preliminary and can serve only as points of
reference. Other changes surely will take place in the future. But today’s life
allows researchers to confirm that the fundamental orientation of the scale of
values measuring what Vietnamese believe and seek, in other words, things that
create the present pattern of Vietnamese values, are still the traditional human
values. However, these shift from patriotism in battle to patriotism in the
construction of peace, in industrialization and modernization; these are the
present sense of the national culture and national pride. Together with respect
for other good traditional values, the newly formed values and those common to all
humankind provide a foundation creating the shape of current life for the
Vietnamese and their society. That is the base also for ensuring the dialogue and
integration for peace and development in this region and in the world. Knowing how
to respect and preserve the good values of this and other nations, while
maintaining one’s own identity is the key to improving the quality and meaning of
life in an era full of change and tension.
****
http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-20/epilogue.htm
EPILOGUE
CULTURAL ISSUES IN THE CONTEXT OF
ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION
YU XINTIAN
Economic globalization has formed two parallel and contrary cultural trends. It
has not only created the current industrial and popular cultures in the world and
brought about the acceptance to a certain extent of some Western values. But also
it has promoted cultural nationalization and localization and reaffirmed and
protected the unique meaning of each culture. Cultural intercourse cannot be
obstructed, like mercury rushing down. World culture is also constantly spreading
outward and extending its influence. Only by opening to the outside world, can the
objective of China’s cultural development be achieved.
This is no longer the colonial era. Whether the thinking and policy of cultural
hegemony can work depends to a great extent on the response of developing
countries. To achieve “cultural security” by closing doors is not only impossible
technologically, but also will run counter to people’s desire. Only by facing the
world with an open mentality and strengthening the national culture through
extensive cultural exchanges can one resist foreign invasion.
Western capitalist countries have taken the lead in realizing modernization and
have used some of the methods of their opposition, the socialist countries. On the
contrary, for socialist countries it is far from enough to learn from capitalist
countries and draw lessons from them. China’s modernization will not take the path
of capitalism, but this does not mean casting away the cream of Western culture.
Only by pursuing a policy of opening-up, can we resist and criticize the
reactionary propaganda of hostile domestic and foreign forces and various
decadent, superstitious and pornographic ideologies and views.
“ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION” DOES NOT MEAN
“CULTURAL GLOBALIZATION”
Economic transnational development and internationalization can be traced back one
century or more, while economic globalization began after WWII. Trade contacts and
mutual investment between developed countries increased tremendously, various
international economic mechanisms began to take shape and transnational
corporations became the engines of world economic growth. Meanwhile, large numbers
of developing countries entered the international economic system and all the
countries interpenetrated and depended upon each other and tended towards economic
integration. By the 1980s, economic globalization appeared in an embryonic form.
Since the 1990s the international economy and politics have undergone historical
changes and economic globalization has proceeded with accelerated momentum.
Transnational distribution of essential factors of production reinforced the
interdependent global system of division of labor, and information technology has
promoted global capital flow and technology transfer, causing in turn new changes
according to the laws of economic cycles. Today, economic globalization has become
an irresistible tide. Observing the current and future trends of the times,
economic globalization cannot but be its basic characteristic and broad context;
it must be the starting point for analyzing any important issue.
Therefore, in recent years, not a few articles have put forward the concepts of
“cultural globalization” and “political globalization”, or more concisely,
“globalization”. In the author’s opinion, they are improper.
The suffix: “-ization” means from beginning to end and from inside to outside. But
there is no such “globalized” culture. Of course, economic globalization is only
in its initial stage. The extent of globalization depends on the difference in the
participation of countries and regions. The economy of many countries has not even
entered within the scope of economic globalization. But the foundation of
globalization has been laid and a global market and network have begun to take
shape. The state of culture is different from this. Another meaning of the suffix:
“-ization” is process. Just as modernity is a state, modernization is a process.
The reasons why economic globalization can be realized are: Firstly, only by
establishing a worldwide market economic system and integrating the world market
can economic internationalization and integration be expanded across the world.
