contemporary America

Will Hutton, a British writer, wrote this in his 2002 book The World We're In:

"This ... is contemporary America. If it is rich and entrepreneurial, it is also economically volatile, profoundly unequal and nothing like as productive as it could be, given its enormous assets. Its democracy, one of the great Enlightenment triumphs and a beacon of hope to many societies around the world in both the past and present, now resembles pre-Enlightenment Europe in it dependence on money and private power. This is the orderly country whose citizens routinely shoot each other. This is where worship at church is rivalled only by worship at the shopping mall. It is becoming a land of individual strangers questing for their inner happiness because the public realm is so corrupted and depleted. It is a country that has burst its limits; an economy that is on the edge. And the whole is overshadowed by a tenacious endemic racism that is the still unresolved legacy of slavery and civil war ....
The American dream is of the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness; but the gap between dream and reality is lived out daily with increasing bitterness. America fails almost half its citizens. Cynicism about public and cultural rhetoric compared with actual experience is profound. This is hardly a desirable economic and social model within its own terms; to try to export it to the rest of the world is risible" (pp. 42-43).

on "collective hallucinations"

As a response to a blog that I follow with interest, I wrote the following, where I raise the question of whether we can find an explanation of conscious, collective hallucinations (for lack of a better term) -- phenomena like apparitions and so on -- that does not in principle deny the reality or external, intersubjective character of such phenomena. This is one of those issues that is like a litmus test of present-day thinking, showing you its true limits and ideological character.

--------------

Recently, a relative of mine told me of two incidents involving what are technically known as "collective hallucinations": phantasms that are witnessed by more than one individual. My relative and her husband (who both, truth be told, suffer from deep depression) were sitting in their living room when they heard a distinct voice loudly utter two words; a couple weeks later, the same voice with the same words were heard again loud and clear.

Of course, it could be as simple as a neighborhood kid pulling a prank (and a proper investigation would have to rule that out, obviously), but the question is, supposing that the voice really was heard and had no obvious or ordinary origin (i.e., it really was disembodied), then what possibly could explain this instance of a collective hallucination which does not explain it *away* and which preserves the intersubjective quality of it (for collective hallucinations are, by their nature, intersubjective)?

Clearly, modern science can admit but two general hypotheses (i.e., there are only two which do not conflict with the basic axioms of the causal-mechanical view):

(1) the voice, while indeed collectively perceived and external the perceivers, was generated by an embodied individual (prankster kid, emerged from a distant TV, radio, etc.)

(2) the voice was, Jung-style, a projection -- but in this case, insofar as this phenomenon was *collective*, it is a collective projection ("sympathetic" projections?)

Hypothesis #1 just is run-of-the mill causal/mechanical style, and treats the voice as a product of ordinary causal processes, whereas #2 is a bit more subtle. But, #2 leaves us with *another* puzzle: how to explain the collective, simultaneous nature of the (seemingly external, adventitious) perception.

We are all here probably familiar with the analogous cases that Jung dealt with regarding the *unconscious*: a wide variety of people were reporting to him dream sequences that bore uncanny similarity to the imagery he was finding in alchemical texts (texts which were themselves drawing on older sacred imagery). Jung then postulates the existence of the collective unconscious, and the notion of the archetypal image.

As far as I can tell (and I'm just beginning to study this here), Jung's is a causal explanation if any is -- just a more subtle one: the archetypal images that arise in our dream world reflect certain somatic processes at work in us, and insofar as these somatic processes remain relatively stable across many generations of human beings, there arise certain common dream patterns. The "collective unconscious" is, then, simply the collective somatic "field" of human beings: the latent somatic patterns that, under the appropriate conditions, "activates", sending "tremors" through our individual psyche (it "bubbles" up from the deep somatic core, through the unconscious and into our conscious worlds).

Here, with Jung's perspective, we cannot treat individuals as atomistic psychic blank-slates who get all their psychic material, as it were, from their "immediate" surroundings (parents, immediate environs, etc. etc.) -- this is Freud, essentially (Descartes with a couple of complexes and a libido). For Jung, we must treat the individual as a kind of "node" (for lack of a better term) in a larger somatic/psychic field, one rooted not only in the body, but also one which "feels" the tremors or vibrations of its own history, encoded in its very material substance (the weight of the collective psyche -- its *history* -- impresses on the individual in the *present*).

So much for explaining the common dream patterns of Jung, which are phenomena experienced while we're unconscious. What about "psychic" phenomena that happen to us when we're awake -- the "collective hallucinations" I spoke about above (which the UFO phenomena, etc. are instances of)? Can we find the conscious analogue of the Jung-style explanation?

As a matter of fact, something like this actually exists. There is an ancient Buddhist school of thought called "mind-only" (vijnapti-matra) which deals with the phenomenon of "collective hallucinations" (I refer the reader to the experts for the details).

