Religious
Philosophy of the Enlightenment
Dupre
1/15/97
This
seminar explores a theme in the Enlightenment that influenced later thought: a
fundamental polemic against religion in the Enlightenment. Not there was less religious talk; in fact,
much writing about God came out of the threat of skepticism that rationalism
brought. Proofs, for instance, were used
to demonstrate the existence of God.
Deists were not just negative; they had positive affirmations, such as
that God exists in the natural order (rather than through special
revelation). It is the direction that
matters: it was important to the Deists that God exists; they opposed
atheism. Descartes, for instance, sought
to use human reason as well as faith.
His desire to escape the skeptism of the 1600's and achieve a certitude
that of math led him to his proof in the existence of God. Neither Augustine nor Aquinus had
philosophies of God: what God is. They
had theologies. Metaphysics was not
considered to be of what God is by Augustine and Aquinas. Contrarywise, God is salient in Descartes'
metaphysics.
Why
was there a crisis? The crisis of
modernity had been healed. A change in
the view of the cosmos--a theological problem with the world-system, during the
1600's created a crisis between science and religion. Aquinas had God as a prime mover, first
cause, from outside the cosmos. Given
Galileo, how can we show that causality comes from God? The idea of 'prime mover' was shot. Motion is not any more to be explained than
is rest. Diterot: perhaps the whole
physical world develops itself, since it is full of powers, into a system. This thought came out of the
Enlightenment.
There
was also the theological problem of space.
Galileo found that there are no fixed stars. The universe is infinite. How, then, can there be a prime mover outside
that which is infinite?
The
question of nominalism whose origin was in theology. Nominalism: God distinguished from creation
such that natural law is not predictive.
The
third element is the primacy of the human subject as the source of meaning and
value. The relation is thus reversed:
the human mind is the source of knowledge of God. So Descartes sought to establish the
existence of God from the human mind.
Hazard,
in 'The Dynamics of Secularization' examines the development of
secularization. He claims that in the
1700's, three forms of detachment (of things formerly united) reached a crisis
situation. Spirit, Reason, and
Imperium(vestages of the Roman Empire ). Nationalisms replaced the Imperium;
international law replaced unity in a Christian empire. A different kind of order emerging here. The theory of international law takes for
granted the idea that nations are independent.
This was not so in the middle ages.
Secondly, reason as it had been
understood collapsed. Reason had been
integrated with revelation and tradition.
It came to be regarded as being independent from revelation and
tradition, detached in general from any bias.
The development of the natural sciences in the seventeenth century
caused this change.
Finally, when the Roman Church lost
its territory when the nations became independent, it did so out of force
rather than voluntarily. Thus, the Roman Church came to be seen as too
interested in earthly concerns, while lacking an adequate spirituality. Compounding this change, nations became
spiritual entities (patriotism, nationalism).
Civic religion thus became public while church religion was relegated to
one's private life. The danger was to
Christianity, as the civic religions are not necessarily of the Christian
Church.
Hazard:
the first stage (1300-1500) of the formation of independent nation states. Second, the 1500-1700 period: the discovery
of science. Finally, from 1700 on, the
Roman Church's spirituality was marginalized.
That church could have done without its territory, but spirituality was
important. Nations developed their own spirituality.
As
long as folks are aware that we know that we are living in a world of symbols,
historicity is not a threat. In the
advent of science, the world became de-symbolized. The literal separated from the
figurative. The modern believer is
confronted with the opposition of his symbolic system--with that of science and
history. Either/Or. Science had no use for religion, so the
latter was abandoned. We now see
transcending symbols on a different level than science. But to see a symbol as a symbol is to deprive
a symbol of its historical reality. This
is none other than the change in the notion of the cosmos.
Compounding
matters, nominalism emphasizes the omnipotence of God: God can do anything,
even that which goes against human reason and judgement. Transcendent and immanent became separated. A distinction between divine and human
causality. This made it possible to do
science without theology. This was
radically new. Aquinas, for instance,
ascribed the same effect from God and the natural agent, yet from different
ways. The idea of an independent
empirical reality made it possible for science to refuse to speculate.
In
other words, God as omnipotent: there are no limits. God can save the sinner and condemn the
saved. Ochum began nominalism. The distinction between God's absolute power
and His ordained power: there is more in God's potential than the order that He
has chosen. This distinction came to
mean that these two were not just two distinct aspects but are
independent. In choosing a world that
runs on secondary causes, God so ordained and in this gave up His absolute
potential. A dualistic theology. The divine will becomes separable from God's
essence. God's power is not above the
order He has ordained. The nominalists thus tended to anthropomorphize God. Descartes, as a nominalist, asked whether
'2+2=4' is necessarily and independently so.
