My Blog

Interviews on Aussie National Radio, “Philosophers’ Zone”

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 20:12:31 -0700

In September, 2010, my wife Kathy and I were in Australia for a conference on “Hegel and Religion” at the University of Sydney. Our friend Sebastian Job sent my paper for the conference to Alan Saunders, the host of the “Philosophers’ Zone,” which is a regular program on ABC Australian National Radio. While we were in Sydney, Saunders taped two interviews with me about Hegel. He’s a skillful interviewer, so the interviews will give listeners an idea both of the variety of opinions that there are about Hegel, and of my own way of understanding Hegel and (in fact) metaphysics in general. The first interview begins with a few hundred words that I wrote explaining how the shared metaphysics of Plato and Hegel (their conceptions of soul, spirit, and the divine) are based on our human experience, though not on the five senses’ experience on which critics like Hume and Kant demand that they should be based. This is the link for the first interview, and this for the second interview.

SPIRITUALITY AND THE “SHADOW”: A COMMENT ON “BEYOND AWAKENING” and political horrors

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 14:49:56 -0700

An ambitious and interesting series of online interviews is taking place currently under the rubric, “Beyond Awakening.” Yesterday my wife Kathy and I heard the host, Terry Patten, interview Jean Houston, the influential writer on human potential and founder of “The Mystery School.” Jean Houston spoke inspiringly about the current widespread interest in spirituality of all kinds, about various stages of mysticism, and about the increasingly active role that women are playing, worldwide, in social, political, and spiritual affairs. But Kathy commented, and I agreed, that something seemed to be missing from the conversation. Afterwards I posted the following note (expanded here) on Terry Patten’s blog, addressing both his interview with Jean Houston and a short essay called “Finding your ‘Yes!’” that he had posted. The essay is about the difficult challenge of saying “Yes!” to life and the world, in view of the great dangers to our species that we seem to be confronting currently.

Terry, I just heard your conversation with Jean Houston. Jean referred in passing to the "major backlash" that has occurred or is occurring, but neither you nor she addressed this backlash concretely. Nor do you do this in the posting (“Finding Your ‘Yes!’”) that we're discussing here. I hope you’ve done it elsewhere; I haven’t listened to all of your interviews or read all of your publications.

The George W. Bush administrations and wars, the official sanctioning of torture, the ongoing racist politics of Bush's party since the time of Ronald Reagan, and the congressional election that took place two weeks ago, must all be challenging to many optimists. By “racist politics,” I refer to the long-term Republican resistance to school integration, to open housing legislation, and to economic development efforts meant to benefit residents of central cities; and I refer to Republican candidates’ emphasis on “law and order” and punishment rather than jobs and treatment of drug addiction. Republican operatives have frankly acknowledged that these policies of theirs have been intended to split the New Deal Democratic coalition of working class white people and blacks. And in fact they have succeeded in splitting it, as many white working class people have been persuaded that blacks and other minorities, and government insofar it tries to help minorities, are their enemies. The current Republican campaign against the recent health care reform legislation is the latest phase of this long-term divisive politics. The “hate politics” of the right-wing media are simply one of the more audible manifestations of this long-term campaign to divide Americans against each other. “Kicking ass” in Chile, Nicaragua and (recently) Iraq and the “War on Terror” is another manifestation of a similarly macho, divisive attitude to the world, an attitude to which Democrats have also made their contributions (as in Vietnam).

Why, in a note on “spirituality,” do I rehearse all of this painful political history? Not in order to prove that the world is a bad place and that we can’t say “Yes!” to it. I rehearse this history because I believe that we can’t be spiritually free, we can’t truly say “Yes!” to our lives in this world, if we don’t address this history, these people, this "shadow" side of our lives. Your passing reference to "Mad Max" militarism that might result from resource problems and ecological collapse neglects these ongoing, present phenomena. It's not just future resource wars, it's ongoing, present resource wars (in Iraq and Afghanistan), and ongoing, present racist politics. I’m not afraid only of what the future may bring, I’m afraid of what’s going on around me right now. I agree, of course, that fear is not a spiritually liberating emotion. But I don’t think that true liberation can result from denying or trying to ignore our fears. It can only result from working through them. Those of us who fear Sarah Palin and her admirers need to deal now with those fears. And those of us who fear “creeping socialism” need to deal with those fears. Talk about grand-scale spiritual evolution that may or may not be under way, doesn’t speak to the present state of our spirit, in which (to judge from the people I know) the fear of hate politics and Sarah Palin, and the fear of creeping socialism, are often overpowering realities. If we don't deal with these fears, we're simply living in denial.

How can we deal with fears and hatred like these? I suggest that the only spiritually or politically effective way to deal with these "shadow" phenomena, is to “love our enemies,” by exploring and loving our own shadow side. Those of us who fear Sarah Palin (etc.) need to find our own inner Reagan, Bush and Sarah Palin--our capacity to deal with life in the way these folks do. We need to identify the germ of freedom that’s present in the desire to “be someone,” and in the desire to tell a story that makes us and our family seem okay. We all thrive on an appreciative audience. We all get a kick out of associating with and being approved by well-known and successful people. We all yearn, in one way or another, for the simpler virtues and human relationships that may have existed in the past. We all get a rush of satisfaction from publicly condemning people who seem to threaten those virtues, and to mess up the story that makes us and our friends feel okay. And we’re all able, without too much effort, to neglect the concerns of these people who seem to threaten and mess up our story. If we can acknowledge these specific desires and abilities in ourselves, it will be much easier to recognize Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin as our brother and our sister.

Similarly on the other side, those of us who fear creeping socialism need to find their inner Obama, their inner Hilary Clinton, who identifies with excluded minorities, women, and people who lack health care. Most people feel a desire to help others who are in trouble, say in Haiti, even when those others don’t look like themselves. Nor do most of us, at that level, draw a line of principle such that government shouldn’t be permitted to contribute to such efforts.

When we've found these inner “shadows,” on either side, we'll have the opportunity to love them as parts of ourselves, in addition to the parts of ourselves that fit into our usual defensive story-lines. Recognizing similar attitudes in others, we’ll have the opportunity to love Reagan, Bush, and Palin, and Obama and Clinton, and the world in general. This isn’t to say that we’ll agree with everyone else, on the particulars--but we’ll understand where they’re coming from. Nor will we necessarily cease to fear what others may bring about. But we’ll be fearing the actions of human beings, rather than the effects of a darkness to which our only connection is fear.

This expanded inner and outer sympathy, I suggest, is the route to real personal liberation. Until we've done this “shadow” work, we'll go on living in (acknowledged or unacknowledged) duality, pain, and darkness. In that condition, any “Yes!” that we may think we’re saying to life will have unspoken exceptions that will deprive it of much joy, freedom and light.

“Science and Nonduality”: The Many and the “One”

Sun, 1 Nov 2009 23:00:00 -0700

Last weekend (Oct. 22-25, 2009), my wife Kathy and I participated in the first international Science and Nonduality Conference, in San Rafael, California. “Nonduality” is an English word deriving from the Sanskrit “advaita,” which is the distinctive concept of the most influential school of spiritual thought and practice in India, Advaita Vedanta. Originating with Shankara and others around 800AD, Advaita’s central doctrine is that Brahman (or “God”) and Atman (“Soul”) are not, as we might think, two things, but one. This idea has been generalized to apply to numerous prevalent dualities in present-day thinking, such as mind/body, matter/energy, and so forth. So the conference sought to bridge also the duality of science and spirituality, bringing together prominent writers and researchers from both “sides.”