In a future post, I'd like to explore this school of thought and see what we can come up with.

dialogue and the body

Plato regards dialogue as essential for the discovery of truth; solitary thinking is of a lesser nature than the (truly) dialogic (a conversation between two persons).

In the solitary pursuit -- but I only mean through reading and solitary contemplation -- the body is subdued, calmed, inactive, reposeful even. Part of the body is dormant; only 'thought' is active (of, if you prefer, only one aspect of the human soul is engaged -- the 'rational' part; the rest of this soul-body is dormant).

We also must distinguish between public discussion -- free-flowing, wandering, caught up in the moment and in the dynamics of the whole group -- and a true dialogue.

For truth to be pursued genuinely, and for Wisdom to be a love (or to be loved), the entire body must be engaged -- Truth is engaging.

The embodiment of truth requires context, valid context -- that is, proper situation. Here and only here, in the situation (and this is something Wittgenstein seems to have realized), are truth and being in union: the specific or individual in communion with the universal, the general, or, more precisely, the totality of Being (Being as a whole). Thus, truth and reference (which is a feature of language) cannot in this unitive moment be separated; only later, in a formal or "intellectual" sense do we do this (in the Schools, or in purely "academic" disputes).

Thus, when Aristotle speaks about a "real" vs. a (mere) formal distinction, this amounts to a recognition of the unity of truth-being, and the fragmentation possible by way of thought-schemes. To keep this distinction in mind is to keep blood flowing in the philosophical life, and in the intellectual act itself.

And so genuine dialogue is essential to the health of the soul (the body-soul, that is). Never should we forget, here, Nietzsche's admonition: throw into the trash all thoughts that descend to you while sitting in your study, sitting alone, just an inward-falling mind-only! Of course, what is meant is: accept ideas -- truly receive them -- only after their real embodiment, their real situation, unfolds -- lodged, they then are, in the particularity of Being itself, an individual-in-Unity, rather than regurgitated as indigested thought-material.

The body-soul is an organism. We can't forget this. It can get indigestion; it can get sick. Scholasticism is a chronic indigestion, a sign of soul-sickness (but not all Scholastics are soul-sick -- Thomas seems to not have been too distant from his body-soul).

Is it any wonder that we can easily summarize Nietzsche's whole "philosophy" as one of a great clearing out of the indigestion of his contemporaries, as one of soul-health? We don't often hear this about his thinking, and it's often overlooked for more loftier, more "metaphysical" and "ethical" notions (notions, just notions is what these readers of Nietzsche the doctor tend to have an abundance of).

It is fairly simple: go get an enema; swallow some roughage; clear out the pipes; go for a walk (" ... along a country path ...").

But we have to call into mind Rilke, the poet, who many times fell into himself. This falling was a healing act of the soul: in the dark reaches of the soul, we may also, beacause we have coursed the black abyss, find the light of day. Day follows night; the second day.

In order not to turn this discussion you read before your eyes into more of the problem -- more pure intellection, an escape from the incandescent reality of being-and-non-being, light-and-darkness, joy-and-sadness, a forgetting of the richness of embodiment itself -- we have to recall these paradoxes. Light-in-the-darkness; darkness-in-the-light. The falling into yourself that Rilke found is as much a part of life as the walks along a country path that we must take in order for truth to have itself uncovered from itself. Inward Contemplation (falling into the depths of your soul) and Dialogue (two souls communing towards truth, in belonging together along the dialogic path) are jointly needed. Their union is essential to our humanity.

And here, melancholy cannot be avoided, or ignored. It is the dark light that reveals.

On David Bohm and Where To Go With His Philosophy

Recently, I wrote this little essay on how I understand the thought of David Bohm and where you can go with it -- what adventures you may find within it (is this what Heidegger meant by "along a country path"?).

Bohm and the Unfinished Recovery of Somatic Epistemology.

M. Cifone.

The overwhelming crisis of our age seems to be, as many have pointed out, the deepening loss of a rootedness in our bodies, which, at the same time, means a loss of authentic community with the natural and social worlds. The inner and outer dimensions of life are falling apart.

Bohm called this cataclysmic shift in human consciousness “fragmentation”, and devoted his most important work, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, to an investigation and articulation of what he called a “non-fragmentary world view”. “If [man] thinks of the totality as constituted of independent fragments,” Bohm wrote,

then that is how his mind will tend to operate. But if he can include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken, and without a border … then his mind will tend to move in a similar way, and from this will flow an orderly action within the whole[i]

Bohm was obviously worried about the important connection between thinking and being, and this realization has led many to claim that a world view is also a way of life, that is, a being-in-the-world. This is something that psychologists like R.D. Laing and Rollo May also realized, and something that philosophers (and, we hope, scientists) are again realizing[ii]. Thought and concept are not separate realties from the reality of our bodies and ways of being. Physics, then, does not constitute a separate domain of inquiry from psychology, or philosophy, for example. These now-separate disciplines are deeply related: they have a common root in the body. A problem or deficiency in our world view (scientific or otherwise) is, therefore, a problem with our being-in-the-world.