Secondly, the information technology revolution has promoted the formation of a
global economic network. Therefore, the process of economic globalization has been
expanding and deepening. The situation of culture is different. Though in the past
half century, the frequency of cultural exchanges between various countries in the
world has exceeded any previous period in the history and cultural absorption and
integration has been unprecedented, cultural difference has not been gradually
eliminated. Wars for nation and religion (culture in a broad sense) occur also
after economic development. In some parts of the world, people drive cars to herd
sheep and cattle and conduct Internet transactions, but they still conform to the
caste system and polygamy. Though cultural development is influenced by economic
globalization, it is not in direct interrelation with the latter. It has a more
complicated inherent developmental logic.
Economic globalization has profound impact on culture, however, and current
research on this is quite insufficient. The impacts can only be summed up as
follows: economic globalization has formed two parallel and contrary cultural
trends. The first trend is that it has created current industrial culture and
popular culture in the world and has caused some Western values to be accepted to
a certain extent. In previous times, the elite culture always dominated one
country’s cultural process and a specific tension was maintained between the elite
and the popular culture. But industrialization and modernization have enabled
large-scale mass consumption, including cultural consumption. The original tension
between elite and popular cultures has been completely destroyed. Popular culture
has surged on an unprecedented scale and simply submerged the elite culture in
quantity. In the past, only phoenixes seemed qualified to flutter, while today
sparrows and crows blot out the sky and the sun. The popular culture has such
characteristics as superficiality, commercial and mechanical nature, focused on
the stimulation of the senses. It has ridden the wind of economic globalization
and spread quickly across the world. In the past, the popular cultures in various
countries also had strong national and local distinctive features. But now the
sparrows and crows throughout the world all sing karaoke and dance to music
machines. No matter how the U.S. and the Soviet Union confronted each other in the
Cold War era, or no matter how tense the US relations with countries such as Iran,
the young people in the U.S., the Soviet Union, Iran and even other countries
follow similar fashions in jeans, disco and hair-dying. No matter how the
intellectual elite turn up their noses at the popular culture, they cannot but
face up to its positive aspects in breaking the monopoly of the elite on culture
and opening up vast spaces for the masses to create culture. The challenge is to
absorb the strong points of the popular culture, overcome its weak points and
enable the attractive forces behind the elite culture to join in guiding popular
culture.
It is deeply significant that economic globalization has promoted the
dissemination of Western values. Western countries have set forth a series of
values such as democracy, freedom, human rights, market competition, legal
contracts and individualism. Though elements of these values exist also in other
cultures, the modernized abstraction of these values has been completed in the
West. The enhancement of these values corresponds with the Western modernization
process, and they have gradually been improved in the process.
When developing countries began their efforts to catch up with and surpass Western
countries in modernization they had to recognize that they must learn and absorb
some cultural values of the West, while introducing its science, technology and
management experience.
However, modernization does not mean Westernization. It is on the basis of their
native cultures that various countries must learn Western culture and use it for
reference. Western values are of universal significance to a certain extent,
otherwise they cannot be accepted by other countries. Economic globalization has
promoted more developing countries to accelerate their modernization, and newly
industrialized countries (regions) have set an example of catching up with, and
surpassing, Western countries and have provided experience in this respect. After
choosing the path of modernization, developing countries have more consciously
accepted some Western cultural values. Because of the global currency of the
popular culture and the dissemination of Western values, some people have asserted
that economic globalization must bring about cultural globalization. However this
assertion is one-sided.
The reasons are: firstly, there is another tendency in the impact of economic
globalization on culture, that is, promotion of cultural nationalization and
localization and reaffirmation and protection of the unique meaning of each
culture. The inundation of popular culture and the acceptance of Western values
have evoked heated debates in almost all non-Western countries. In this all trends
of thought have appeared from the “school of Westernization” to the “school of
nativism”. Given that many cultures in the colonial era were suppressed under
Western gunboat and missionary policies, developing countries are now able to
protect their own interests, including their cultures with state power while being
aware that closing door can only protect backwardness and that only opening-up can
help cultural rejuvenation and development. What is more hopeful is that some
developing countries (regions) have not only succeeded in catching up in economy,
but have found a way to answer the difficult problems of absorbing external
cultures while keeping native cultures or nativizing external cultures and
modernizing native cultures. These are two aspects of the one process. Weaving
together the two concur and complement one another.1 In this way, the native
culture is rejuvenated while being retained, and its dissemination and inheritance
are promoted. It will neither be extinct nor assimilated and contained, but
greater stress will be put on the characteristics of national development.