That it cannot be otherwise limits God's potential. God as reason is separated from His
essence. God can do only what He put
down in scripture. So the divine command is independent from God's essence.
Guyer: divine ethics separate from divine essence.
The
result was skeptism. Descartes sought a
certainty--God as proved by human reason, the source being his own act of
consciousness. He sought to dispense
with theology. A rational knowledge of
God is all we need. He does not question
there having been divine revelation.
Theology is the science of God; Philosophy is the science of Man. Unless it is proved by the reason of the
human mind that God exists and the soul is immortal, there is no basis for
certitude. That proof by human reason is
necessary to believe the revelation of scripture was the change here. The key to Descartes' project is to get the
certainty that God exists and is not an evil deceiver--this he takes to be
essential to having any certainty. Descartes seeks to demonstrate that the idea
of God that has existed is necessary for having any certainty about the
world. He bases this on his certatude
that 'I think'. Meditation three: that
there must be a cause of this idea outside of my mind, God must exist.
The
quality of indubibility that mathematics has is that which Descartes
sought. A method would lead to certitude
that God exists. Descartes invented
analytic geometry: the lines could be reduced to patterns. Mathematics is about relationships. Signs of proportions. The symbol having absolute simplicity does
not depend upon anything else. The absolute for Spinoza is the strive for
simplicity.
How
could the science of proportions be applied to all other sciences. And where is the proportion between 'I think,
therefore I am'? That thinking and
existence must coincide with certitude. Not taking one as causing the other: I
think ergo I am.
He is not saying that to think is to be in human thinking; rather, he
takes thinking to be simple, and thus absolute.
In God, thinking and existence are the same. This is why Descartes sought a proof that God
exists. That thinking depends upon
nothing else than itself is for it to be simple, and thus absolute(not further
definable). Thus it is through ideas
that simplicity and the absolute are reached but yet imperfectly.
Then,
Descartes concludes the existence of a thinking agent. Kant: what is the 'I'? The idea of the infinite which I can't
justify mandates the existence of an outside thinking entity. The notion of
casality is the key: to get from the ego
to God, the principle of causality must be invoked; not by taking God to be in
nature, as was earlier done. My idea of
God is one caused by my mind, but the idea of God is the cause of the truth of
everything else that follows. From the
self as a given, one comes to the idea of God.
Freud and Freirbach: God is a projection of the mind. This is cartesian.
The
evil deceiver possibility is a nominalist charge. That a perfect infinite being could not
deceive was Descartes' answer.
In
conclusion, the idea of God finds its foundation in the idea of the self. The human subject is no longer the effect but
is the cause. The relation of Man to God
has been turned completely around; the self must give a foundation to God. God is no longer the foundation. Secondly, the idea of God functions not to be
an object of worship or concern for its own sake, but as an instrument for
science. These changes resulted from
nominalism. Descartes, on the basis of
the self, assumes that the idea corresponds to its reality only of God and of
the thinking agent (himself). Key:
mathematical ideas.
1/22/97
Dupre's
thesis: the change in religious thought has survived.
Descartes:
this change is shown systematically.
Nominalism brought about the change.
It emphasizes the omnipotence of God such that God is totally
transcendent. Nothing makes apriori
sense anymore. No prediction possible
because God is not immanent in the world's order. Certainty can not be assumed in the world, so
it must be based in the mind. Certainty
in and through the mind as in mathematics.
Needed: that which uses mathematics and is about reality. He claims, 'I doubt, there I exist'. Dupre: difficult to deduce anything out of
this. I cannot be wrong about my doubt. Only if there is a God who is reliable can
there not be an evil deceiver (who could trick me into believing that I doubt).
Descartes'
foundation of God's existence is in the self.
This is to reverse the prevailing order.
Proofs that God exists came with this change. Not before.
From then on, the point of departure for any theoretical religious
belief is in the self. The idea of God
has to be seen in the idea of the self.
This is foundational. An inversion of the foundations of religious
thought.
Why
does Descartes talk about God? To
support his certainty; to make his system work.
A subordinate, functional role; the imputus comes from elsewhere. If we look at 'transcendence as a movement
inherent in the human mind wherein the mind moves beyond itself. Whereas transcendence had been the starting
place (in the idea of God--thus from how the transcendent is revealed and known
by us), it came to be put in terms of the mind.
Carl
Decker: contrasts knowledge of God based on revelation with Hume's natural
religion(no revelation). Hume: because
nature is a machine, God must be rational.
By taking a different starting point, the idea of God is circumscribed
to human (mind) terms. Dupre: what can
one do with an idea of God qua engineer?