So, this, as I understand it, is the problem of fragmentation Bohm wrestled with over the course of his life. To heal the soul-sick man, then, is to also reconfigure his science, to reorient man and his thinking back to his somatic roots. Most of Bohm’s work in physics, consequently, was devoted to clarifying the essential discoveries of modern physical science that point away from fragmentation and toward wholeness, and Bohm’s work outside of physics proper was devoted to achieving wholeness where it counts: in human beings themselves (in our bodies), as we dialogue, and, therefore, as we relate to one another in real life.

But what, in my opinion, remains obscure is the connection between Bohm’s physics of wholeness and his work on human dialogue and consciousness (what you could call the more “spiritual” part of Bohm’s work). It remains obscure because the somatic basis of Bohm’s thinking remains in the realm of thoughts and ideas.

In the now quite large literature on Bohm’s philosophy and science, what we often find is much talk of an alternative model of reality where, according to the “Implicate Order”, physical (material) processes and the thought process are unified, a world view in which “mind” and “matter” are not separate but form a continuum or “unified field”. We also find much talk of the relationships between Bohm’s thinking and the thinking of philosophers such as Whitehead who also take a “process” view of reality where the mind/matter distinction does not (or cannot) arise (as it does in the Cartesian-Newtonian world view). And we can even find “applications” of Bohm’s philosophy of wholeness in the corporate/business world [iii]. Put simply, we find much talk and much conceptualization and some implementation.

All of this is important work. All of it is necessary (to a certain extent, anyway). But all of it continues to miss the point, I think, which is not about “frameworks” or “process philosophy” or healthy business leadership at all. Nor is it about (mere) “models” of reality, important as these intellectual tools are in themselves. In my view, all of this participates (perhaps unwittingly) in the very problem of fragmentation itself, and does not in itself constitute authentic alternatives to it (there are, after all, authentic as opposed to “counterfeit” wholes, as Henri Bortoft likes to say).

As I understand Bohm, he was trying to develop a way of proceeding with natural science in which it is (at least) possible to relocate human experience—what I am calling “somatic” or bodily epistemology—so as to truly, authentically, overcome the mental/bodily isolation implicit in modern scientific consciousness since the seventeenth century and which now grips man in this age of what Neil Postman called the “Technopoly”.

Bohm’s most important suggestion, then, was methodological, rather than primarily “metaphysical”[iv]. So when Bohm talks about the interdependence of mind-matter or the “undivided wholeness of the universe” this can only have “meaning” in a somatic sense and not exclusively or primarily in a discursive or “rational” sense (which is what a fully-articulated “world view” really amounts to—a framing of experience with a series of logically related propositions). The “Implicate Order” is, then, a road map to something else—not a “metaphysics” that is to replace the (false) metaphysics of the old, Cartesian-Newtonian sciences with their mechanical philosophies. Missing this somatic basis you miss everything important and meaningful in Bohm, and continue to pursue something more like scholasticism rather than the real thing. Missing this you mistake map for territory.

While I cannot go into the details here (and they are just becoming clear to me as I study the matter more closely), I believe that there are larger (“macroscopic”) patterns in play that inhibit the recovery of the body within physics (and science more generally). By and large, the body (the source of all true creativity in science and the various human arts) is noticeably absent from most of what goes by the name of science or philosophy these days. And so we have, I suspect, a new kind of scholasticism taking hold of the majority of “work” on the fundamental problems of science and scientific methodology, or, in Lee Smolin’s terms, we are finding more “craftspeople” than “seers”[v].

It is hard to maintain a balance between somatic and discursive knowledge. The sociologist and cultural critic Pitrim Sorokin argued that there have been rare historical periods where humanity managed to strike up something of this balance (the Greece of Aristotle and the Europe of Aquinas are two of Sorokin’s examples[vi]), but given the overwhelming bias against the actual body in modern institutions of learning and teaching, it is easy to slip into the scholastic coma of mere verbal understanding, to confuse map with territory (the passivity of scholastic debates being an indicator here that you’ve already slipped into this deadening confusion).

This, then, is the challenge that Bohm’s work faces, and this inadequacy can only be overcome by serious somatic work (work with and in the body). I see the opening of dialogues with Asian, Native American and other traditions where somatic epistemology is prominent, as an important step here. The dialogues between students of Bohm’s work (or students of any Western natural philosophy) and Native Americans, Hindus and Buddhists is absolutely crucial.

It is this project of Bohm’s—providing a somatic basis for physics and other ways of human intellectual enquiry—that remains largely unfinished (and poorly understood) in my view. Conceptualizing the world as process and finding a mathematical structure that accords with this way of thinking (the physics of the Implicate Order) is not enough[vii]. Indeed, as Morris Berman put it in his study of this very question, “[w]e are in very murky territory here … no physicist I know of has managed to construct a methodology that directly involves the experimenter in their own experiment”[viii].