Modernization as a general concept will be expressed in a specific form through
the unique infiltration of the national culture. In fact, it is a good example
that although Western countries have reached a very high level of modernization,
they still retain their respective national cultural features. Asian, African and
Latin American countries are so numerous and diverse in culture that it is still
less possible for them to reach unanimity.
Secondly, the formulation and expression of humankind’s common cultural values
require that various cultures, especially non-Western cultures, contribute their
excellent values. In some sense Western values have many strong points, but they
have shortcomings as do any cultural values. For instance, the unchecked spread of
individual freedom has caused social problems; over-competition has triggered
contradictions in interpersonal relations; attending only to conquering nature has
resulted in its retaliation; and strong religious mentalities have obstructed
intercultural absorption and tolerance. These shortcomings can not be remedied by
the Western culture itself. In their own processes of modernization, developing
countries are learning from and absorbing some Western values, but they are also
developing what is useful and discarding what is not in their native cultural
values in order to counteract the inadequacy of Western values and enhance their
own. This is of universal significance to countries all over the world.
Lastly, only cultural diversification can ensure that humankind not be destroyed
should a unitary “cultural gene” face future challenges. At the turn of the
century, humankind made unprecedented progress, but also met unprecedented
problems, for example, the population explosion, ecological deterioration,
environmental pollution, frequent wars, ignorance and backwardness, the wide gap
between the rich and the poor, severe crimes, violation of moral norms and the
break-up of the family. The new scientific and technological revolution brought
more expectation and hope to humankind, but also concealed huge crises: e.g., the
information network has narrowed the distance of time and space, but also bred
online crime and speculation. What the Southeast Asian financial storm showed may
be only the tip of the iceberg. The breakthrough in biological technology will
bring about unexpected glad tidings to the life of humankind, but will also cause
confusion and perplexity in law and ethics. A greater threat lies in unforeseen
changes. Various national cultures are extremely rich and varied and are a vast
storehouse of experience and wisdom with which humankind can handle crises; only
by drawing on this experience from the historical cultures can humankind forge
ahead. If culture is “globalized” or “Westernized,” as some people have said, it
will be a very sad future for humankind.
The impossibility of “cultural globalization” has been considered above. Now,
greater stress will be laid on what can be done, because the attitude of people is
also very important. When all cherish more the garden of national cultures under
the condition of economic globalization and make more efforts to explore, develop,
transform and enhance these cultures, then cultural diversification will develop
in a healthy manner.
STRONG AND WEAK CULTURES
“Economic globalization” does not mean “cultural globalization”. Entering the
world market is also not equal to “falling fully in line with Western culture”.
However, in the ideological circles of developing countries views about this are
very confused because there are huge differences among the cultures of the world.
Western culture as a strong culture is aggressive while the newly emerging
national cultures are in a weak state. How to understand this phenomenon has
attracted more and more attention.
When Western powers moved across the world with the power of thunder, they
destroyed the original social economy through trade and dumping, besides conquest
by force; they negated and changed local values and moral concepts with
Christianity, education and law. Westerners capitalized on the superiority of
European cultures and its ability effectively to set new standards throughout the
world. They assumed themselves to be the teachers of other nations in spirit and
morals. Colonists arbitrarily determined the destiny of other nations on the
premise of egoism based on their own standards. Power politics was swollen with
cultural arrogance: the “European heartland theory” or “Western heartland theory”
are of long standing. Though an undisguised preaching of Western superiority is
criticized also in the West, its influence is deeply rooted.