The conference was organized by Maurizio Benazzo, of Neti Neti Media, and (on the science side) Prof. Stuart Hameroff of U. of Arizona (Tucson). Prof. Hameroff is also the organizer of an ongoing biannual series of conferences at U. of Arizona on “Consciousness,” which attracts leading neuroscience researchers, philosophers, etc. Hameroff’s two talks at this conference were probably its most ambitious attempts to synthesize nonduality and science, the latter extending down to the quantum level. Hameroff collaborates with Roger Penrose, an Oxford University physicist whose The Emperor’s New Mind and other books have drawn connections between consciousness and quantum phenomena.

Penrose and Hameroff suggest that the quantum level may be where “Platonic Forms,” both mathematical and ethical, most directly affect the physical universe. As an admirer of Plato, I’m naturally quite interested in this proposal. I’ll have to learn a good deal more about quantum physics and physiology before I’ll be in a position to evaluate it.

I feel better equipped to assess some of the philosophical or religious ideas that were laid out at the conference. There was a good deal of inspirational invocation of the idea that “we are all one,” through the non-dual Brahman/Atman. As I’ve indicated in this blog and other writings, I have a lot of sympathy with this idea. I’m glad to see it being taken seriously in public venues like this conference. However, I want to emphasize that it’s an idea that needs to be handled carefully. If we assert it as a blanket truth that simply has to be “accepted,” rather than understood, we may erase crucial differences that I think should be respected and preserved, and are respected and preserved within the true “One.”

More than one person at the conference reported having heard people say that they sometimes feel guilty about insisting on their personal needs, in negotiating with others—in view of the supposed fact that the difference between them and the others is really just an illusion!

The difference between you and me is not, I think, a mere illusion. On one level it’s perfectly real, so that I shouldn’t suppose (for example) that your experiencing pleasure or convenience compensates for my experiencing pain or inconvenience. In this sort of context, it’s perfectly appropriate to raise issues about justice and fairness.

The metaphysical truth (as I think I’ve learned from Plato and Hegel) isn’t that the boundaries between us are simply unreal, illusory, but that they aren’t features of the fullest reality, what’s “most real.” Because the One is completely self-determining, it’s real as itself; whereas we, who are only partially self-determining, aren’t fully real as ourselves. But whatever degree of self-determination we do have, contributes to or derives from the complete self-determination of the One, and thus it’s preserved, rather than erased, in the One’s fullest reality.

So it’s important for us to preserve our sense of how “the world” of distinct people and things functions and ought to function, at the same time that we love and orient ourselves towards the ultimate, most real One. If distinct things were insignificant, why would the saints and mystics report that the One loves everything? In my own life, my newfound (in recent years) consciousness of the One, powerful as it is, doesn’t erase my consciousness of my individual past and future, and my particular responsibilities and decisions. If anything, it intensifies and deepens that consciousness—and makes it manageable, by putting it within a universal context of love and forgiveness.

As Rumi says, “there’s no need to go outside.” The Atman/Brahman, the Soul/God, is in every one of us, insofar as each of us has some capacity for self-determination. Since my finite self-determination is infinitely far from infinite self-determination, my awareness of infinite self-determination, or the One, does reduce the finite me to nothing, in comparison. (This is what the Sufis call “fana,” annihilation in God.) But at the same time, the fact that I have this awareness, that I have some self-determination, gives me infinite importance, as it gives infinite importance to all of us. (This is what the Sufis call “baqa,” dwelling in God.) So we nothings must love and nurture ourselves and each other, as the One loves and nurtures all of us. But in order to love and nurture each of us effectively, we must preserve a sense of how each of us is a “something,” distinct from the others. Even though, unlike the One, these “somethings” aren’t fully real.

I think this sort of “down-to-earth” recognition of our partial distinctness is found in every spiritual tradition that endures. Sufi sheikhs have families and jobs. Hinduism makes provision for love and raising a family, as well as for monastic life. Taoism makes fun of exalted pretensions. Christian monks pay their bills by making and selling wine. Plato and Hegel, both of them mystics, develop complex theories of love, ethics, and society. A person doesn’t pass directly from childhood and youth to spiritual maturity—there are intervening stages to pass through, having to do with learning the ways of the world, learning to think for oneself, and developing one’s capacities for love and for nurturing (and thus resolving any inherited “issues” one may have). If a metaphysics or a religious world-view neglects any of these stages on the way, it won’t really satisfy its followers. (Nor, probably, will it integrate well with the sciences.)

A Response to Robert Williams's Critique of My Hegel Book

Tue, 9 Dec 2008 12:26:05 -0700

Prof. Robert R. Williams has done me the honor of writing an extended review (Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Jan. 14, 2006) of my Hegel’s Philosophy of Reality, Freedom, and God (Cambridge University Press, 2005). I’m grateful for the positive comments that Prof. Williams made about my book (“a difficult but important book … original … provocative, challenging”). In what follows, I deal with many of the objections that Prof. Williams raised against aspects of the book’s argument. He raised quite a few issues, and I’ve chosen to respond to them in some detail, in four numbered sections, for the benefit of anyone who may be interested. I discuss and try to clarify what I take to be the key issue between us in section 1. I begin the section by analyzing and responding to some of Prof. Williams’s comments, and then I step back and sketch some of the broader background in the history of theology which I think makes it easier to understand the specific doctrines that I attribute to Hegel, and to which Prof. Williams raises objections.

1.

Prof. Williams’s main problem is with my treatment of Hegel’s conception of true infinity and its relation to God. He worries that my treatment threatens to turn Hegel’s theology into a Feuerbachian one, in which God simply is human beings. Prof. Williams acknowledges that “Wallace's intention at least is clear: Hegel is not reducible to Enlightenment naturalism or Feuerbach because of his unusual way of understanding human freedom and self-transcendence. Wallace develops his first thesis that finitude is only as a transcending or going beyond itself principally at the level of anthropology. In Kantian language, self-transcendence means that reason is practical, is capable of determining its own ends. Wallace maintains that when we understand Hegel's argument about the true infinite correctly, it provides an attractive alternative to Kant's 'two worlds' or 'two standpoints' approach to the problem of freedom, while preserving what is most attractive in Kant's conception of freedom, namely, [quoting me] ‘its notion of transcending finite natural inclinations through unlimited rational questioning . . . . the same argument also underlies Hegel's idealism, his philosophical theology, and his ethical and social thinking . . .’ (52). The problem arises,” Prof. Williams continues, “when the true infinite is equated with God, and God is equated with the affirmation and transcendence of reason over the inclinations. What is the content of the true infinite? Wallace repeatedly asserts that true infinity is only as a transcending of the finite.”

Let me point out before quoting Prof. Williams further that the thesis (which Prof. Williams says I “repeatedly assert”) that “true infinity is only as a transcending of the finite,” and the correlative thesis that “finitude is only as a transcending or going beyond itself,” are both Hegel’s own explicit theses, in the Quality chapter of the Science of Logic (Miller trans., p. 145 [bottom]). I quote these two theses with page references repeatedly, beginning on pp. 76-77 of my book, and I discuss them initially in the context of “Quality,” as such, though I certainly do follow Hegel’s lead in associating the self-surpassing of finite Quality with “freedom” (Miller trans., p. 138, top), and thus ultimately with human beings, with Spirit, and with God. If Prof. Williams meant to challenge my interpretation of these key passages in Hegel’s text, one would think he would have sketched an alternative interpretation of them, so as to make it clear why mine isn’t called for.