The only way out of scholastic ways of thinking and being is to first take seriously the lack of deep body knowledge in most of us who like to worry about “fragmentation”, and to find a serious somatic practice. The first step is, obviously, dialogue: between those trained in cognitive/discursive-style science and philosophy and those who have an authentic somatic practice. The next step is for there to actually be a serious somatic practice in the lives of those seriously exploring the problem of fragmentation.

This inevitably means a long hiatus from the usual academic and institutional quarters where these sorts of things are explored from a cognitive or discursive point of view (for example, working for a long time with Native American shamans, or with Buddhist yogins). It may not lead to any “results”, either, no ground-breaking treatises on “somatic science” (that would probably be the kiss of death in any case). But what this would mean is at least the possibility of a rooted science, a more humane science, beginning with its practitioners. Thanks for reading.

---

[i] Wholeness and the Implicate Order, p. xiii.

[ii] Even someone like Hilary Putnam, one of the most important thinkers of the “analytic” school of Western Anglo-American philosophy is now, after decades of logical analysis, leaning towards this “embodied” point of view (see for example his recent Jewish Philosophy as a Way of Life). This, is of course, a running theme in the history of philosophy itself, as the historian of ideas Pierre Hadot shows (Philosophy As A Way of Life).

[iii] I am thinking of Joseph Jaworski’s work on business leadership. See, for example, Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership (1998).

[iv] Though “metaphysics” is going to have to be reinterpreted here from a somatic point of view, the most clear of which we can find in the work of Bohm’s student Henri Bortoft (The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe’s Way of Science), and in the work of Morris Berman (for example, in the first installment of his “Consciousness” trilogy, Reenchantment of the World), both of whom draw on a large body of work: writers, philosophers, scientists, poets and intellectuals who've made profound contributions to this question. You get the feeling, reading Bortoft and Berman, that there is an entire tradition hidden from orthodox science and philosophy, a “heretical” tradition as Berman terms it. Bohm is certainly kin here.

[v] The Trouble with Physics (2006), chapter 18.

[vi] See Sorokin’s discussion in The Crisis of Our Age.

[vii] And, as I’ve said, it is merely instrumental to something beyond all this but back to one’s body—“the kingdom of heaven lies within” as Christ said in another context.

[viii] Coming To Our Senses (1989), p. 135.

moral "theory" vs. wisdom that employs theory

The question for all professional philosophers (one whose answer separates the wise from the mere scholar) is, does your thinking -- your philosophy, your contemplation -- blossom into a living presence in the world where thought and action must be united?

Professionals increasingly do not like to teach the old philosophers, do not like to teach "philosophical theory" -- but they often do not recall the admonitions of Nietzsche to justify themselves. Or else, they have nothing interesting to say: they simply have some ill-conceived distaste for 'theory' -- and that is because they have no true understanding of it (after you read Nietzsche, you must find the deeper understanding of theory in which his "transvaluation" is accomplished: that occurs when you transmute 'theory' into 'health').

Here is my reply to one of the professionals regarding the teaching of 'moral' theory, in particular. I try to demonstrate the point, rather than argue it out as a point (that would be bad theory!):

I think "moral theory" goes the wrong way. Under the spell of mathematical physics, it has preferred to go from abstract principle, to derived consequence (actions following from the axioms) -- or, perhaps worse, from particular instances to a general principle. The former, Kant (duty to obey the principle); the latter, Mill (the natural inclination is what's best, and that is our principle). In both cases, it seems, actions must be programmed to be what they ought to be by the moral principles -- Kant and Mill actually agree here. Nonetheless, the important question being explored is one that we all have to face: what is intrinsically valuable, that is, a 'good' in and of itself, that is not a means to anything else? what is the difference, then, between intrinsic, as opposed to instrumental, values? And the most important point that Kant, Mill and Aristotle all agree on is that I have to struggle against myself (or society) in order to be moral. But perhaps abstract principle is not the way to win it -- is not the heroic way (this is Nietzsche, as I read him). And here is where, I think, Aristotle hits this one on the head: 'happiness' (but this should be rendered, 'healthiness' or wellness of soul, which, recall, is the inner life principle for Aristotle -- hence healthiness) does prove to be intrinsically valuable (it's valuable in and of itself, and not as a means to something else), and his 'virtues' (their general character and specific kinds) are a kind of means ('vehicles' to be embodied) to accomplish it; but they have to be understood as rules of thumb rather than "universal moral principles".