At present, Western research and its publicity on universal values are powerful
and dynamic. By referring to Western cultural values as “universal” and “common in
the world” they obscure the particularity of Western culture. According to Roland
Robertson, a British scholar, globalization can be regarded as a dual process
including universalization of particularity and particularization of universality
in the most general sense.2 With economic globalization, some Western scholars
desire urgently to universalize Western culture. This author holds that some
Western values, such as democracy, human rights and freedom, have a certain
universality; otherwise they could not be accepted. But, it is completely wrong to
regard the path of the West as a model and impose it on others.
During the Cold War, fierce struggles between political systems and ideologies
covered equally fierce cultural struggles. As socialism was at a low ebb after the
Cold War, Western cultural hegemony caused a great clamor. Especially the U.S.,
the sole superpower in the world, aspired again and again to change the world with
its values. President George W. Bush took the expansion of U.S. political values
as the main component of security. Former President Clinton listed the spread of
U.S.-style democracy as one of the three pillars of U.S. diplomacy. Strategic
Review 1998 of the U.S. University of National Defense pointed out in analyzing
the Asia-Pacific situation that almost all the countries in the region had
accepted the economic values of core countries such as the U.S., and that this was
very favorable for the promotion of economic relations in this region. However,
some countries continued to resist and even refused to accept values of democratic
politics, so doubts and concerns existed in the relations between core countries
and other countries. Thus the spread by the U.S. of its cultural values is aimed
at maximizing its national interests and realizing its hegemonic strategy of
“leading the world”. Socialism being at a low ebb further enabled Western cultural
values to exercise strong influence in the political system. Some declared “the
end of history,” while others predicted the extinction of socialism. The U.S.
Government’s definition of the era is “market and democracy” and “security and
order”. In fact, it holds that the capitalist system will last forever.
The strong force of Western culture is also embodied in the richness of its
material base and its absolute superiority in the cultural industry, products and
market. In the late 1990s, the world film box-office value was about US$15.5
billion, in which the U.S. accounted for over two thirds, US$10.5 billion. The
telecommunications industry is the U.S. largest exporting industry, while the film
industry ranks fourth. This shows the strength of the cultural industry. What Coca
Cola and McDonald market is not only food and beverage, but also the meaning of
culture and the lifestyle added to them. Hollywood’s swift and fierce attack has
been moving forward successfully and their products are enjoyed by millions across
the world. Japan’s Fuji Sankei Communication Group ranks first among the world’s
five largest mass media groups; its annual income reaches US$10 billion. After
1998, it has been forging ahead towards “complete digitalization” and has
established international digitalization media jointly with such media groups as
Australia’s Murdoch Media. In the emerging networks, over 80 percent of
information come from Western countries and only 5 percent originate from Chinese.
Western countries provide over 90 percent of online service, while the Chinese
mainland provides only 1 percent. The weakness of developing countries is not only
because they lack strong economic strength and capital input, but also reveals
that their greatest shortcoming scientific and technological backwardness and
dearth of human resources.
The strong cultural force of Western countries dominates the world because of the
support of the international political and economic systems they led. To introduce
cultural concepts, ideas, principles and values all over the world, the guarantee
of the system is of the utmost importance. The system uses organizational force
and legal recognition to create the situation. They compel others to submit
without firing a shot and, even if using force, they “have just cause”. After the
victory in WWII, Roosevelt and Churchill designed the United Nations, putting the
spirit of the “Atlantic Charter” into effect. To prevent the economic crisis in
1930 from resurfacing, various countries set up a series of organizations at the
Bretton Woods Conference. Later, there were arranged such systems as GATT, WTO and
APEC. Though theoretically, in organizations such as the UN, all the countries are
equal, in reality, strength always determines the weight of speech. Western
countries are superior in the system, because they have initiated most of the
fundamental principles of the international law and the world system and they
dominate the current world order. System innovation and its original culture can
be traced to the same origin, and are well reasoned. To pursue their own systems
and cultures in international relations, developing countries must take into
account the existing international law and the world system, and not come into
conflicts with them. Only by so doing can their systems and cultures be accepted.
