Ridling Zaine. Philosophy: Then and Now. A look back at 26 centuries of thought

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

Ridling, Philosophy Then and Now: A Look Back at 26 Centuries of Thought

398

presence of Being in the face of human existence, by attributing to Being all

initiative and to man only the possibility of abandoning himself to Being and

to the things that are the modes of the language of Being. For Heidegger,

Being is interpreted better through the etymology of those words that

designate the most common things of daily life than through the analysis of

existential possibilities. Jaspers has seen the revelation of transcendence in

ciphers – i.e., in persons, doctrines, or poems – all of which can be interpreted

as symbols of existential situations and above all of limit situations, the

insurmountability of which, in provoking the total “shipwreck” of human

possibilities, makes man feel the presence of absolute transcendence. In a less

philosophically elaborate form, Being has been understood as mystery by

Marcel; as the perfect actuality that guarantees the existential possibilities by

Louis Lavelle, a leader of the French philosophie de l’esprit; and as the

absolute value that man encounters in his own spiritual intimacy by René Le

Senne, also of the philosophie de l’esprit.

Problems of Existentialist Theology

Existentialism has a theological dimension. Though Heidegger rejects

the label of atheist, he also denies to the Being of which he speaks the

essential qualifications of divinity, inasmuch as it is not the ultimate cause and

the Good. But Jaspers, in his last writings, emphasized more and more the

religious character of faith in transcendence. Faith is the way to withdraw

from the world and to resume contact with the Being that is beyond the world.

Faith is life itself, in that it returns to the encompassing Whole and allows

itself to be guided and fulfilled by it. Jaspers has even developed a theology of

history. He speaks of an axial age, which he places between the 8th and 2nd

Ridling, Philosophy Then and Now: A Look Back at 26 Centuries of Thought

399

centuries before Christ, the age in which the great religions and the great

philosophers of the Orient arose – Confucius and Lao-tzu, the Upanisads,

Buddha, Zoroaster, the great prophets of Israel – and in Greece the age of

Homer and of classical philosophy as well as Thucydides and Archimedes. In

this age, for the first time, man became aware of Being in general, of himself,

and of his limits. The age in which man now lives, that of science and

technology, is perhaps the beginning of a new axial age that is the authentic

destiny of man but a destiny that is far off and unimaginable.

For Bultmann, the theologian of the demythologization of Christianity,

inauthentic existence is tied to the past, to fact, to the world, while authentic

existence is open to the future, to the nonfact, to the nonworld; i.e., to the end

of the world and to God. Thus, authentic existence is not the self-projection of

man in the world but, rather, the self-projection of man in the love of and

obedience to God. But this self-projection is no longer the work of human

freedom; it is the saving event that enters miraculously through faith into the

future possibilities of man.

In these theological speculations and in others that are comparable, the

common presupposition of the Existentialists is recognized – i.e., the gap

between human existence and Being. There is either an acknowledgment of

that gap, with existence assuming the role of the demonic (the alternative that

Sartre and others have all illustrated above all in their literary works), or an

acknowledgment of the hidden participation of human existence in Being

through a gratuitous initiative on the part of Being.

Kierkegaard had earlier distinguished three stages of existence between

which there is neither development nor continuity but gaps and jumps: the

aesthetic stage is the one in which one lives for the pleasure of the moment;

Ridling, Philosophy Then and Now: A Look Back at 26 Centuries of Thought

400

the ethical stage is the one based on the stability and continuity of life in work

and in matrimony; and the religious stage is the one characterized by faith,

which is always a “dreadful certainty” – i.e., a dread that becomes certain of a

hidden relationship with God.

The ethical and religious stages correspond roughly to what Heidegger

and Jaspers call, respectively, the inauthenticity and the authenticity of

existence. Art is not as a rule recognized by contemporary Existentialists as an

autonomous stage; it is almost always for them an essential manifestation of

existence itself. For Jaspers, it is a mode of reading in nature, in history, and

in men the cipher of transcendence; i.e., the negative symbol in which

transcendence is revealed. According to Camus, it is an aspect of man’s revolt

against the world. The artist tries to remake the sketch of the world that is

before him and to give it the style – that is to say, the coherence and unity –

that it lacks. For this purpose, he selects the elements of the world and freely

combines them in order to create a value that escapes man continuously but

that the artist perceives and tries to salvage from the flux of history.

From this point of view, art would be a way of reshaping the world

beyond its factual forms, in order that it might show their negative and

troublesome characteristics. The directions of contemporary art that have

deliberately forsaken the imitation of reality find their justification in this

point of view.