So, as the content of Aristotle's 'virtues', on the whole, prove: there has to be an element of heroism to 'theory': that is, the building of one's character against the lethargy of self, the pressures of society and the confusions of tradition (theories and propositions that get converted into static ideals or idols). And we have to remember the concept of 'theory' in ancient Greece: seeing what is actually before you (i.e., 'truth'), or in Heidegger's words "the beholding that watches over truth" ("Science and Reflection", p. 165). What a 'living' conception! Thus, Aristotle's "virtue theory", properly understood, is alive: he points to examples from experience, and tries to generalize to some kind of rule of thumb: an athlete who works his or her body too hard will eventually wear themselves out and therefore end up destroying the very thing they seek, perfection in strength, etc. ... thus, moderation here ... and so on. Message: struggling to achieve some particular end will, the harder you push, end up destroying that very thing (principle of dialectic -- recall the injunction of Heraclitus that has come down to us: "follow the principle [root or foundation] common to all"). Thus, moderation is the best course of action in anything (does not apply to 'moderation' because that would be a category error, in classic Aristotelian sense: 'moderation' is not an activity but a quality of activities, 'activities' themselves being the actual things here). A 'happy' soul is one which is fully integrated, that is, one that is not coming apart in the sense of immoderation: literally, as above, the continual destruction of one's particular aims by struggling immoderately for them. "Aims" being crucial here: the health of the soul is the unity of the various parts, but obviously there are factors that are beyond one's conscious control ... but what we "aim" at, by means of our concepts or ideas, is exactly controllable by us (freedom to act) -- and here is where the central role of thinking comes into play. Contemplation, as an act which calms the mind from pursuing one and only one particular aim (which, according to the principle of dialectic is going to be ultimately futile, but, in regard to the specific aim itself, merely temporarily fulfilling/rewarding -- recall, again, Heraclitus: "all is flowing"), can be the only highest form of life, the ultimate happiness of man. Contemplation is not negation or avoidance -- that would contradict the other aims of life (body needs nutrition, etc.); it is just an acceptance of what is, a "beholding that watches over truth" (Heidegger again), which involves, obviously, the nourishment of the body (eating, fitness generally -- sexuality, proper digestion, etc.). Thus, contemplation has active and passive aspects to it.

Yes, I agree, modern theory is pretty useless; but the teaching of some of the classic ones can be fruitful, I think (as I've tried to demonstrate). This only if you can get "underneath" the ideas themselves.

reflections on human consciousness and the professionalization of intellectual inquiry: the special case of "analytic philosophy"

Professionalization is at the same time a forgetting, an anesthetization of human spirit, a plucking out of the wild vines from a primordially haunted garden of being (this idea of a "haunted garden" was beautifully suggested to me by A. Vasquez -- a fellow outsider). Our rootedness continues to be hidden from us, another wave of obfuscation from the ancient recesses of the history of human consciousness. This very description stinks of the forgetting itself, with its "consciousness" and its "history" -- almost sclerotic! Why was is it that some of the rooted called their encounters with Christ erotic? With the divine, a spiritual ecstasy? The professional class, with its separation of individual life from "professional" life, cleaned up the divine love, smoothed it over with distant talk of a far, transcendent-other divinity, a something else among other somethings. Idolatry: the mediation and eventual replacement of the divine with the Other, the Object-to-be-venerated, neatly dispensed and "maintained" by a professional class of spiritual technicians. Meanwhile, spirit is on life-support, confused, drowsy with a forgotten enervation of soul (lived under the surface), its energies continually pent up and released in awkward bursts of sexual fury, obsessive indulgences ... and the great specter of "progress" descends, a Promethean gesture of the deep longing spirit, and finally: the intensification of the "smorgasbord" effect (technology is a glutton's heaven).

And our supposed men and women of reflection -- the philosophers, the pursuers of Wisdom -- have, under this great weight of "progress" and calculative thinking and with this obfuscation of spirit firmly taking hold, our philosophers are experts in the forgetting. They are professionals, technicians.

Bruce Wilshire captured the sense of this professionalization in his The Moral Collapse of the University, devoting one full chapter on the demoralization of philosophers in academia as they become professionalized (he considers in some detail those of the "analytic" tradition -- a tradition that has, unfortunately, been my source of "training" and non-education for several long and trying years. I was to have discovered that I lived in an historical vacuum, amidst paper-cut flat figures of philosophy, who taught doctrines easily summarized in logical stick-figures, ready to be picked apart by the crafty novitiate and brought into class for show -and-tell for the enjoyment -- amusement -- of the rest of the debate-campers).

"All in all, academic professionalization entails criteria of evaluation of one's 'performance' in which the theatrical ingredient is uncomfortably large: one submits activity for evaluation from only a limited stretch of one's life. The full consequences, the meaning, of one's thought about life in not brought to a test by one's life itself. In a broad but significant sense, one is 'performing'."