As the cultures of developing countries and Western culture do not derive from the
same system, the integration of the two requires a great deal of work. At the turn
of the century, people pay close attention to the reform of international
political and economic organizations to adapt them to the changes in era. The key
lies in putting forward their own new ideas and principles and seeking a path for
their collective recognition, as well as exploring the feasibility of systematic
arrangements. This is a severe test for the cultures of developing countries.
The fact that the cultures of developing countries are weak is undisputed; this
will not change for a considerable period. Under these circumstances, “wholesale
Westernization” is not desirable and extreme cultural nationalism is also very
harmful to developing countries. Some intellectuals advanced the concept of
“cultural colonialism”, “cultural imperialism” or “neo-colonialism” in a broader
sense. This deserves careful analysis. No doubt, there really exist cultural
hegemonic trends of thought in Western countries which sometimes are reflected in
the policies of some countries. But, today is no longer a colonial era. Whether
cultural hegemonic thinking and policies can work depends, to a great extent, on
the reaction of developing countries. “Cultural security” through closing doors is
not only impossible technologically, but also will run counter to people’s desire.
Only by facing the world with an open mentality and reinforcing the building of
national cultures through extensive cultural exchanges can we resist foreign
invasion.
Furthermore, although the concepts of “colonialism” and “imperialism” are
borrowed, cultural issues and economic and political systems differ in
characteristic manners. Political and economic systems can be clearly divided into
capitalist and socialist systems, planned and market economy. However, it is not
easy to judge whether a country is reduced to the status of a colony by means of
quantitative and qualitative analysis, and, given the basic termination of the
colonial system, whether the culture of a developing country is reduced to the
status of a “colony”. Spoken and written language is really an important mark of
culture, but many developing countries have had to inherit the legacy of the
colonial period and use English, French and Spanish. Meanwhile, their governments
have been protecting the national spoken and written languages. In some developing
countries, the multi-ethnic, multi-national and multi-linguistic state has
sometimes made the official designation of one official national language harmful,
so they cannot but adopt Western languages.
Perhaps more important is ideological identification, cultural values and the
moral system. Through education reflecting national liberation and independence,
the national identity and pride of newly emerging nations have been greatly
enhanced. This is basic. Of course, there exists the trend of urban youth pursuing
Western culture and imitating Western lifestyle, but their proportion in the
population is worth research. It is also an universal phenomenon that young people
return to their mainstream culture after a “traitorous period”. Developing
countries have different national conditions. Only by analyzing the specific
situations of various countries can one gain a correct view. Without this, this
author can only report that of the developing countries she has visited no country
can be called in general a cultural “colony”. India was one of the colonies with
the longest history in Asia and English is also the official language, but the
national pride and patriotic feeling of the Indians are very strong; national
culture goes back to ancient times and is well preserved. South Korean leaders
from Kim Young-Sam to Kim Dae-jung have stressed the learning of Western values,
but the South Korean Government and people have been rather successful in
developing what is useful and discarding what is not in the traditional culture.
Therefore, national cultural pride has struck root in the hearts of the people.
Vietnamese characters have been Latinized. Though undergoing long-standing
colonial rule, war destruction and system alternation, continuity in the
inheritance and renovation of its culture is very clear. There are not only
influences of Chinese and Buddhist cultures, but also vestiges of Western,
especially French, culture, while retaining characteristics of Vietnamese culture.
In sum, national independence is a strong guarantee against cultural
“colonization”.
Speaking of strong culture, we generally refer to Western culture, because the
cultural values of Western countries are relatively almost identical and they are
quite different from developing countries on issues such as freedom, human rights
and democracy. But, if carefully observed, we may find that Western countries are
not monolithic; they differ greatly in culture and their foreign cultural policies
are widely divergent. The French Government has stipulated that French language
must be used during at least 40% of time in French television and broadcasting
programmes, and Hollywood’s films can account at most for one fourth of the films
shown in 4500 cinemas. The Canadian Government advocates a “mosaic culture” at
home, that is, each ethnic culture is a part of Canadian culture and the
government will not compel it to be assimilated. After driving US “country music
radio stations” out of Canada in 1995, the Canadian Government began to put into
effect C-55 bill in 1999, which stipulates that Canadian enterprises are not
allowed to advertise in foreign periodicals distributed in Canada, lest a high
fine be imposed on them. The protection of national culture has been attained
through cutting off the financial resources of US periodicals in Canada.