Social and Historical Projections of Existentialism

The metaphysical or theological dimension of Existentialism does not

leave man with nothing to do. Once the nullity of the existential possibilities is

Ridling, Philosophy Then and Now: A Look Back at 26 Centuries of Thought

401

recognized, man cannot but resign himself to Being, which, in one of its new

manifestations in the world or beyond it, conducts him to a new epoch. Even

someone like José Ortega y Gasset, the leading Spanish Existentialist and

writer, who, in examining the social aspects of existence, has characterized the

present epoch by the advent of the masses and the socialization of man, has

halted at the recognition of the crisis and the total uncertainty that dominates

the future of man (La rebelión de las masas [1929; The Revolt of the Masses,

1932]).

On the other hand, humanistic Existentialism has recognized the positive

and the to-some-degree determining function that man may have in history. It

has insisted, as in Merleau-Ponty, on man’s duty to assume the responsibility

of an effective action for the transformation of society and, in general, of the

world that he inhabits.

Along this line of assuming responsibility, Existentialism has moved

toward Marxism, with which it shares the diagnoses of existence as the

primordial and ineradicable relationship of man with nature and with society.

In the Critique de la raison dialectique (1960; “Critique of Dialectical

Reason”). Sartre attempted a synthesis between Existentialism and Marxism

by modifying the notion of “project” that he defended in L’Être et le néant

and by utilizing the notion of dialectic as understood by Marx. The project of

which existence consists is not the result of an arbitrary choice (as Sartre had

previously maintained); it is, instead, that of a conditioning by the objective

possibilities that Sartre identifies (as does Marx) with “the material conditions

of existence.” The project remains, however, that of the particular individual

of a unique consciousness – but of a consciousness that tries to become

totalized; i.e., to enter into relationship with others so as to constitute, with

others, human groups that are more and more comprehensive. In this manner

Ridling, Philosophy Then and Now: A Look Back at 26 Centuries of Thought

402

it tends toward a complete and definitive totalization without appeals.

Dialectical reason would be precisely such a process of growing totalization;

and it becomes, moreover, the true protagonist of history and becomes that

with which the interior freedom of any individuals who participate in history

is identified.

From the defense of the freedom of the individual, Sartre has thus

moved to the defense of the absolute dialectical necessity of history despite its

being interiorized and lived by individuals. A historical project of human life

that tries to remove the characteristics of inauthenticity or of alienation from

existence – a project that may bring Existentialism and Marxism close

together – thus ends by losing, in this form, its risky and problematic character

and the awareness of the conditions and the modalities of its realization. These

features are also lost in the “transcendental project” of a new society

elaborated by one of the leaders of the New Left, the German-born American

Herbert Marcuse. While insisting on the requirement that the “transcendental

project” be “in accord with the real possibilities open at the attained level of

the material and intellectual culture,” Marcuse entrusts its realization to an

impersonal and contemplative Reason, which cannot but invite the “great

refusal” of contemporary society.

Having developed in different and contrasting directions, Existentialism

has furnished philosophy and the whole of contemporary culture with

conceptual tools, of which the nature and techniques of employment have still

not been clarified – as, for example, terms like “problematicity,” “chance,”

“condition,” “choice,” “freedom,” and “project.” Although these tools can be

employed usefully for the interpretation of existence – i.e., to orient

philosophical inquiry in the fields of epistemology, ethics, aesthetics,

education, and politics – it is nonetheless indispensable that the pivot on

Ridling, Philosophy Then and Now: A Look Back at 26 Centuries of Thought

403

which they turn, “possibility,” be granted its own ontological status that does

not reduce it either to Nothingness or to Being. It is indispensable, moreover,

that a positive datum be perceived in possibility, a datum that is verifiable

with appropriate techniques and that, while not offering infallible guarantees,

allows man to project and to act in the world with calculated risks and with a

prudent trust.

Idealism

As a philosophical term, Idealism refers to any view that stresses the

central role of the ideal or the spiritual in man’s interpretation of experience. It

may hold that the world or reality exists essentially as spirit or consciousness,

that abstractions and laws are more fundamental in reality than sensory things,

or, at least, that whatever exists is known to man in dimensions that are

chiefly mental – through and as ideas. Thus the two basic forms of Idealism

are metaphysical Idealism, which asserts the ideality of reality, and

epistemological Idealism, which holds that in the knowledge process the mind

can grasp only the psychic or that its objects are conditioned by their

perceptibility. In its metaphysics, Idealism is thus directly opposed to

Materialism, the view that the basic substance of the world is matter and that

it is known primarily through and as material forms and processes; and in its

epistemology, it is opposed to Realism, which holds that in human knowledge

objects are grasped and seen as they really are – in their existence outside and

independently of the mind. As a philosophy often expressed in bold and

expansive syntheses, Idealism is also opposed to various restrictive forms of

thought: to Scepticism, with occasional exceptions as in the British Hegelian

F.H. Bradley (1846-1924); to Positivism, which stresses observable facts and

Ridling, Philosophy Then and Now: A Look Back at 26 Centuries of Thought

404

relations as opposed to ultimates and therefore spurns the speculative

“pretensions” of every metaphysic; and often to atheism, since the Idealist

commonly extrapolates the concept of mind to embrace an infinite Mind. The

essential orientation of Idealism can be sensed through some of its typical

tenets: “Truth is the whole, or the Absolute”; “to be is to be perceived”;

“reality reveals its ultimate nature more faithfully in its highest qualities

(mental) than in its lowest (material)”; “the Ego is both subject and object.”