After his statement that “Wallace repeatedly asserts that true infinity is only as a transcending of the finite,” Prof. Williams continues: “[Wallace] claims that this does not reduce infinity to the finite because the finite achieves its own reality only through this transcendence. While Wallace sometimes suggests that relationship is what is fundamental to the true infinite (208), the problem is that relationship implies two relata, and this implies dualism, which Wallace, siding with Enlightenment naturalism and anti-deism, denies.”

I assume that Prof. Williams agrees with most interpreters of Hegel, including myself, that Hegel, too, wants to avoid any ultimate dualism. So my reference to “relationship,” which Prof. Williams cites, wasn’t meant to imply an ultimate dualism. (I won’t bore you with the explanation of why I think it doesn’t need to have that implication.) But it seems clear to me that besides wanting to avoid dualism, Hegel doesn’t want to side with Enlightenment naturalism, either. Nor, as a sympathizer with Hegel, do I intend to side with Enlightenment naturalism—beyond agreeing with its objections to dualism! I believe that Hegel’s conception of true infinity shows how we can do justice (which naturalism does not do) to what’s true in Kant’s dualism and other dualisms, without falling into dualism as such. This is done precisely by the conception of the (true) infinite as the self-surpassing of the finite—which introduces what we might call a “vertical” dimension (of “surpassing”) into what would otherwise be a flat, “naturalistic” picture, but does so without introducing a dualism of an inferior entity and a superior one. It’s able to avoid introducing such a dualism precisely because of the intimate relationship that it postulates, whereby the infinite is the finite’s self-surpassing. The main effort of chapter 3 of my book is to explain how this synthesis of the best parts of dualism and of Enlightenment naturalism’s monism works.

Besides describing me as “siding with Enlightenment naturalism,” Prof. Williams makes other remarks that suggest that he thinks I endorse Enlightenment naturalism and want to interpret Hegel as endorsing it. He takes pains, later, to argue that “Hegel rejects a non-religious, non-theological alternative of Enlightenment naturalism as fundamentally nihilistic….” This would have no relevance to my book if Prof. Williams didn’t think that I’m in some way drawn to a “non-religious, non-theological alternative of Enlightenment naturalism.” And at the very end of his review Prof. Williams asserts that “Hegel's theology is not naturalism, but pantheism”—again suggesting that he thinks I am identifying Hegel as a naturalist. It’s difficult for me to understand how Prof. Williams came to the conclusion that I endorse Enlightenment naturalism, as such, when a main theme of my book is that Hegel wants to preserve what he takes to be true in Kant’s dualism and his conception of freedom, in particular. Apparently Prof. Williams believes that a philosopher must either endorse “Enlightenment naturalism” in toto or reject it in toto. So that when I make it clear that Hegel shares naturalism’s objections to dualism, Prof. Williams concludes that I think Hegel is endorsing naturalism, as such. But Hegel is much more sophisticated than that. His project, which I sought to clarify and to celebrate in my book, is to show that we can combine what’s true in naturalism and what’s true in Kantian dualism. The introductory passages in the Encyclopedia Logic on Empiricism (i.e., Enlightenment naturalism) and on Critical Philosophy (i.e., Kant) make it clear that Hegel doesn’t intend simply to “reject” either of these, but rather to learn from them both. And his account of true infinity, which he sums up in the two theses that we’ve been focusing on, shows how we can learn from both at the same time: by recognizing a “vertical” dimension of surpassing (as Kant does with his dualism), while nevertheless preserving the unity of reality (as Empiricism does) by interpreting this surpassing as a self-surpassing, in accordance with the thesis that “true infinity is only as a [self-] transcending of the finite.”

(As for Hegel being a “pantheist,” I think Hegel’s repeated objections to such an interpretation, which was brought against him by vocal critics at the time, are both sincere and well-grounded, as I explain in my book. Pantheism lacks precisely the “vertical” dimension of the surpassing of the finite, on which Hegel focuses his systematic attention.)

Prof. Williams continues: “The true infinite is a unity, but how is this to be understood? Wallace suggests that true infinity means that the infinite is the self-superseding of the finite and that the finite achieves reality through its self-supersession. Consequently ‘God's freedom can at the same time be humans’ freedom (self-superseding) and realization.’ (208). This seems to collapse the divine into the human.”

To clarify: the point of Hegel’s doctrine that the finite becomes infinite by surpassing itself, and of his corresponding account of human life (as “subjective and objective spirit”) and the divine (as “absolute spirit”) in the Encyclopedia, is precisely that the finite or the human ceases to be (merely) finite or human when it surpasses itself in these ways. Thus when “God’s freedom” is “human freedom” (as I put it somewhat loosely in the passage that Prof. Williams cites), the freedom in question is no longer “human” in the sense of being finite, or of belonging to humans qua finite beings. So the doctrine that I’m ascribing to Hegel does not collapse the divine into the human as such. No doubt this is a fine point, but it is (indeed) crucial.

Prof. Williams continues: “…Finally in his summary conclusion, Wallace contends that the true infinite requires the non-dualism of human and divine being. This means that God is ‘the self-surpassing of humans’ and that humans, in ‘going beyond ourselves’ become God and thus in this sense achieve or realize freedom. We are 'with ourselves' and free ‘in God’. At best these formulations are extremely ambiguous; at worst they are every bit as reductive as Feuerbach's reduction of theology to anthropology: the infinite vanishes.”

These formulations are, indeed, ambiguous in one clear sense, namely, that they imply a more intimate mutual involvement of humans with God than unsophisticated theology generally imagines. (I’ll say something about a more sophisticated kind of theology in a moment.) I obviously don’t admit that it’s legitimate to say that “at worst [my formulations] are every bit as reductive as Feuerbach’s.” The infinite doesn’t in any way “vanish,” in these formulations, because they always assert the reality of something that’s beyond the finite. Indeed, they assert that what’s beyond the finite is the only full “reality” (in Hegel’s distinctive sense of that word).

I suspect that part of the problem we’re facing here is that there is a tradition of monotheistic theology, on which Hegel is drawing, which is more complex—indeed, more (broadly) “Hegelian”—than the theology that philosophers generally have in mind when they allude to the “relation between God and human beings.” In a famous passage in his Confessions, St Augustine tells God that God is “more inward to me than my most inward part" (III, vi [11]). Jelaluddin Rumi tells us that “there’s no need to go outside” to meet God, and Meister Eckhart makes similar statements. When one has this kind of theology in mind, it’s easier to see why Hegel’s account of the relation between God and human beings might strike us as “ambiguous.” The relation between God and human beings that Hegel has in mind, in which he substantially agrees with Augustine, Rumi, and Eckhart, is much more intimate than one would expect if one were to follow a simple schema of “transcendence,” with God on one side and humans on the other. This is precisely why Hegel makes it his business to re-conceptualize transcendence itself—as “true infinity.” He wants to explain the sense in which, as Augustine says, God is “more inward to me than my most inward part.” This is true inasmuch as God (the infinite) is the finite’s going beyond itself by going into itself, becoming more “inward,” more itself, or more (as Hegel says) “free.” This explanation of how God can be more inward to me than my most inward part doesn’t “reduce theology to anthropology,” any more than Augustine or Rumi or Eckhart reduces theology to anthropology—because going “inward,” as Augustine, Rumi, Eckhart, and Hegel (all of them ultimately drawing on Plato) understand it, is how reality goes beyond the finite, and thus beyond the subject matter of anthropology. So when Augustine speaks of what is most “inward” in himself, and when Hegel speaks of “freedom,” they are talking about something of which humans are (in some sense) capable, but they aren’t talking about anything that’s merely “human” (finite, anthropological). And thus when they associate God with what’s most inward in us, and with freedom, they aren’t “reducing” God to something that’s merely human (finite, anthropological).