And the form of this performance, Wilshire continues, is court-room litigation, a form that "fits no historical model of legitimate philosophical dialectic" -- indeed, it is antagonistic and antithetical to it, for it is about winning the debate, a rhetorical theatrics for the sake of making a good point, and closing down your "opponent" (p. 123). In other words, the very opposite of what Socrates, for example, was engaged in: a sincere inquiry into truth, goodness and, finally (perhaps ultimately), beauty. "If all this is true ... then there has been", writes Wilshire, "a return of what Plato and Socrates stigmatized as eristic, a mere disputation, something unworthy of a philosopher", for it trumps pure theoria -- a glimpse of the sacred structure of Being as such -- in favor of mere sound opinion, that is, mere verbal soundness, integrity of the discursive, rhetorical wit. A performance, theatrics for its own sake. Truth is long; truth is arduous; truth is dialectical: the movement of an idea 'round the great expanse of being, out towards beings back towards Being. Back and forth; energetic, erotic, poesis.

What is so remarkable about Wilshire's analysis of professionalized academe, and in particular his understanding of professionalized philosophy, is that he gives clear voice to the shadowy underside of these endeavors: the "mimetic engulfment" that is the cradle of human knowing and being, but whose obscure dynamics is imperceptible to a Cartesian ego struggling to see itself reflected in a world of logical figurations and physical magnitudes (the Sun of Reason is finally too hot for a Daedalus who wants to find his Soul in the rarefied Empyrean circles of the geometers). He throws light on the gnarly, writhing vines of life that course through our discipline, of which only the trimmed front-lawn is ever made visible in professionalism's hallowed argumentative chambers: "the university fails to understand what it is doing, and what it is abetting, because in the dominant conception of knowledge, truth about ethical relations to others is blocked or obscured [that is, "it tacitly assumes that "there is no truth about the human condition as a whole"], as is also our involvement in the moody background world--matters crucial to who we are and to what education should be" which is, as Wilshire says earlier, a leading or drawing out (the origin of education is the Latin educare).

These vaunted chambers, the chambers of the courts of disputation are just the foyer, with bellhop neatly dressed, a pleasant greeting on your way in and out; fiery speeches, with the fire gone out, read on in the convention halls inside, with polite applause after your 30 minutes of litigation concludes -- what a spectacle! the sic et non of wit-against-wit, the non subtly boasting at every misstep of the sic. Outside, in the back, and between the acts, there: the decay, the putrefying egos impoverished, their wills to power evaporated, they now decompose out in the compost heap, keeping the garden of Being, finally, well-nourished. But a confusion looms above these dead mind-bodies like a suffocating miasma: but what am I here for?

Wilshire quotes a passage by recovering philosopher-victim Abraham Kaplan:

"Students of philosopher enter their training with the most admirable philosophical motives. They come with intellectual curiosity puzzled about the foundations of science, disturbed by religious questions, agonized over politics, captivated by literature and art. All that nonsense is knocked out of them" (p. 125).

Demoralized; zombies without a history or conception of one, one more mechanical bit in the clock a'tick-tock: "the consolidation and purification of the secular intellect has been bought at the price of its contraction, and this powers the restless, vulnerable, "point-instant" ego-self. What we get is schizoid disintegration, says Nietzsche, while what we want is 'real, red-blooded life'" (p. 128).

There is no argumentative evasion of this unhealthy dynamic. There is only the break from it, to begin anew a life that tries to heal the divisions and to be comfortable in one's own body (bless that poor but great-souled ancient, Plotinus -- venerable and tortured to be a body. A model for our age.).

Life calls,

Proof or Existential Relationship?

Many have commented on, and investigated, the alleged proof of the existence of God by the "saintly and unusual" St. Anselm (Josef Pieper's description). The argument is meant to be a kind of rational reach for what is believed by faith but yet unknown to reason (what the Medievals called ratio, one of a few capacities or means of knowing we have in our possession). The essence of the argument is that in the very idea of 'God' is also the fact that God exists fully, so perfectly, that a denial of His existence is not only inconceivable, but, impossible.

And this latter point is absolutely crucial, for I am in agreement with a great many commentators, such as Hegel (as Pieper reports), who have pointed out that many of Anselm's critics (going back to the first, the monk Gaunilon) have simply missed the whole point, have missed the essential idea.

The first powerful reply to Anselm (d. 1109) had to wait until the 18th century, at the height of the Enlightenment: it comes from Immanuel Kant. He points out (in his first Critique) that Anselm's mistake was to take "existence" to be a predicate, arguing (along with Gaunilon, it seems) that what is conceivable is not in itself in accordance with objective reality, a reality that is independent of mind (that is, of thought or idea, which ratio draws from). I may conceive, with Descartes, that, by definition, a triangle is three-sided, and assert that to contradict this is absurd (inconceivable), but this does not establish that a triangle exists, nor does it tell us about the nature of its existence. Kant, characteristically, would continue: this nature only may be known empirically, and so would be dependent upon an investigation into nature itself; this way, we may discover things that correspond to that concept of triangle -- that is, this is a matter for science and not thought alone. All that such arguments tell us is that, hypothetically, if a triangle exists, then it must have three sides. What begins in thought, remains there forever, until we bring that thought to nature; here, science is born.