Therefore, if the leader of cultural hegemony is the U.S., other Western countries
may also share common concerns with developing countries in opposing US cultural
hegemony. For this reason, specific research should be done on the cultural policy
of each Western country, industry, market and relations with developing countries.
We will firmly oppose what is really cultural hegemony, but deal differently with
what is not.
Besides, there are normal contacts between countries and also various non-
governmental cultural exchanges. The U.S., the sole superpower, is no exception.
To fulfil their historical task of modernization, developing countries must open
to the outside world and absorb all the achievements of human civilization. They
cannot forget this in resisting cultural hegemony. If they stand still on the path
of modernization, this will fundamentally endanger their national destiny and
prospects; it will be impossible for their national cultures to be prosperous and
vigorous. Culture is related to all the activities of humankind: artistic, social,
political, educational, religious, spiritual and economic. It has a broad
tolerance. If opposition to “cultural colonialism” is pursued, it may impact all
the foreign contacts and will certainly impair a country’s opening-up and
development.
Hollywood films are an example. In the perspective of film producers, film
production is an economic activity aimed at gaining box-office values. When
exporting to other countries, films involve trade contacts and cultural exchanges
between countries. The artistic works reflect US culture and values, but if there
is no severe political prejudice or propagation of sex and violence, cultural
exchanges are more advantageous than disadvantageous. We should educate the people
to absorb nutrition and reject dross in cultural comparison and trust people to
have such ability. If a bad work uses advanced scientific and technological means
as well as strong technique of artistic expression, we should allow professionals
to learn the technique so as to enhance their ability to disseminate our national
culture.
In the final analysis, a cultural closed-door policy is impossible and
unacceptable. We must let the people enhance their cultural discrimination so as
to absorb the true, the good and the beautiful and discard the false, the bad and
the ugly. Only when the national cultural promotion achieves remarkable success
and blends the feelings of the people with a culture geared to modernization, the
world and the future, can the people have the cultural backbone to enhance their
discrimination and absorbency in the cultural mix.
While recognizing the fact of strong and weak cultures, weak cultures are not
fully passive. Cultural intercourse can not be obstructed, like mercury rushing
down. Weak culture is also constantly spreading outward and sending out its own
influence. Swiftness of information and communication has made it possible for any
event occurring in any corner of the world to become the focus of worldwide
attention. The past hundreds of years have witnessed Western attempts to conquer
the world and migrate outward, but now a trend of immigration from developing
countries into Western countries appears. Among the immigrants there are not only
laborers, but increasingly excellent talents in various fields. European scholars
speak of the new change from “world Europeanization” to “European
universalization”. The past one-way export of Western thinking has changed into a
two-way dissemination of Eastern and Western, as well as Southern and Northern,
thinking.
Cultural interaction has produced some results in international exchanges. For
instance, on the highly controversial issue of human rights developing countries
have begun to attach importance to them, while developed countries have had to
recognize the rights to subsistence and development as their basis, which has been
written into UN conventions on human rights. Not a few Western scholars used to
look down upon East Asian culture, but the very rapid development of this region
has aroused the interest of the world in East Asian culture and the blend of
Eastern and Western cultures. If developing countries devote themselves to
modernization and culture building, weak cultures can be changed into strong.
Therefore, this author hold that the concepts of strong culture and weak culture
and the formulation of opposition to cultural hegemony are more accurate than
“cultural colonialism” and “cultural imperialism”.
CHINA’S CULTURAL CHOICE
The aim of China’s cultural construction is very clear; it is to build national,
popular and scientific socialist culture in the process of modernization.