The definition is very tight. But
hasn't it always been so? In the earlier
conception, we start from the idea of transcendence (it is open as an idea in
itself: the transcendence is a total openness that is never captured by human
representations). This must be
vague. This is not to say that earlier
conceptions of God did not have in them ideas of ourselves and relation to the
world; rather, it is that the conceptions were understood to be lacking in
capturing the transcendent.
Out
of the impass of nominalism (doubt, or skepticism) came rationalism. When the self, reason in itself, becomes the
basis for certainty, does not the notion of truth change? Truth is the correspondence of one idea with
another. Locke, for instance, is only
talking about ideas (the world of ideas).
The
inversion had practical consequences too.
Not just that God is defined and delimited to human reason. Practical attitutes, or ethics, became
identified with religion because that is what we think is worthwhile. Before the 1700's, religion differed from
ethics. Cassier: a religious ethos
superceded the religious pathos.
Religion had been thought to be passive; it is given, rather than a
question of action or doing good. The
doing good is a sign of the grace of God's election: Luther and Calvin. In the eighteenth century, this belief is
lost.
Diderot:
the only religious philosopher to shift from Deism to Theism.
d'Holbrard:
virtue rather than dogma. God as rewarder
and punisher. Dupre: but virtue is
described in terms of human society and placed as absolute. Dupre:
virtue as that which is useful to society as the absolute is
problematic.
Deism:
If
the transcendent is taken as the starting point, revelation is passive. The deists, in contrast, eliminate the need
for or possibility of revelation. Jesus
as a divine person is out of the question.
John Toland, Christianity not
Mysterious, : that which is not mysterious in Christianity is formed by
human reason. That which is not rational
is superstition. For Diderot, Voltare
and d'Holdbrant: revelation is uncalled for.
Not believing in Revealed Religion, the deists believed in God; they
were as adament against atheism as revelation.
Only Diderot became an atheist.
On miracles: they are impossible because they would destroy the order of
nature, on which God is based, so it is atheist to believe in miracles. The deists were convinced that God exists
and is immortal--these being necessary for morality (God must endure so the
immoral can be punished and the natural order not disturbed).
Mandeville:
Deism is the belief that there is a God and the world is ruled by
providence.
Dupre:
this is not the only kind of Deism. In
fact, the kind that believes of God only that he exists and punishes is not the
dominant kind of Deism. For instance, Faust Socinius, in the 1500's, was the
founder of Deism. He believed that God exists and in revelation: on the
functional, rather than personal, divinity of Jesus. What he eliminated were dogmas of Roman
Church Councils. A reduction of
Christianity to Scripture. Also, Tindal
was a rationalist deist wherein deism is not inconsistent with revelation per
se. He wrote: Christianity as Old as Creation.
Tindal pointed to the core of Christainity as being of reason;
revelation is not thereby excluded.
Thirdly,
a theory of revealed religion by John Locke: we accept revelation because it agrees with the tenats of
reason. The justification of revelation
is in its rationality. The core of
revelation is reason, and without revelation there would not be religion. The
Reasonableness of Christianity is a
pious book. Locke claims not to be a
deist, but reason for him is the judge and criterion of revelation, as for
Descartes, reason is the foundation of the idea of God. Dupre: For Locke, revelation is not reduced
to the deliberations of reason, but Locke claims that a revelation is subject
to the test of reason. Locke was
generally concerned with how we know (epistemology). Locke's criterion for truth is our ideas--how
they agree or disagree with eachother.
Dupre: if so, the intrinsic coherence of a narrative is its criterion to
reasonableness. But is criticism, thus
only external, of truth? No. Guyer: Dupre here criticises Frei.
Locke's
concern in The Reasonableness of
Christianity is whether and how belief can be justified. Wolterstorff claims that Locke has two rules
for the justification of belief.
First,
Never put confidence a belief as being true to a degree that is not
proportionate to the probability of the evidence. Key: a
proportion relation between the degree of trust and probability. Dupre and Wolterstorff: this relation does
not in fact hold.
Consider
Pascal: a probability of something very important can be used to gamble on;
trust in a belief is warranted over that degree which would be proportional to
the probability of(not the amount of) the evidence to the extent that the
belief is taken to be very important. So
an important belief could be held over proportion to the probability of an
evidence which is scant but having a minimal probability. Wolterstorff and Dupre: a minimal evidence
exists in the supernatural. Guyer:
Pascal would not disagree; he rejected the reversal (God from self) even as he
was a rationalist. So faith to him, as
well as for Kierkeggard, is moved by grace rather than by human means.
Second,
Locke takes it as a rule that where an extrinsic evidence is never full, yet is
of in a matter of importance, trust is rationally justified. Unlike Pascal, this is not gambling. Dupre: but this implies the following
conclusion: 'I don't think that of the belief to be true, but I accept it as
true because it is an important matter.'