But they are indeed associating God in a most intimate way with human experience. This is the paradoxical feature of mysticism which has always raised suspicions of “heresy” among literal-minded folks. They think God should be “up there” and humans “down here,” meeting each other (at most) in an afterlife. They don’t understand that what makes God so surprisingly present in certain human experiences in this life, as described by the mystics, is that the natural human being (whose experiences these are) has been deeply surpassed, in these experiences, by the inwardness or freedom that she has experienced. Prof. Williams accuses the doctrine that I find in Hegel not of “heresy,” but of being reductionist and naturalist. But Prof. Williams’s fundamental objection seems to be the same one that’s made by the literal-minded orthodox religionist: that Hegel as I interpret him—Hegel the Platonic/Augustinian mystic—has objectionably removed the “distance” between God and humans. The answer to Prof. Williams and to the literal-minded orthodox religionist is that the distance remains, but it’s the distance between the surface and what’s most inward, or between the (merely) human features and the true self and true reality, rather than the distance between two distinct “beings.” Some other prominent theologians who are on this same “mystical” track are Plotinus, A.N. Whitehead, and Paul Tillich, all of whom refuse to describe God as a separate “being” from humans, but none of whom (surely) is appropriately described as reducing theology to anthropology.

With this additional context before them, I hope readers may be in a better position to understand the apparent “ambiguity” of Hegel’s account of God as I lay it out in my book. It’s the “ambiguity” of a great tradition of western theology, beginning with Plato and including Plotinus, St. Augustine, Whitehead, Tillich, and many other serious theological inquirers. It appears “ambiguous” because it seeks to respond to the problem that Hegel describes under the heading of “spurious infinity”: that if God were a separate “being,” he would be rendered finite by his relationship to the other beings that are the world. So if God is to be truly infinite, we must think of his relation to the world in a different way from that of one “being” to others. The theologians I’ve mentioned all encountered objections like the ones that Prof. Williams raises against the doctrine that I ascribe to Hegel. (Tillich, for example, was accused of being effectively an atheist.) I’ve tried to suggest how Hegel can respond to such objections. But I hope especially that it’s clear that discussions in this area should begin with a recognition of the problem that Hegel is addressing (and that I think the other members of his tradition also address, in their various ways): the problem of “spurious infinity.” If our discussion begins with a recognition of this problem, we will perhaps have the patience to work through Hegel’s solution to it with care, rather than dismissing it as conflicting with unexamined assumptions about how God should relate to the world. (Here I’m guessing about what’s motivating Prof. Williams’s objections; he doesn’t spell his position out in enough detail for me to be sure.)

What I’ve explored in this section is, I believe, the central unresolved issue between myself and Prof. Williams. In what follows, I’ll deal with several additional issues that he raises, most of which turn out to be variations on what I’ve already discussed.

2.

Prof. Williams develops what he calls three major “counterpoints” to my approach. In the first one, he says that “despite his appreciation of and his intention to do justice to Hegel's theology, Wallace is at a disadvantage in realizing this intention since by his own admission he has not studied Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion.” (What I actually wrote, on p. xxx of my book, was that I “lacked time and space to deal with” Hegel’s lectures. Thus do urban legends grow!) Prof. Williams goes on: “At the heart of [Hegel’s philosophy of religion] is the speculative reversal and speculative intuition, which involves a philosophical theology which includes some version of the ontological proof in terms of which God is anundfürsichsein, i.e., the non-existence of the absolute is impossible. This philosophical theology also includes a concept of divine self-divestment and divine-human unity or incarnation. This incarnational principle is found in Hinduism, Greek sculpture (Kunstreligion), as well as in the revelatory religion. In short, the content of these lectures are not restricted to Christianity as Wallace fears (313-316).”

I gave a detailed account, in my book, of the worked-out “version of the ontological proof” that Hegel gives in—and only in—his Science of Logic and Encyclopedia. Hegel indicates in his Lectures (LPR 1:309/VPR 1:213) that he has given the “precise” argument in his Logic, and doesn’t plan to repeat it in the Lectures. It is very clear in the Encyclopedia that Hegel thinks that the third volume (the Philosophy of Spirit) gives us a systematic account of God as Absolute Spirit, and that this account ultimately depends upon the Logic. This is why I felt that I could deal with Hegel’s systematic thought about God, without exploring the lectures on the philosophy of religion. When someone gives us an integrated account of the Lectures together with the arguments in the Science of Logic and the Encyclopedia on which the Lectures depend, I will gladly grant that their account is more comprehensive than mine. In the meantime, I feel that my approach is a very defensible first step, and misrepresents nothing crucial.

Regarding incarnation, Hegel’s treatment of the subject in the Encyclopedia (§§ 567 and 569) strongly suggests that he regards Jesus Christ as the sole true (full, ultimate) Incarnation of God. This no doubt is the main reason why he describes Christianity, in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, as “the consummate religion.” My fear is not that Hegel doesn’t deal with other religions besides Christianity (he obviously does), or with non-Christian conceptions of incarnation, but rather that his account of incarnation and the “consummate religion” may not take sufficient account of these other religions and other conceptions.

3.

In his second “counterpoint,” Prof. Williams writes that “Although Wallace pays lip service to Hegel's doctrine that the finite is ideal, relative to and included in the true infinite—and recognizes that this counts against naturalism—he misses the fundamental speculative reversal and underestimates Hegel's rejection of naturalism. At issue is what is ground and what is result. What appears to be the result (God) is the logical starting point and ontological ground, while the original starting point (human freedom) is grasped as relative to and derivative from its ground. Without a sufficient appreciation of this speculative reversal—which philosophy shares with religion—Wallace's interpretation of the true infinite becomes indistinguishable from Kant's postulate and Feuerbach's projectionist anthropotheism: ‘The key to understanding Hegel's concept of true infinity . . . is seeing that his critique of Kant and Fichte . . . overlies a fundamental agreement with Kant and Fichte about the importance of freedom as transcending finitude.’ (124-125) Compare this with Hegel's stern declaration that ‘a true hallowing should nullify the finite.’ (FK 65) This cannot be reconciled with any view of the divine as simply the self-realization of human freedom, or for that matter with any view of logic as a study of human thought and so reducible to psychology.”

Regarding what is “ground” and what is “result”: for Hegel, the ultimate reality (as I think I make very clear in my book, starting with its title) is God, a.k.a. true infinity. Human freedom is relative to and derivative from God in that the finite (and thus everything that’s “human”) achieves reality only by surpassing itself, in true infinity. The sentence that Prof. Williams quotes about how Hegel agrees with Kant and Fichte about the importance of freedom as transcending finitude doesn’t conflict in any way with what I just said. Prof. Williams imagines that there’s a conflict here because he supposes that the sentence that he quotes is really about what he calls “human freedom,” and not about the divine as such. But this is a mistake. Freedom, for Hegel, is constitutive of God (absolute spirit). Humans participate in this freedom, to a significant degree, but that doesn’t make it merely “human” freedom. To suppose that it does, is to miss the point of Hegel’s conclusion that the finite achieves reality only by surpassing itself—that (in other words) the finite or the “human,” as such, is not “real.” Reality is God, and is not humans, as such.

To suggest that I might view Hegelian logic as “a study of human thought and so reducible to psychology” misses the same point equally. The subject matter of psychology is (relatively speaking) finite. It is subjective spirit. Theology, on the other hand, deals with subjective spirit’s and objective spirit’s surpassing themselves, in infinity, which in this case means absolute spirit, or God. As infinity, God is real. We humans are real only insofar as we participate in God (“participating” in accordance with Hegel’s other principle, that the infinite is only as the self-surpassing of the finite).