In other words, "being and thought are different", as Pieper says of Kant's main point. Let us bring back them main point of Kant's: that "existence" is not a "predicate". What does this mean? A "predicate" is that which we may say "holds of" a thing: we may say that, of a spring cheery tree in bloom, that its flower petals are pink; pink "holds of" the petals. We separate out -- in the mind -- the 'petals' and the 'pink'. The petals are the "subjects" of the pink "predicate". In this way, we think of 'petals' and 'pink' as separate realities which may, or may not, be found together. In other words, I can imagine -- and indeed, find -- petals that are not pink (the petals of a sunflower).

What of existence itself? Is this not a predicate? With these questions, Kant establishes a framework for Anselm's logic. And from this line of thinking, according to Kant's reading, there emerges exactly one subject whose predicate is existence itself -- God -- so that the denial of this predicate of existence to its subject God is, by definition, impossible: it would be like trying to deny that a triangle has three sides. The very nature of the subject is existence; existence is joined, inseparable, to this subject. "God", writes Anselm, "is a being greater than which nothing can be conceived". God's is the fullest possible being. God must, therefore, exist not merely in thought but also independent of thought.

But, Kant objects, existence -- being -- cannot be among the predicates of any subject. What the proposition that "the blossoms of a cherry tree are pink" really asserts is that "on the assumption that there are any petals, trees ..., etc. at all, then those of the cherry tree are pink". The proposition is such as to hypothetically associate one thing with another. That the subject exists at all is assumed and cannot be an implication of the predicate. Thus, to take that existence itself as a predicate is to prove absolutely nothing about the existence or being of the subject. It is an illusion of language. It is a circular argument. It is worthless as proof, and worse: it is a verbal confusion.

Says Pieper, who follows Hegel and Barthes: Kant misses the point entirely (Scholasticism, pp. 68 -- 70). He writes: "The force of the argument rests upon God's in fact representing a unique and incomparable case of Being itself", and finally that

"Anselm's line of argument rests upon the fact that the nature of the existence of God is different in principle from the nature of the existence of all other existences, such as that of the island [Gaunilon's chosen example] or of the hundred taler [Kant's example]" (p. 69). (Gaunilon said that we would be committed to the real, mind-independent existence of an "island" if we merely defined it as one such as none greater can be conceived -- which is clearly absurd.)

But, if we think about what was, perhaps, Kant's deeper point in saying that "existence is not a predicate", we may actually discover the possibility that Kant is in full agreement with Anselm.

Kant's claim that "existence is not a predicate" means that we cannot treat 'being' as yet another being in the world, which, like 'pink' may or may not be associated with a subject (a thing that may be in possession of various 'predicaments', to use the old scholastic-Aristotelian word).

If, rather, we take 'God' to indicate being as such and not another being in the world among others, then obviously we have confused the two. Again: if we do treat existence (being) as a predicate, then we have in fact committed a fundamental error which is to confuse existence itself (Being as such) with that which is in existence (individual beings). 'Being' is not something that could be "possessed" by beings.

In other words, the confusion is -- as Kant in effect is saying -- one between metaphysics proper (which, as Aristotle said, is a study of "Being as such") and physics (an investigation into the structure that existence has, an investigation into nature -- "phusis" -- as we find it). For the latter endeavor, "Being as such" is the ground, it is the place where the question, put to the things, keeps its feet firmly planted. The investigation into the things of nature goes on without calling into question Being as such. Here, we proceed empirically, out to nature with concepts and theory; as such, this endeavor is fundamentally conjectural and open. Purely logical deductions are no help as far as what exists and how it exists, in detail.

As for the former endeavor, the metaphysical endeavor in Aristotle's sense (one also adopted, reinvigorated and renewed by Heidegger) it is such as to raise a question concerning Being as such, to investigate it as the ground we walk on. But here we don't so much as ask what it's nature is (in the sense that we ask, where does the 'pink' in the cherry blossom come from? how does the pink arise? are there petals that are not pink?), but we question so as to draw ourselves into the question. In other words, the study of "Being as such" involves our relationship to Being as such -- it is, finally, an expression of that relationship itself.

And this is how we should, properly, understand Anselm's "proof", which, after all, is a "faith that seeks understanding". Anselm begins with the ground where his existence is rooted, and seeks to show that inasmuch as any being exists at all, there can be no denial of existence itself -- which, after Aristotle, we call "Being as such" -- and this is God. God, as Being as such, cannot be coherently denied for it is that which the very doubt itself would presuppose (the similarities to Descartes -- who, not coincidentally, restates Anselm's proof -- are intentional. They reveal how Descartes' own philosophical view obscures the fundamental role of Being as such, a theme both Heidegger and Tillich would later pick up on).