For Locke, the importance of a matter justifies infinite investigation,
rather than doubt, even if there is little evidence.
Locke
on miracles: Locke defines a miracle as a sensible operation as above
comprehension and contrary to the state of nature and taken to be divine (The Reasonableness of Christianity, p.
79.). Of the historical miracles, the
key is the chain thereof. Dupre: why
doesn't Lock speak of nature, beginning with the regularity of it rather than
the irregularities such as miracles? See p. 238. Locke starts out with nature; from it God can
be known. But Man has been perversed due
to the Fall and the priestcraft(superstition, hiding the knowledge of
God). So nature is no longer adequate
for Man to come to know God's way, so God sent Christ.
This
is refutted by Lessing: History has to be distrusted, so too the miracles
claimed therein. Stories can't be taken
as having absolute truth. Lessing
believes in the resurrection of Jesus.
Dupre: how can a truth of fact which Lessing claims is contingent be
used to establish a truth of reason which is universal? Going from miracles to revelation is
problematic, according to Dupre.
Hume:
a miracle presumes a law. But a law is based only on empirical
observation. That which is observed
could change in the future, thus so could the law, changing the status of miracles
taken as true and those taken as false.
So Hume argues against going from miracles to revelation.
Locke
claims that the intrinsic (moral) quality of the Christian message has made the
religion successful against terrible odds. Its success was thus not due to the
miracles. Dupre: but Locke himself
argues against his own claim here when he maintains that whereas the monotheism
of the Hebrews had remained hidden due to the closed nature of the cult,
Christianity could spread because it has been open to the outside (e.g.
missionary work). So is this to say that
the success of Christianity has not been due to the intrinsic value and
transcendence of its message?
Another
instance of Locke undercutting his own argument: the message of the Gospel can
be found in other religions, because it is rational (rationally
justified). Dupre: But then could not
one find the message then oneself, using reason? Locke: No, human reason is so weak that
revelation is necessary. Dupre: but
Locke's project here is on the justification of belief on the basis of
reason.
1/29/97
Deism
has several manifestations. By the
mid-1600's, it meant a Natural Religion opposed to revelation. Locke is not really a deist. The other form of Deism as a kind of
rationalism. Supernatural isn't
necessary. Tindel, for instance, claims
that a natural religion has existed independent of Christianity. The other Deism: natural religion is the
opposite of Christianity. So, the two
manifestations differ on whether natural religion is concruent with
Christianity or contrary to it.
Behind
the question of whether Locke is a Deist because he seems to assign an
independence to natural religion., is the question of whether the relation of
natural religion to supernatural revelation has been worked out.
Is
the god of Deism the god of reason or the a degenerated form of the Christian
deity? The rationalist character--the
immanent character, of god is manifest in the practical domain in the
eighteenth century. Voltaire: religion is morals comon to the human
race. Cassier: a religious ethos
superceded the religious pathos, and was replaced in the Enlightenment by an
active morality. What is the point at which Deism differs essentially from that
which proceded it? Rational reflection
as distinct from a rationalist ddeity.
Dupre: God had been presented as an idea as given. The Deists claimed that the idea of God is
the conclusion of an argument rather than the starting point. An idea that precedes philosophy as opposed
to an idea of philosophy. The idea of
God independent in its reality from Philosophy (human works). The philosopher finds the idea that is aleady
there. Aquinas, for instance, does not
give an argument for the existence of the idea of God; rather, he takes the
reality of the idea to be a given. God
for Aquinas is not an object for metaphysics.
He proved five ways that philosophy can lead to the idea of God, but
this is different than asking: what is God, which Aquinas takes as a given.
With
the Enlightenemnt, reason sets the limits on the idea of God.
Reason is the full foundation of the idea of God. This turned around the view of God as the
foundation of reason.
To
Aquinas, the cosmos is a filled with divinity. A theophanous. This is different than assuming that the universe
is godless and on the basis of this prove that God exists. Descartes is at the time of this turn. He speaks of the idea of the infinite being
the given whereby one gets the idea of finitude. The idea of God I could only have gotten from
elsewhere. The Cambridge Platonists
began with this. Berkeley : there are no objects; there are
only ideas. The Deists do this with
God.
With
the emergence of the concept of deism came the emergence of the concept of
nature. Deism justifies its claims in
equating rationality with nature. Nature
follows its unchanging laws. The concept
of Nature came with the supremicy of Reason.
This equation was made in Stoicism.