As for Hegel’s “stern declaration” in Faith and Knowledge that "a true hallowing should nullify the finite" (FK 65)—it’s followed in the next paragraph by the more detailed and more orthodox formulation, entirely in keeping with the doctrine that I find in the Science of Logic, that “in the Idea … finite and infinite are one, and hence finitude as such, i.e. as something that was supposed to have truth and reality in and for itself, has vanished. Yet what was negated was only the negative in finitude; and thus the true affirmation was posited.” (FK p. 66) What this last sentence says is that the finite is preserved, as well as being negated (surpassed), in the true infinite.

4.

In his third “counterpoint” to my analysis, Prof. Williams writes that “Wallace tracks the true infinite and shows that it provides the structure of the soul, the will, life, ethical life, including social and political institutions, as well as the relation between God and world. But surely it is different on these different levels and in these different contexts. The latter are more than simple instantiations of the same fundamental structure; they are its different self-specifications and self-organizations. … These different intralogical and extra-logical contexts are important; they are not examples which merely instantiate certain 'unchanging' fundamental structures.”

I don’t disagree with anything that Prof. Williams says here. He cites (without using quotation marks) my claim that “in the earliest categories Hegel establishes a pattern that the rest of his philosophical system doesn't depart from but only elaborates. (48)” I don’t see how this conflicts with Prof. Williams’s statement that later categories “are more than simple instantiations of the same fundamental structure; they are its different self-specifications and self-organizations.” “Elaborates” seems a capacious enough term to include self-specification and self-organization.

We certainly agree that the later categories and the Realphilosophie are vitally important. And as far as I can see, Prof. Williams hasn’t challenged my claim that Hegel’s account of true infinity illuminates what’s going on in the later categories and the Realphilosophie. This is what’s most important to me and to the argument of my book.

I’m grateful for the detailed attention that Prof. Williams has given to my book, and I hope that further dialogue between him and myself (not to mention other interested people) will illuminate these issues further. I don’t know any other issue that’s more central either to Hegel or to our understanding of our own nature and situation.

Simon Critchley on Obama and the Illusion of Ideals

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:46:25 -0700

A philosopher named Simon Critchley has an essay about Obama, entitled “The American Void,” in the November issue of Harper’s Magazine. It’s a classic example of the despair, together with incomprehension of ordinary human experience, that are characteristic of a generation of academics who have immersed themselves in Marx, Nietzsche, and their intellectual descendants.

Critchley says that in promoting the idea of a common good, Obama “dreams of a society without power relations, without the agonism [the ‘competition’-RMW] that constitutes political life.” But the result of such a dream, according to Critchley, is to “consign human beings to wallow in some emotional, fusional balm.” So the upshot, for Critchley, is that “we must believe, but we can’t believe. Perhaps this is the tragedy that some of us see in Obama: a change we can believe in and the crushing realization that nothing will change.”

Talk about nihilism! What Critchley doesn’t seem able to acknowledge is that Obama’s appeal to the common good is neither merely “emotional,” nor a “balm”—it’s an appeal to an ideal. Like many disappointed idealists, Marx and Nietzsche disparaged appeals to ideals. (Though the appeal of their actual programs depended, in unspoken ways, completely on ideals: of justice and brotherhood, in Marx’s case, and of personal freedom, in Nietzsche’s. But they never acknowledged this fact.) After the idealistic hopes of the 1960s generation were (to a significant degree) disappointed, many intellectuals followed in Marx’s and Nietzsche’s footsteps, becoming bitterly suspicious of ideals and talking instead about “matter,” “power,” “agonism,” and so forth.

Now Obama’s unforeseen degree of success has shown that many non-“intellectuals” (at least) are still open to the appeal of ideals. Critchley’s failure to grasp this simple fact—and the difference between intelligible and discussable ideals (on the one hand), and “emotional, fusional balm” (on the other)—shows how deep despair can go. Evidently Critchley didn’t find it possible to adopt Plato’s attitude toward ideals—that they can be discussed, criticized, clarified, and founded on the truth about human beings—when he joined the discipline of “philosophy” whose name Plato coined.

Another story of the sad abandonment of youthful ideals is that of Wordsworth and Coleridge, during the years after the French Revolution collapsed into the Terror, and then into imperialistic conquest. Let us be more patient with the world than Wordsworth and Coleridge and Marx and Nietzsche were! We have more experience of the durability of ideals of freedom, justice, and the “common good” than they had.

No doubt many of our high hopes for the Obama administration will be disappointed. Obama is human, and so are we. But the ideals to which Obama appeals will remain in our hearts, and in minds that don’t succumb to despair, to be tapped again.

William Blake as a Prophet for Today

Mon, 6 Oct 2008 18:23:27 -0700

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an Hour.
(Blake, “Auguries of Innocence”)

People think of the Romantic Poets, together with the German Idealists and the American Transcendentalists, as pursuing an “impossible dream.” There’s support for this judgment in the fact that two leading Romantics, Wordsworth and Coleridge, recanted their youthful views, and others died young and in apparent disarray (see Shelley’s “The Triumph of Life”). But I believe that the Romantics’ alleged “dream” comes closer to reality than our normal, ostensibly “waking” life does. For evidence we can turn to William Blake, who lived a passionate life of seventy years (1757-1827) and never reversed his course as Wordsworth and Coleridge did.

The theme of Blake’s later poetry is “mutual forgiveness.” It’s not difficult to see that we must forgive a lot in order to see “Eternity in an Hour.” To see the world in that way we must feel that, in some deep way, “all is well” in the world; and to feel that, we must be able to forgive the evil in the world. For Blake, mutual forgiveness is the most important message of Jesus. The importance of Jesus is not that he “redeems us,” nor that he “rose from the dead,” and will come again. Rather than on what Jesus, as a separate being, does for us, Blake focuses on how Jesus can be in us (“All deities reside in the human breast”: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell). When William Wordsworth told Henry Crabb Robinson that he had “no need of a Redeemer,” he implied a similar view: that Jesus is important not as a separate being, but (above all) as one who reveals the divine presence in us.

Blake takes a dim view of the Greeks, in his later poetry, because he associates them with the judgmental pursuit of “virtue,” which he takes to be in conflict with mutual forgiveness. And he takes an equally dim view of Judaism, which he thinks is similarly judgmental. So he’s not advocating “Jerusalem against Athens,” religion (as such) against philosophy. Rather, he’s advocating a brand new religion—of mutual forgiveness.

Blake is probably mistaken in thinking that the doctrine of mutual forgiveness is brand new. Greek “eros” and “cosmos,” and Hebrew “covenant” both seem to point towards what Blake is after, in that both are (implicitly) inclusive and unifying. It’s true that both eros and covenant can also be judgmental and exclusive, but ultimately both must recognize that exclusiveness prevents them from achieving what they (implicitly) aim at, which is inner freedom or self-determination.

How do eros and covenant aim at inner freedom or self-determination? Plato loves the Good because it’s by pursuing the Good that he can be himself, be self-determining, rather than being a creature merely of his circumstances. (See Republic book iv, and my “What is Philosophical Mysticism?”) The Jews—I strongly suspect—love Yahweh (and fear him) for the same reason. Not in order (merely) to become a “separate” people, but in order to become a people that’s guided by what’s good, and thus a people whose identity is its own, in a way that the identity of “idolaters” is not their own. The Jews reject “idols”—accidents of their natural environment—in favor of a single, invisible God because they think of the invisible God as less accidental, and more unambiguously Good, than a mere natural feature, such as an idol, can be. And thus the guidance of the invisible God is, in effect, the guidance of the Good, which is the key to being yourself, rather than being a mere creature of your circumstances. So in both the Greek and the Hebrew case, the guidance of what’s “higher” (the Good, or Yahweh) enables a person to be more herself, more self-determined.