It is with this in mind that Tillich clarifies Anselm's thought. He writes, explaining the nature of the theologian's endeavor, and how religious experience was understood, in Anselm's time:

"experience meant participation in the objective truth implicit in the Bible and authoritatively explained by the church fathers. Every theologian must participate in this experience. Then, this experience becomes knowledge, but not necessarily so. Faith is not dependent on knowledge but, but knowledge is dependent on faith" (History of Christian Thought, p. 158).

In other words, what Anselm was doing was describing an existential relationship in which he actively participated, which relationship was structured by certain realities, such as God. But God represented a special entity, one which, in its nature, implicates all entities, the totality of being. God is understood as the culmination of a hierarchy of being (each of which is separated according to its relative finitude or specific form of "incompleteness of being"). Our relationship to this being is fundamental: it is a presupposition of all other realities; that is, God indicates Being as such. But, crucially, God is not to be considered another being among beings -- and this is the fundamental mystery of being which ratio, finally cannot overcome. When reason does believe this, when man has such an arrogance to overcome such a mystery (that Being is not another being-among-beings), we arrive at various errors, one of which is, as Pieper points out, "rationalism".

Thus, for Tillich, Anselm's is a "theonomous" way of philosophizing: "[it] means acknowledging the mystery of being, but not believing that this mystery is an authoritarian transcendent element which is imposed upon us and against us, which breaks our reason to pieces. ... God and mystery belong together, like substance and form" (ibid., p. 160).

And thus, as Pieper points out, we had in Anselm a kind of balance, or mutual reinforcement, between ratio and fides -- reason and faith. It is the two faces of God that allow their marriage, their harmony. The one face shows God qua "Being as such": that from which we depart in our attempt to know nature, the individual beings that fill existence. The other face, the mysterious face, is God as the perfection of Being: potential being fully and completely realized, which perfection is latent in all, but not now actualized in any one (the mystery is the mystery of Being and Time/History -- as in Heidegger's work of the same title).

Anselm's arguments are so-called, writes Tillich: "they are neither 'arguments' nor do they prove the 'existence' of God. But they do something much better than this. ... [they] are not arguments for the existence of an unknown or doubtful piece of reality, even if it is called 'God'. The argument is right as long as it is a description of the way in which man encounters reality, namely, as finite, implying and being excluded from infinity. The argument is doubtful and yields a conclusion which can be attacked if it is supposed to lead to the existence of a highest being" (ibid. p. 161-2, emphasis added).

Kant, and many of those who follow his thinking, are right to attack the argument as an existence proof. But, when we fully understand the point with Kant's premise that "existence cannot be a predicate", we are lead to a deeper understanding which clears the way for an appreciation of the existential content of Anselm's "proof".

The more appropriate question that must be put to Kant and those who may with vehemence attack such proofs as Anselm's, or the general idea of 'God' itself, is whether they ascribe to a far more general, two-fold principle: that reason is such as to, on the one hand, abolish any and all mystery and finally, on the other, "that there cannot be anything which exceeds the power of human reason to comprehend" (Scholasticism, p. 45). (The other errors would be traditionalism and fideism, which is a complete abandonment of reason and which amounts to a slavish devotion to institutional religion and tradition; and an "empirical rationalism" or "slavish devotion to science" (ibid. p. 73)).

And this latter part of this meta-principle of "rationalism", as Pieper dubs it, is the most serious: for it in effect closes off the freedom characteristic of conjectural science, and seems to, vaguely but perceptibly, indicate a boundary beyond which rational thinking cannot go: that some hypotheses are invalid, others admissible. But unless this be a vacuous and in the end a tyrannical pronouncement, we must know which ones? Answer, by the conjectural method inherent to science. In which case, we don't limit any hypothesis prior to its correlation to the facts of nature. Here, we render the meta-principle weak, potentially empty.

More than this: if we accept that there is a difference between an enquiry into Being as such, as opposed to an investigation of the structure of existence (which presupposes Being as such), then to which enquiry does this meta-principle apply? Does it rule out merely those hypotheses applied to individual beings, and so is a constraint on empirical enquiry? Or, rather, does it apply to those conceptions advanced in the questioning of Being as such? Even here, the regulative principle should not be "there cannot be anything which exceeds the power of human reason to comprehend", but should rather be "is it adequate to being-in-the-world".

In other words, the principle that restrains reason here (in the existential endeavor) should be itself a question that involves the questioner into their individual existence; the principle does not try to impose a conception of what is adequate to reason, it rather allows the concept to follow one's being-in-the-world. This is what Tillich means when he reinterprets Anselm's argument as a "description of the way man encounters reality". For Anselm, the description was adequate to his being-in-the-world.

But is it adequate for me? or for you? That is the question we face today, the more strongly in the light of science, which, for some, is becoming its own unholy religion (God is progress, or ecology, ...), as unholy as the religion of any institution (the Church, the Synagogue, the Mosque). We only know if we go on the path, follow the question itself, which, in the end, involves living. Live!