Peter
Gray's Enlightenment: Stoicism
detached itself from Christianity in the seventeenth century. The independece of reason and nature from
theology. Nature as the only concrete
manifestation and foundation of God's existence. Nature came to be a substitute for God, and
then replaced God. 1643: God looks to
Nature. Thomas Brown. Seventeenth century defense of nature came
out of Emmanuel College of Cambridge University. It came out of the Calvinists, as against the
Papists and the Armanians(less pre-destination emphasis). John Aerosmith: no free-will.
Nathanial Coverwill, too. Strict
Calvinists. Ironically, they provided
the concepts of nature and reason with substance.other than that it is
corrupt/fallen. The purpose was to
vindicate the use of reason in religion, after the Deists had claimed that god
is nature. Coverwell: the primary object
of reason is nature. Does the natural
light of reason eclipse the light of grace?
Nature is that reagular line that God has drawn into being--order. A fixed kind of providence, as laws of
nature. Nature as a fixed kind of
providence. Also, Nature is that which
is inner-mostpresent in all created things--as immanent meaning. Nature as human nature becomes the light of
reason. Reason as a form of nature. Coverwell gives the mind a mystical
aspect. God's image in the person is
human nature. He was not a Platonist,
however. The divine light as
participated in human nature. The human
mind is the divine presence that dominates Nature. The human mind, as a participation in the divine,
dominates natural law(the physical laws).
The physical laws come from reason which is the presence of God in the
human mind.
Stoicism:
nature is divine. So the Christian
Stoics would use this view of reason and nature to claim that nature (as divine)
is independent of the idea of God. The
identification of nature and the divine.
Mandeville:
that Nature is deprived of its providencial design; providence--that everything
in nature is done for a purpose. Providence : the wisdom of
a divine being outside of creation.
Nature without providence is to say that the physical laws are not
subject to the intentions of an external divine being.
Shaftsbury
is the link from Mandeville. In 1643 was
Thomas Brown's text(Nature is the manifestation of God). A brutal opposition between reason and faith
such that he goes with faith. Deism can be seen by 1682 with John Driden. The
Deists claimed to deduce the idea of God.
He asked: how can religion alone be salvific? The bible is corrupt. Reason is not sufficient. So he goes with tradition. No alternative to a tradition. He had to admit to the Roman Church's power
to interpret scripture.
So,
Deism as the independence of nature from God was gaining ground in England . Deism got its break with Shaftesbury.
1701, he wrote an essay called, A Letter on Enthusaism. Enthusaists were viewed as nutty mystics,
like charismatic Christians today. Whereas
Locke claimed that the mind is a blank screen, Shaftsbury saw a light in the
mind--that the content of the mind is real, rather than being a reflection of
things in the world. Shaftesbury claimed
that people are afraid of a god who is perfect goodness. The view of God had
been spoiled due to anthropomorphic qualities being ascribed to him such that
he would be feared. That God is a
jealous being. But how could God be
jealous when it is everything. How could
God have favourtism? Consider morals to
find what can be attributed to God. God
is good, so try to be good and think of God as that. Dupre: the whole question of God is left to
Morality. Shaftesbury gives praise to
revelation, but does he see anything in it that goes beyond Nature? Hume claimed that Shaftesbury did the Church of Englad
Locke: as for morality, he is a deist. But he admits to revelation in much of his
text.
What
is Deism? Is it merely to say that
revelation agrees with reason? The fact
that he accepts miracles means that he is not betting on the unchangeability of
the laws of nature. Miracles are not
irrational. Internal evidence of the
gospel Locke finds in rationality. But
this is not to disallow the supernatural (so Christ can be seen as the
Messiah). Locke: the gospel conforms
with reason. Is this to say that the
gospel can be seen in nature itself? Is
this to say that revelation is nothing?
Locke answered both questions affirmatively with regard to
morality. Toland: religion conforms to
reason. Christianity can contain nothing
contrary to reason (Locke agrees) or above it (Locke disagreed). Locke's Reason: logic. His notion of reason is narrow. Locke claims that the resurrection is not
contrary to reason.
2/5/97
Locke,
The Reasonableness of Christianity:
Rationality
as against revelation. Toland, on the
basis of this text, claimed that there can be nothing against reason in
revelation and that there can be nothing beyond reason. Dupre: he is wrong on the latter.
What
does it mean that the revelation must conform to reason? It presumes that there is no contradiction
between them. But to claim that
revelation can't go beyond reason is to take the mind as the arbritrator of
truth. The mind, rather than God, being
the starting point.
During
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a narrowing of the meaning of
Reason. Aquinas: Reason not just as
common sense but as an openness to revelation.
After Descartes, Reason is seen as logical. Reason as an agent of
intellect before Aquinas. With
Descartes, Reason was taken as an active.