It’s because of this connection between God and inner freedom that St. Augustine says that God is “more inward to me than I am.” It’s not that God is responsible for my actions, but that I’m more fully myself when I seek to be guided by God (the Good).

But the crucial discovery that we make in pursuing this project of inner freedom or self-determination is that a judgmental and exclusive way of following the Good or Yahweh prevents a person from being herself, or self-determined. A judgmental or exclusive way defines a person in terms of what she rejects—what she judges and excludes—rather than in terms of herself. So you can’t achieve self-determination by loving the Good or Yahweh unless, rather than judging and condemning what falls short of these ideals, you nurture every relation to the Good or Yahweh, however rudimentary that relation may be, in yourself and around you. This nurturing entails forgiving, reaching out, giving a second chance to those (including yourself) whose initial efforts at being guided by what’s higher are (even disastrously) unsuccessful.

Thus Blake needs to see that if the judgmental God whom he calls “Urizen” is to be a means to our inner freedom and self-determination—which will surely make more sense of this God than any other conception does—then this “Urizen” himself must embody the forgiving love that Jesus preaches. And indeed Blake does seem to see something like this:

To the Accuser who is
The God of This World
Truly my Satan thou art but a Dunce
And dost not know the Garment from the Man.
Every Harlot was a Virgin once
Nor canst thou ever change Kate into Nan.
Though thou art Worshipd by the Names Divine
Of Jesus & Jehovah: thou art still
The Son of Morn in weary Night’s decline
The lost Traveler’s dream under the Hill.
(“The Gates of Paradise,” 1826)

“The Accuser who is The God of This World … Satan”: Here, Blake identifies “Satan” with the wrathful God of the Old Testament, because of the way they both differ from Jesus’s God of forgiveness. But in the end (Blake suggests), in spite of the misunderstandings that are associated with names like “Jesus” and “Jehovah,” they’re all one. This “Satan,” “Jesus” or “Jehovah” is still “the lost Traveler’s dream”—what we’re all really seeking—though often under misleadingly “judgmental” and exclusive descriptions. Here, the often pugnacious Blake actually seems ready to extend a hand of forgiveness to the judgmental Urizen, whom he has most bitterly opposed. Which would be the ultimate demonstration of his seriousness in following Jesus’s teaching of forgiveness.

Blake’s vision of unity through mutual forgiveness resembles the vision of the young Wordsworth:

Of truth, of grandeur, beauty, love and hope—…
Of joy in widest commonalty spread;
Of the individual mind that keeps its own
Inviolate retirement, and consists
With being limitless, the one great Life;
I sing: fit audience let me find though few.
(“Home at Grasmere,” 1800).

When he describes the individual mind’s “inviolate retirement” as consistent with the unity of “the one great Life,” Wordsworth presupposes the same great forgiveness that Blake dreams of. As joy and Life, Wordsworth’s vision is clearly of this world, not of another one. Wordsworth later hedged his bets by appealing to a possible future state, in another world. But William Blake never compromised his vision of heaven on earth (“a Heaven in a Wild Flower, … and Eternity in an Hour”). Nor should we!

How Can I Reconcile Spiritual Connectedness with Politics?

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 11:36:48 -0700

I’ve become increasingly conscious, over the last decade, of the difficulty of combining an interest in politics with an interest in spiritual connectedness. As you can see from my postings, I’m committed to spiritual connection as my primary goal. I think I’ve made it clear that this isn’t just a theory, it’s by far the most rewarding practice, the most rewarding experience that I’ve had in my life. I can see no point in “compromising” it. Sure, I need to make a living and finish raising my great kids. That’s not a compromise, since because those things are part of my world, they’re part of spiritual connection, for me. If I left them out of my life, to that extent I’d be (spiritually) disconnected. Politics, on the other hand, seems, on the face of it, more “optional.” Unlike the bills and the kids, the New York Times and the political blogs are things that I can easily face the world without having even glanced at.

However, there is a part of me that wants to be not only a responsible dad but also a responsible citizen. After all, what kind of dad would do nothing to resist the threat that his kids will inherit a world in which human life is badly degraded, or impossible? So I want to be “engaged,” as some western Buddhists currently (and somewhat oddly) put it. To be “spiritually progressive,” as an inter-religious group led by Michael Lerner of Tikkun magazine puts it.

And this is where the problem arises. To the extent that I do get involved in politics, whether it’s by reading newspapers or by volunteering (as I did) in support of John Kerry’s presidential campaign four years ago, my sense of connectedness undergoes major stress. I become judgmental, condemning the politicians whose views and tactics I disagree with, and condemning their supporters, and feeling cut off from all of these people, as a result. As I said in my posting on love and inner freedom, this being cut off from groups of people not only makes me feel less at home in the world, it diminishes my personal freedom, because it means that who and what I am is determined by the people I’m cut off from—the people I’m condemning—rather than by myself. As some of us have discovered, this isn’t just a theoretical problem, it’s a very experiential problem. To be unfree in this way, is the opposite of ecstasy, and when you’ve known ecstasy, nothing else has much attraction, in comparison.

Last week’s political news made this issue as difficult for me as it’s ever been. John McCain’s television attack ads accusing Barack Obama of making a sexist attack on Sarah Palin and of having advocated sex education for kindergartners, seemed to show that McCain is willing to tell blatant lies in order to be elected president. Not just to neglect issues, and distract voters’ attention from them, but to radically misrepresent his opponents. This from a self-described “straight talk” leader. If this continues, we’re facing the prospect of a campaign season of utter confusion, and complete lack of dialogue on the real issues.

Where this leaves me is: in trouble. How can I “love” enemies like these, who are dragging my country deeper into an already desperate mess? So I’ve been working on this; and here’s what I’ve come up with so far. My ego would have loved to be Sarah Palin. She was basketball point guard, she had other kids panting to be on her “team.” She knows how to shoot a high-powered rifle and kill a caribou. Her family and a lot of her fellow Alaskans tell her that she’s wonderful. The ego is a glorious thing! When I was accepted to study at Oxford and at Cornell, when I got an NEH Fellowship, and when Cambridge University Press offered to publish my book, I found out what a well-stroked ego is about. Why wouldn’t I make a good Vice President, or President, if need be? As for John McCain: his family military history and his prisoner-of-war experience and the praise that these have brought him for decades tell him that he’s upright, honest and has paid his dues. So he doesn’t need to think about minorities, pregnant teenagers, and the unemployed. Nobody can know everything; those folks are someone else’s department. And he doesn’t need to be finicky about advertisements. Why not hire George W. Bush’s campaign hatchet men? They know their job, and, as we all know, “politics is a contact sport.” “My job,” McCain thinks, “is to be the wise-cracking, loving (to people I know), tough grandpa who won’t blink when confronting the Enemy down the barrel of a gun.” Once again, “the Big E,” Ego, is the name of the game. Don’t we all know how seductive it is? I certainly do.