Approaches to Understanding Idealism

What Idealism is may be clarified by approaching it in three ways:

through its basic doctrines and principles, through its central questions and

answers, and through its significant arguments.

Basic Doctrines and Principles

Six common, basic conceptions distinguish Idealistic philosophy:

1. The Union of Individuality and Universality

Abstract universals, such as “canineness,” which express the common

nature or essence that the members of a class (e.g., individual dogs or wolves)

share with one another, are acknowledged by all philosophers. Many Idealists,

however, emphasize the concept of a concrete universal, one that is also a

concrete reality, such as “mankind” or “literature,” which can be imagined as

gatherable into one specific thing. As opposed to the fixed, formal, abstract

Ridling, Philosophy Then and Now: A Look Back at 26 Centuries of Thought

405

universal, the concrete universal is essentially dynamic, organic, and

developing. Thus universality and individuality merge.

2. The Contrast Between Contemporaneity and Eternity

While most philosophers tend to focus on matters of contemporary

concern, Idealists always seek a much wider perspective that embraces epochs

and eras in the broad sweep of history. In the words of the 17th-century

Rationalist Spinoza, they strive to view the contemporary world “under the

aspect of eternity.” Thus, in spite of the extensive formative influence of

culture, Idealists claim that their philosophy transcends the parochialism of a

particular culture; and Idealisms are found, in fact, in all of the major cultures

of the world.

3. The Doctrine of Internal Relations and the Coherence Theory of Truth

It seems natural to suppose, as non-Idealists usually do, that the

consideration of two things in their relatedness to one another can have no

effect on the things themselves – i.e., that a relation is something in addition

to the things or terms related and is thus external. On this basis, truth would be

defined as a relation of correspondence between a proposition and a state of

affairs. The Idealist believes, however, that reality is more subtle than this.

The relationship between a mineral deposit and the business cycle, for

example, is an internal one: the deposit changes to an ore when prices render

it profitable to mine the mineral. Similarly, it is part of the essence of a brick

that it is related to a wall or pavement. Thus terms and relations logically

Ridling, Philosophy Then and Now: A Look Back at 26 Centuries of Thought

406

determine one another. Ultimate reality is therefore a system of judgments or

propositions, and truth is defined in terms of the coherence of these

propositions with one another to form a harmonious whole. Thus a successful

spy is judged either a hero or a villain only in relation to a total system of

international relations, an accepted philosophy of history, and the moral

judgments involved. There are therefore degrees of reality and degrees of truth

within a system of truth cohering by internal relations, and the truth of a

judgment reflects its place in this system.

4. The Dialectical Method

Idealism seeks to overcome contradictions by penetrating into the

overall coherent system of truth and continually creating new knowledge to be

integrated with earlier discoveries. Idealism is thus friendly to all quests for

truth, whether in the natural or behavioral sciences or in art, religion, and

philosophy. It seeks the truth in every positive judgment and in its

contradictory as well. Thus it uses the dialectical method of reasoning to

remove the contradictions characteristic of human knowledge. Such removal

leads to a new synthetic judgment that incorporates in a higher truth the

degree of truth that was present in each of the two lower judgments.

5. The Centrality of Mind in Knowledge and Being

Idealism is not reductive, as are opposing philosophies that identify

mind with matter and reduce the higher level of reality to the protons and

electrons of mathematical physics. On the contrary, Idealism defends the

Ridling, Philosophy Then and Now: A Look Back at 26 Centuries of Thought

407

principle that the lower is explained by the higher – specifically, that matter

can be explained by mind but that mind cannot be explained by matter. The

word spirit can be substituted for “mind” or even placed above it; and

“Spiritualism” is often used, especially in Europe, as a synonym for Idealism.

6. The Transmutation of Evil Into Good

Nearly all Idealists accept the principle that the evils with which man

has to deal may become ingredients in a larger whole that overcomes them.

The eminent American Hegelian Josiah Royce (1855-1916) held that the

larger whole is the Absolute Mind, which keeps evils under control as a man

might hold a viper under the sole of his boot. Along with this doctrine of the

sublimation or transmutation of evil, Royce incorporated into his metaphysics

a point from the 19th-century irrationalism of Schopenhauer, itself a

voluntaristic form of Idealism, viz., that “the world is my idea.”

Schopenhauer, however, was probably the only Idealist who defended the

converse principle that good is transmuted into evil.

Basic Questions and Answers

In defining philosophical Idealism in its historical development as a

technical metaphysical doctrine, three most difficult and irreducible questions

arise. From the efforts to answer these questions there has been created an

extensive literature that is the corpus of philosophical Idealism.