Locke's Reason is not open to revelation but is its arbitrator. The human mind can't admit of anything beyond
Reason. The ambiguity in Locke: he
defines the notion of Reason (as not being open to revelation) in such as way
as to undercut revelation. That the test of revelation/truth is reason is not
to say that there is nothing in revelation is not conformable to reason. The latter is implied by Locke and claimed by
his follower, Toland.
A
separation between the supernatural and reason in the fourteenth century. This was the root of Nominalism as well as
the problem of revelation coming under Reason(logic, common sense...--of the
mind's activities). But what of the
spirit informing assessment of Truth/revelation? Dupre: it is part of the disclosure of
revelation itself, rather than being of human assessment of Truth.
Descartes
influence on Locke is large. Locke
reaches Truth through Reason exclusively.
In contrast, Kierk. claims that faith contradicts Reason because faith
is belief in the absurd. Faith is not
subject to Reason. Faith goes beyond
reason.
Shaftesbury
is crucial from Locke's theism to the Deists. He defends religious tolerance:
why should the truth of one's faith depend upon the place of which one is
born. He is dissatisfied with specific
religious principles that are not of living.
Dupre: some deism here. As soon
as an intolerate sect is persecuted, it argues for moderation and
tolerance. Dupre: the issue here is the
following--if you believe you have the truth and another person claims that you
do not, how does one tolerate him?
Locke's
Letter on Toleration :
Civil
interests are distinct from care of the souls.
So the State can't use force because religion is of inner forces. The church should be a voluntary association. All worship should be tolerated by a State,
except where it is immoral. Church
leaders are not to use civil powers to enforce church rules. A church sould be
able to throw out members, but not hang them.
In
1660, Locke wrote two tracts claiming that there should be no toleration, with
a strong King. In matters of religion,
total surrender to the King. Civil war
is worse than total surrender. But in
1668, he argued for toleration, as it would inhibit civil war. Except to Atheists and Catholics. Atheists were thought to be morally
dangerous, as they were not subject to the police-man God. Catholics were subject to a foreign
authority. Later, he advocated total
toleration, bounded by civil law and morality.
Dupre:
tolerance has always been a relative thing.
Religion demands the establishment of certain structures. To what extent should the State tolerate such
structures which are bound to be offensive to others? To what extent should a religious cause be
promoted such that State protection is necessary? Locke did not want the State to pass laws
offensive to a religious minority or for a religious majority to use the State
to enforce the structures of their beliefs.
If the Truth is objective, should not it be enforced? Locke: religion is an inner, subjective
phenomenon. This was foreign to the view
of the Middle Ages. Religion as
subjective came with the Reformation. Following one's conscience.
The
notion that Truth is objective is an ancient idea. Whence it went out, questions of certainty
arose, such as by Descartes.
2/12/97
Deism
and Tolerance go together in the English Enlightenment. This Enlightenment began with a plea for
tolerance. This matter was settled after
the glorious revolution. So after
Locke's letter, Toland moves into rationalism and the salience of
morality. Religion comes to be viewed as
a phenomenon of morality.
The
French intellectual history at the time: Tolerance was salient through Louis
IV. The intolerance of the theological
faculty at the Sorbonne could only be fought by rationalism. So Diderot
emphasized rationalism, though without the salience of the moral dimension.
Beginning
the English Enlightenment, Bell :
an innate moral law that relativises theological distinctions. The moral law is universal. Tolerance is based on the moral law being
universal. He shows the absurdity of
religious dogmatism.
Beginning
of the French Enlightenment: Voltaire showed a way to doubt. Dupre: this is significance. The early concern was tolerance. Montesquieu defended tolerance by showing the
absurdity of dogmatism. Doctrine as a source
of disputes rather than a means of sanctification. Wars have been due not to there being
different religions, but to the attitude of intolerance, especially in
Christianity. The Romans succeeded in
keeping the religions within their empire from starting fights by maintaining
that God is known by many names. Cicero presents this
view. Dupre: Roman religion was not
Greek religion with Roman laws.
Montesquieu: out of the view that different religions are manifestations
of the same thing came tolerance in multiplicity.
Voltaire(b.
1694) dominated the eighteenth century in France . Jesuit education. The Roman church in France set out
against him for what he wrote. His
achievements included literature(epics as well as dramas--Candide, for
instance). He worked in science
too. He also wrote on religion. Against atheism and the Roman church. His early work included Toleration while his
later work stressed rationalism. He had
visited England . The
Philosophical Letters: he compared France
with England . 1734.
He learned the English empiricism and distrusted science and
apriori. The first four letters are
about the Quakers. He is condescending
to them but he respects them. He plays
it against the French
Church
Voltare
on the existence of God: the absurdity of the belief that there is no God
argues for God's presence. God is
necessary as the ground of the natural laws.