As for the voters who are tempted to believe McCain’s and Palin’s ads: Like them, I too am very scared by what’s happening in the world, and I too would love to have a Leader whose values I felt I shared tell me that he or she will take care of our problems, which are really pretty simple and require only firmness of purpose to resolve. I differ from these voters in being aware of many of the historical disasters that have been produced by this kind of thinking. But I can certainly find the part of myself that thinks (or feels) that same way, nevertheless. For one thing, it affects my feelings about Obama.

When I get in touch with these parts of myself—the big “E,” and the child hoping to be saved—I feel less estranged from my fellow citizens. Misguided, many of them are; inhuman and unworthy of sympathy, none of them are. This regained sympathy will allow me, I hope, to read the newspaper and perhaps volunteer for Obama without thereby becoming cut off from part of my world, unfree, and out of touch with ecstasy.

Wordsworth, Mary Oliver, Suffering, and God

Sun, 7 Sep 2008 19:33:43 -0700

...For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods....
(from William Wordsworth, “Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” 1798)

Many of us have probably felt Wordsworth’s “sense of something far more deeply interfused,” underlying the beauties of nature and (in relation to them) “the mind of man.” A present-day successor of Wordsworth is Mary Oliver, whose imaginative attention, in her poetry, to shore birds, trees, flowers and dogs leads her to “elevated thoughts” (like W’s) that many of us find powerfully suggestive. Their meditations on nature constitute some of our most powerful modern spiritual poetry.

It’s important to remember, though, that Wordsworth in effect recanted the trust in nature that his great early poems seem to express. He did so as early as 1806, in his “Elegiac Stanzas” (better known as “Peele Castle”), in which he writes of

...the gleam
The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration and the Poet’s dream...
Beside a sea that could not cease to smile;
On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss.
...in the fond delusion of my heart.

It’s a “delusion” because, in the meantime, W’s younger brother, John Wordsworth, a merchant captain, has drowned at sea, and W has been shown how deeply un-“smiling” nature can be. The poem ends with the line:

“Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.”

That is, in place of the immediate (though perhaps somewhat obscure) fulfillment that he had experienced from the interfused nature and “mind of man,” in “Tintern Abbey,” W now is deferring fulfillment to a possible future time, when the suffering that he is experiencing at the loss of his brother will be set aside. He’s referring, in other words, to a possible reunion in heaven. W’s later poetry leans toward this more conventional theology of “hope,” as opposed to the apparently immediate fulfillment that he conjures up in his great early poems.

Mary Oliver showed a similar change of emphasis in her recent volume of poems entitled Thirst. Images of church, Eucharist, and prancing across fields before God appear there alongside her more familiar nature imagery. Oliver let us know that she was in mourning for her life partner, who had recently passed on. So a reader might understandably infer that “nature” had turned out to be an insufficient support, in her hour of need.

I agree that “nature,” simply as such, can’t provide what we need most. I’ve described my “mysticism” as based on love and on a deep kind of thinking, whose goal is freedom, being oneself. Neither love nor thinking nor freedom are immediately evident in nature.

But I don’t agree with Wordsworth’s despairing suggestion that his earlier attitude to nature was simply a dream and a delusion, “mere poetry,” as we might say. I believe that Wordsworth’s earlier attitude was more complex and more nearly adequate than, in his dark hour of sorrow and doubt, he gave it credit for having been. What is this “motion and spirit” that he wrote of in 1798, that “rolls through all things”? It was “in the mind of man,” initially. It impelled “all thinking things, all objects of all thought.” “Thinking” is playing a more central role, here, than W’s retrospective self-criticism, in 1806, gives it credit for. “Tintern Abbey” wasn’t simply about nature; it was explicitly about nature in relation to “the mind of man.” It could be read as suggesting that the mind of man finds (or begins to find) its own depth, in contemplating its relation to nature. So that nature plays an indispensable role, but isn’t sufficient, by itself, for the fulfillment that W’s poems evoke. It’s not clear why a nature that doesn’t always “smile,” but sometimes kills us, couldn’t nevertheless contribute to our self-knowledge in this way.

As for the issue of tragedy: In his great autobiographical poem, “The Prelude,” whose first draft he completed in 1805 (the year of his brother’s death), W spoke at length of how in childhood he was

fostered alike by beauty and by fear.
(Book I, line 306)

His examples of the role of fear in his education included the early death of his father. Some of his early poems recount wrenching stories of human tragedy (“Salisbury Plain,” 1794; “The Ruined Cottage,” 1798). So W wasn’t unacquainted with pain, before his brother’s death. I think it would be reasonable to suggest that his story poems about the sufferings of poor people were part of an effort, within him, to process the realities of pain and tragedy in general; which is surely something that the mind of man has to do.

It’s clear that despite these efforts, W wasn’t fully prepared for the pain of his brother’s death, which shook to its foundations the view of life and the world that he had been constructing for himself. The question is, was that view truly as fundamentally inadequate as his brother’s death made him feel that it had been? It’s noteworthy, to me, that in broadening her spiritual world, in Thirst, Mary Oliver doesn’t seem to have turned on herself the kind of self-criticism that W turned on himself, in “Peele Castle.” She doesn’t accuse her earlier work of being a result of “delusion.” Her new poems combine traditional religious imagery with nature imagery in ways that signal no regret about the latter. Perhaps Oliver is fortunate in being less inclined to “theorize” about life (and then revise her theories) than W sometimes was. Or perhaps she’s more aware that nature, in her poetry, was never simply a “refuge,” but always a symbol or a suggestion of something that goes beyond it. As nature is, for example, in the photographs on my website; or in Rumi’s poetry, with its profusion of flowers, mountains, and oceans, which are never “merely” flowers, mountains, or oceans, but always metaphors, as well.

How Inner Freedom Requires Love

Sun, 7 Sep 2008 18:10:11 -0700

How does Love relate to the “deepest kind of thinking” that I described in the previous posting, which leads to inner freedom (the ability to “be oneself”)? Many people suppose that they could have complete personal freedom, inner as well as outer, without treating other people in any particular way. Without necessarily treating them morally (for example), and certainly without loving them. We suppose that tyrants and other villains can be criticized for their immoral actions, but not (necessarily) for lacking inner freedom.

I think this is a mistake. It’s a mistake because the person who treats others badly, is making a sharp distinction between himself and the others. Himself, he’ll treat well; them, he’ll treat badly, when it’s convenient to do so. But when he constructs his life around this distinction, he constructs his life very much around his relationship to others. The character of his life is determined by that relationship. But this means that (to that extent) the character of his life isn’t determined by him. It isn’t “self-determined.” Instead, to a significant extent, it’s determined by the boundary between himself and the others; and to the extent that it’s determined by that boundary, which is the boundary between him and the other people, it’s determined by the other people, as well as by him. And this means that he doesn’t have the inner freedom, the self-determination, that he probably would like to claim that he has.

This is why all the great spiritual teachers tell us that we need to treat others well. They don’t tell us this because they happen to care most of all about how we treat other people, rather than (say) about our being free. Rather, they tell us this because they know that we can’t be fully free, as long as we treat others badly, because treating others badly while we treat ourselves well involves being guided by that all-important boundary between us and the others, rather than being guided by ourselves, and thus it prevents us from being fully free (self-determining).

So the paradoxical result is that by treating others as we’d like to be treated ourselves (the Golden Rule), we’re able to be ourselves, much more than a villain can be. This is what it means to say, as mysticism does, that you and I are are “One.” We’re One because I can only really be me, by treating you well; and vice versa. My being guided by the boundary between us, by treating those on one side well and exploiting those on the other side, prevents me from being me. So that when I really am me and you really are you, It’s because we’ve ceased to be guided by that boundary, in that way. For practical purposes, of course, it will still be most effective (most of the time) for me to be in charge of my affairs, and you in charge of yours. But neither of us will feel, as villains do, that this means that the other person doesn’t matter, and can be exploited at will.