President Jiang Zemin pointed out that as long as the Communist Party of China
continues to represent the requirements of the development of China’s advanced
productive forces, the orientation of China’s advanced culture, and the
fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people, it can
establish itself in a lasting unassailable position. The “three represents”
constitute an integral whole. They are not only the fundamental guiding principle
for Party building, but also the strategic policy for developing a prosperous
socialist culture. China’s socialist cultural building will be a very long
historical process. Its background is the new scientific and technological
revolution and economic globalization which add fuel to the flames in the mix
between various cultures where strong culture and cultural hegemony are
overbearing. Faced with severe challenges, China’s cultural choice can be only a
cultural opening in a wider and deeper way. Economic globalization has made
cultural closure almost impossible and technically unrealizable. When satellite
television covers the whole world and the computer network links innumerable
households, the mutual cultural mix will become very specific. The Chinese
Government’s decision to join the WTO brings the Chinese market completely into
line with the international market. The developed countries’ commodities,
including cultural products, will enter into the Chinese market in quantity.
Besides commodities, cultural meanings, value trends and even ideological coloring
will be manifested. This is an unavoidable problem which lies ahead for the
Chinese people. Why must China answer it with a wider and deeper opening policy?
Firstly, only by opening, can China make use of the opportunities created by
economic globalization, overcome the challenges brought about by economic
globalization and fulfil the dual process of catching-up in its modernization
drive. In the past twenty years, China has made considerable progress in catching-
up in its industrialization; people now enjoy a higher standard of living; they
have progressed from simply having enough to eat and wear. But before China had
finished catching-up in industrialization, it began to face the threat of being
left farther behind in knowledge-based economic competition. The new scientific
and technological revolution has offered the opportunity to leap-frog in
development, for in a sense it can be said that all the countries stand at the
same starting line. On the other hand, developing countries lack sufficient
economic strength to support the knowledge industry, are backward in science and
technology, are weak in education and are not good in the marketization and
industrialization of scientific and technological achievements. Only by opening up
in a wider and deeper way, can they gain the qualifications to begin running.
In fact, not only developing countries, but also developed countries recognize
that to win in the future, they can not depend only on their own potentials but
must possess the ability to fuse and absorb external innovative thinking. In
recent years, Western countries have intensified the recruitment of senior talents
in developing countries, and large enterprises have sought out promising
inventions all over the world. The investment of transnational corporations in the
Chinese mainland has expanded from processing and manufacturing to knowledge-type
service fields such as training, retail, and research and development. The setting
up of institutions of research and development has become a new investment trend.
Corporations such as Intel, P&G, DuPont, Nokia, Ericsson and Matsushita have set
up research centers, technological development centers and laboratories in Beijing
and Shanghai. Their purposes are to seize China’s huge market and to make use of
its talents.
This will greatly advance the development of China’s new high-tech industries, and
the reform of its modes of management of scientific research institutions. It will
also nurture excellent young talent. For instance, the opening of the information
network in attracting people’s attention may enable us to get a lift on the
development express, but also subject us to the surprise attack of cultural
garbage and even run a certain risk. No opening-up can be protected from negatives
for a short period, but in the long-term to block the path towards world
expressways causes the greatest insecurity.
Secondly, the goal of Chinese cultural building can be achieved only by a cultural
opening. The socialist culture representing the progressive course of China’s
advanced culture and with Chinese characteristics certainly will be geared to
modernization, the world and the future; certainly it will be open. China’s
cultural modernization has been accelerated under the attack of external cultures
and through opening will be pushed forward in handling relations with external
cultures. The concepts and ideas such as rule of law, science, democracy and
innovation all are introduced from the West, extremely enriching China’s thinking
and culture and promoting the establishment of the socialist culture. Moving from
a society with a relatively comfortable life to the level of a moderately
developed country, it becomes more urgent for China to absorb all of human
civilization. In the long ideological progress of the achievements, feudalistic
remnants still exert their effects and ignorance and backwardness still opposes
science and civilization, so cultural modernization shoulders a heavy
responsibility.