Deism: God set the laws in motion.
Is morality one of his arguments?
He did not believe in divine sanction.
Rather, God is the foundation of morality only because something must
have given the universal moral laws to the different peoples. Universal
morality--not known to him by reason alone but by empiricism. This material is
in his Metaphysics. So he was influenced by Locke's rationalism.
He was also influenced by a rationalist interpretation of scripture. He claimed it was nonsense. See his Dictionary
of Philosophy (1764). He claims that
anything historical gives birth to a thousand disputes. So, problems with a historical religion. Also, he found sources outside Israel for its
bible. On the Christian bible,
prophesies were written after-the-fact (e.g. Fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE). His main objection is that that religion is
based on a historical revelation. It
can't be used as a fact or as a basis for a metaphysic. This is claimed by British Deism too. Dupre: church history was the deists' main
weapon against Christianity.
Voltare
wrote an epic history book. He begins
with the early religions. He argues that
they were superior to Judaism and Christianity.
He is particularly critical of the Torah. Joshua 12:24--that Yahweh told Joshua to
kill the Ammorites. That a massacre
would be claimed to be from God is abhorent to him. He then shows how the Jesus Movement differed
from the life of Jesus and principles of his teachings. The Constitinian Church
In
his later Letters (1775), he shifted
from rationalism to feeling. He defends
a kind god, arguing against Atheism.
Nature, conscience and sensitivity tells one that God exists. A strong defense of God's existence. Unlike in his early writings, he claims here
that divine reward and punishment exist.
Rousseau,
coming later, disagreed with Voltaire.
The
religion of feeling in France :
away from English rationalism and a precursor to Romanticism. Rousseau:
a Deism of sentiments. Divine
love as distinguished from the worldly kind. Rousseau knew Sharpsbury. Rousseau: the feeling of conscience is
sentenal. He is arguing against the view
that the virtuous will get a reward.
Virtue is its own reward! Rewards
would not be due to one's merits, but on the goodness of God. Whereas Augustine thought it a pleasure of
the after-life to watch those in hell suffer, Rousseau claimed that the sinner
is my brother. Rousseau: God's knowledge
is intuitive rather than rationalist.
Consult oneself and what one feels to be right.
This idea began in Shaftsbury. In
that feeling (of conscience) is God present.
Conscience is the voice of one's soul, which is the voice of God. All of these are spirit. Dupre: these claims
are not consistent with the fourth book of The
Social Contract. He defends a civil
religion that does not interfere with one's private religion--but vice versa as
well. Hobbes: the religion of the King
should be THE religion. Rousseau: the
state of nature was a theocracy--land of the gods. No distinction between religion and
state. Polytheism because different
tribes. When one tribe conquered
another, the deity of the conquers prevailed on both. But the Hebrews kept their own God. So, divisions in an empire. Christianity was spiritual/moral, of a
kingdom of such. They would not
sacrifice to the Roman emperor. Then,
Christianity became the religion of the empire--Christians had an external
earthly head (their bishops) and a civil head.
Allegiance to both masters. This
was the second stage. In the third, the
civil king choose the king. Allegiance
to the king rather than to their bishops.
Rousseau saw this as problematic.
His solution: the gospel is
purely internal. The other system is an
external religion qua social
sentiments necessary for society's peace, prescribed by civil law. The country is the outward religion. Rousseau is writing a political book. He claims that there should not be divided
loyalties. But if only pure (spiritual)
religion, internal laws would alone
exist to restrain the individuals.
External laws needed.
Christianity is subject to tyranny.
Meekness and passivity. So, civil
religion. Deism.
Dupre:
but this is another religion, which will either conflict with the internal religion
(conscience) which is likely, or be of as a parasitic religion. Rousseau uses as his model the Roman Republic
Is
Deism in American civic religion due to Toleration? No. It
was a minimalist program (the civil religion) which was filled with
Protestantism. We are the people of
God. A repeat of the ancient Hebrew
nation's view of itself. The civil
religion is a parasite religion, feeding on others. But that makes civil religion here a
hypocricy.
2/19/97
The almost total exclusion of 'otherness' characterizes
the Enlightenment as an epoche. The
'otherness of the other' had vanished. Descarte: From the self; the ego as the
start of reality. Locke: all that we
know is our own ideas. Hume:
phenomenalism of the self; skepticism of that which is beyond oneself. Solipcism was then a problem. Not that knowledge was reduced to
subjectivity (except for Hume); rather, knowledge was taken to be of a closed,
objective world. The self constitutes objective reality. Today's Psychology came out of this. Reason as universal and all-inclusive. Passivity, or receptivity, becomes part of
the constitutive process. I even constitute my receptivity. The idea of
transcendence goes out. A connection with the 'Other' had been broken. The idea
of God had changed (to Deism); the pre-existing idea of God did not work in a
closed system as the cosmos, as mechanical, came to be taken as. A self-identical spiritual universe--the
realm of Reason and Natural Religion was shown to be expanded as the Europeans
'discovered' other lands and peoples.