Famously, Jesus tells his followers to love their enemies. Is this because Jesus cares most of all about love, and doesn’t care about the difficulty and inconvenience of what he’s telling his followers to do? Or is it because Jesus cares about our freedom, and about love as the only way to find full freedom? If he cared about our freedom, this would explain why he clearly thinks that loving our enemies will make us better off. And as many of us have discovered, he’s absolutely right. Loving our enemies, or at any rate trying to forgive them and to realize that they’re human like we are, lightens our lives immensely and lets us open out and enjoy life and be effective in it in a way that we can’t do while we’re preoccupied with the terrible things that other people have done and are doing.

Please don’t tell me that Jesus is thinking that loving our enemies will make us better off because God will reward us for loving our enemies, by letting us go to heaven. Just try to love others as a way of getting to heaven! I don’t think you’ll succeed in doing it, because the project of loving others as a way of getting to heaven implies that what you really love is heaven, rather than the others. Whereas if you love others in order to be free, this means that you’ve discovered that you are in fact freer, when you’re not preoccupied with what’s yours versus what’s theirs, but do what you can to benefit everyone. You’ve discovered the way in which truly being yourself makes the boundary between you and me irrelevant. You’ve discovered that your own freedom, and your love of others (as well as yourself), are really the same thing.

This, then, is why mystics report that they’re liberated—made incomparably more free—by leaving behind the normal human preoccupation with what’s mine versus what’s yours, and how to increase what’s mine, and so forth. When those preoccupations are gone, we can unfold our personal capacities out of themselves, rather than out of fear and greed. We all have glimpses of this, in our moments of pure “public spirit.” The mystic (the Buddha, St. Francis, Jelaluddin Rumi, Meister Eckhart, Saint Theresa) has nothing else.

It’s also (I think) why Plato connects Love very closely to deep thought and personal freedom, in his Symposium and his Phaedrus. Plato’s way of talking isn’t the same as Jesus’s or the Buddha’s, but the upshot in all three cases, when you think it through, seems remarkably similar. I wrote a couple of chapters in The God of Love, Science, and Inner Freedom about how love relates to freedom, in Plato.

What Is Philosophical Mysticism?

Fri, 5 Sep 2008 05:51:32 -0700

For me, mysticism is the doctrine that God and I, and you and I, are all, in an important way, One. Philosophical mysticism is the kind of mysticism that emphasizes the role of thinking, in this Oneness. We’re One through our deepest and most serious kind of thinking. Or through love, which is inseparable from that kind of thinking. So in response to the common assumption that “mysticism” is vague and irrational, philosophical mysticism aims to show how, if we take seriously the thinking and loving that we do every day, they point beyond the usual assumption that God and I, and you and I, are ultimately separate and distinct.

Involving thought and love in this way, my mysticism is obviously a matter not just of “theory” but of experience. For me, it’s an immensely fulfilling experience which I had barely dreamt of, before it came to me. For my first four or five decades, I inhabited what looks (in retrospect) like a spiritual waste land. In The God of Love, Science, and Inner Freedom I’ve described some of the experience—of pain, despair, love, and thought—that brought me from that waste land to my current frequent experiences of ecstasy. “Philosophy” should surely come out of, and enrich, a person’s experience. In recent years, mine certainly has.

How can God and I be One? We can be One if my effort to be myself, is God. Such a God isn’t identical with my physical body or my habitual fears, desires and ideas. God may involve that body and those fears and so forth, but God is called “God” because he/she/it goes beyond (“transcends”) them. So when I say that this God is me, I’m not saying that God is physically present in me or that God has the failings that I have. God goes beyond all of that. But a God who transcends those parts of me can nevertheless be present in me as my capacity for inner freedom, or self-determination: for being, or trying to be, something that goes beyond my physical and habitual aspects. In this way there can be, as the Quakers say, “that of God in everyone,” without this God’s being identical to anything merely physical or externally determined.

How can a person experience this presence of God within her? By observing her desires and thoughts, thus creating a space in which they can be reformulated (or reformulate themselves) to be more fully her own. This observing, and the resulting space, reformulation, “her-own-ness,” and opening up to the world, are God’s presence. For decades I was driven by fears and resentments that I couldn’t name, and that I consequently couldn’t observe, couldn’t get any distance from, and couldn’t reformulate. When I finally found some of this distance, with the help of twelve-step groups, of therapists, and ultimately of my wonderful wife, Kathy, my “self” finally began to assert itself, naming my fears and resentments and thus creating increments of distance, space, and reformulation. In this way, I discovered my capacity for freedom. Because it took so long coming, I don’t take this capacity at all for granted. Rather, I feel it as a gift—even while it’s effectively identical with (the real) me, which is finally emerging. I’m aware of the great disparity between what I was by “nature”—fearful, resentful, self-protective—and what I can be by freedom; and thus I’m aware of how I “transcend” what I am by that kind of nature. Consequently, I find it reasonable to think of this entire development as (in a significant sense) super-“natural,” and thus as revealing the presence of something that we can very well call “divine,” in the world.

This observing, getting distance from, and thus (eventually) reformulating my desires, thoughts, and feelings, to make them more reflective of me, is what I initially referred to as “the deepest and most serious kind of thinking.” Under the rubrics of the “soul,” the “self,” “freedom,” “autonomy,” and “authenticity,” this kind of thinking is what a great part of “philosophy” has been about, from Plato down to the present. (Plato analyzes it especially in his account of the soul, and of the exit from the “cave,” in his Republic.) We can see from many of Plato’s works that philosophy needn’t be opposed to a certain kind of “mysticism.” And if mysticism is “religious” and gives access to something that’s appropriately thought of as “divine,” so also does this deepest and most serious kind of thinking, which philosophy focuses on.

To the philosophical mysticism that I’ve just sketched, traditional religious believers (on the one hand) and atheists (on the other hand) often object that a “God” who is “in me,” isn’t the God that they believe in or the God that they reject. It’s not “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,” as Pascal put it. I agree that this God looks different. But I think this God in fact captures what people really care about, in “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” First, this God transcends nature, in the way that I’ve described. Second, this God gives freedom and love (I’ll say more about the “love” part, in later postings), and thus “saves” or “enlightens” us. I certainly feel saved and enlightened by my new life. And third, this God gives me, and thus the world of which I’m part, a fuller kind of reality, by making us real as ourselves, rather than merely as products of our fortunate or unfortunate circumstances. This giving of (full) reality is analogous to the traditional role of the “Creator.” In all of these ways, this phenomenon seems to qualify as (in an important way) “divine.”

If someone wants to call me a “heretic,” I have no problem with that. I don’t feel a need to be an “orthodox” anything. Though I wonder whether the stress that people put on “orthodoxy” doesn’t reflect their fear that without it, they’ll lose the God that they really care about; and I question whether that’s really true. I do want to insist that my experience is authentically religious. I don’t see how that could reasonably be denied. I also want to suggest that what I’ve found seems to represent an important middle ground between scientific thinking and traditional religious ways of thinking. My experience contains something that “transcends,” “saves,” and “creates,” and thus clearly deserves to be called “God”—but which doesn’t involve (“anthropomorphically”) projecting human characteristics onto a separate, divine “being,” and doesn’t conflict with modern (Darwinian) biology, and doesn’t depend on any kind of blind “faith.” The existence of this middle ground undermines the assumption, which is so widely made on both sides, of an inevitable conflict between science and religion.