Western capitalist countries have taken the lead in modernization and have used
some practices of opposition socialist countries in promoting their own
development. On the contrary, learning and drawing lessons from capitalist
countries by socialist countries is far inferior. In learning and drawing lessons
from the latter, we must sort out the achievements of human civilizations from the
capitalist system and understand fully what they are and how to fuse and absorb
them. Though Chinese modernization will not take the road of capitalism, this does
not mean rejection of the cream of Western culture. If we are unable to sort out
in Western culture what is of the essence and what is dross, we shall make the
wrong choice in the process of opening and delay China’s modernization. Of course,
our cultural opening is omnidirectional. We shall incorporate cultures of diverse
nature and adopt the strong points from all cultures, whether Western developed
countries or Asian, African and Latin American developing countries or
transitional countries.
Thirdly, China should make more contributions, including cultural ones, to
humankind; only by implementing an opening policy can this objective be reached.
The Chinese nation has a long history; its culture goes back to ancient times and
has been splendid. It made tremendous contributions to the history of human
civilization, but its backwardness in modern times made it look like a bright
pearl covered with dust. We have implemented an opening policy and learned and
absorbed the cream of external cultures with the aim of distinguishing the
differences and developing through interaction. We have modernized the
transformation of Chinese culture to enable it to reach the level of the times.
For example, in the feudal society “loyalty” meant “to be loyal to the sovereign
and devoted to the country”. We should inherit the tradition of patriotism and
remove the feudal flavor. “Filial piety” was the basis of the feudal social
ethics. We must assimilate it with discrimination, transforming it into the
principle of relations between generations in the family. Only on the basis of a
modernized transformation can we spread it to the rest of the world. The new
scientific and technological revolution and economic globalization have promoted
various unprecedented cultural exchanges and provided a golden opportunity and a
marvelously fast means for spreading Chinese culture. China needs to enhance its
awareness in this regard and explore a huge space. To spread the excellent Chinese
culture to the outside world, the way, method, means and mechanism should be
brand-new, convincing, compelling and penetrating. This requires an opening
policy, in-depth understanding of the state of cultures in different countries of
the world and of the people’s psychology of acceptance and popularization.
Cultural dissemination, of course, cannot do without the material support, but it
is mechanical and one-sided simply to equate cultural ability with economic or
military strength. Wisdom can resolve difficult problems.
Lastly, only by implementing the opening policy can the reactionary propaganda of
hostile domestic and foreign forces and various decadent, superstitious and
pornographic ideologies and views be resisted and criticized.
That Marxism is the guiding ideology of our socialism is unshakable. The truth of
Marxism has been established and developed through its struggles against various
falsehoods. Today, the Chinese people accept rich, numerous and jumbled
information rapidly and have active minds. Great changes have taken place in their
cultural level, psychological state, cognitive ability and appreciation, so it
will not work to educate them by means of closed doors. Only by implementing the
opening policy to allow people to make comparisons in practices, can socialism
become their conscious choice and can their beliefs be unshakable.
After the ten-year great calamity, some Chinese lost their self-confidence when
the country was opened to the outside world and stayed abroad by every possible
means. But after a 20-year opening, China’s comprehensive national strength has
been enhanced, the Divine Land has taken on a new look, the people’s standard of
living has been raised, the confidence in socialist modernization has been
strengthened and students studying abroad have begun to return. All these are good
contrasts. The development of information technology, especially the internet
technology, has provided new means of opening. There is much progressive, healthy
and beneficial information, but there is not a little reactionary, superstitious
and pornographic content. Domestic and foreign hostile forces want to make use of
them to attract the masses and confuse people’s hearts. This should arouse our
vigilance, but we can rely only on opening in two ways in this struggle. One is to
strengthen Marxist and socialist education in enabling the masses to have their
own judgment. The other is to take the initiative to launch attacks and make use
of the Internet to defeat the false, the bad and the ugly with the true, the good
and the beautiful. In sum, only by a cultural opening to intensify cultural
construction can the success of economic, political and social opening-up be
guaranteed and can a foundation be laid for China’s national rejuvenation.
NOTES
1. See the author’s article entitled “The Destiny of Culture -- Pondering over
Relations between External Culture and Native Culture in Modernization Process”,
Cross-century Development Strategy and Cultural and Ethical Progress (Shanghai:
Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences Publishing House, 1997 edition), p. 669.
2. Roland Robertson, “Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture” (London:
Sage, 1992), p. 102.
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