The drive to conformity is built-in to this self-centered universe. Even Rousseau: extrapolation of our own
feelings. This was not to break out of
the closed universe of what the human mind could grasp. A widening of a horizon
of a basically self-identical spiritual universe. Any relativity from the semblance of
otherness only proved that the realm of reason and natural law was more
comprehensive that the Church. The
sameness was actually broader. All that
remained was reason and natural law. The drive to absolute conformity within a
completely closed universe (that which reason and natural law chould hold, thus
implying no otherness to them). Medieval Scholastic Theology: the cosmos as
open (infinite), with closed systems within it.
Romantics tried to break out of the closed nature of the system. Today, the closed system is viewed as
heterogious (pluralism, knowing the otherness of the other). Moral relativism is a reaction because of the
loss of selfhood.
The
self, source of all productivity and meaning, is itself empty; the sense of the
self is lost in being projected outward creating a closed homogenious
system. It has spent itself in spinning
its web. Otherness is necessary for
dialogue. Utilitarianism, for instance, was of a universe consisting of means
and ends for humans. Example of a closed system--everything being means and
ends to the self. The self as the source
of all objectivity. God was no longer
the source of reality. Instead, the
self. Voltaire wrote about 'us', rather
than God or other cultures as 'other'.
In the drift to create a universe on the basis of our selfhood, we have
lost ourselves completely. The emphasis
on other cultures in the late twentieth century is a reaction to this dynamic
and the fact that we have nothing of ourselves left.
Every
effort of history has its price. Every
acquisition in history has involved suffering.
Spinoza:
Elimination
of otherness not in a curtailing sense but in a way of bringing back everything
into a unity, the unity of the substance.
He used Descartes' language 'against' him. Descartes sought a foundational epistemology
and metaphysics. The foundations of knowledge.
So the thinking self is the basis of all that is to be known. Self-centered. Spinoza focused on ontology (being), not
epistemology (knowledge). His method of
bringing things together is not the Cartesian efficient causality (e.g. first
cause--God was thus thought of as necessary as such), but is based on a
platonic imminent causality: how is the one present in the many? A question of
being. Spinoza: the efficient causality operates as an immenant causality--God
as the Formal cause: the reality is within God.
Descartes used only efficient causality, God as the first cause of
movement for instance. Spinoza was
influenced by Hebraic mysticism which was gnostic and neo-Platonist. Spinoza: not an emmination in which the one
is different from the many; a degeneration does not exist for Spinoza. See Deleuze on Spinoza. For an intellectual biography, see von
Dunia-Borkowski.
Spinoza
was excommunicated from Judaism for his claim that God has a body.
DeLeuze's
thesis: God is total expressiveness(whatever exists of God is expressed;
whatever there is, is expressed), according to Spinoza. So no room for negative
theology. What is the under-current
here? Every philosopher has 'seen'
something and works it out. For instance, what is the essence of being? Spinoza's pre-philosophical intuition was
the attempt to be. To be is to be
striving to be.
Spinoza's dfns:
finite: that which can be limited by
another thing of the same nature (after its kind). So anything of which
there can be two must be called finite.
The body is finite because we can conceive another.
substance: that which is in itself and is
conceived of through itself; the
conception of which does not need the conception of another thing. From Descartes' Principles of Philosophy. By substance we can conceive of nothing
else than a thing which exists in such a way as to stand in need of nothing
besides itself in order to exist. There is only one substance and it is God
that is absolutely independent. The
other substances are not so, according to Descartes. Only one substance is independent. Spinoza:
only one substance.
attribute: that which the intellect
perceives as constituting the essence of substance. What the intellect perceives as constitutive
as expressive of the essence of substance.
Is it true for the human mind or ontologically? Ontologically. That through which the substance expresses
its essence. Each expresses the essence of the substance. It is the totality, but not the totality in
all its aspects.
mode: In the whole multiple intelligible
world of people and things, the modifications of substance; that is, that which
is in (and conceived of through) another. The expression of God's being. God is as much present in the modes as in
himself, because God's essence is in the modes.
Dupre: this is not pantheistic.
Nature that is being natured is distinct from nature itself. Explicatio
and complicatio (a fifthteen-century theologian). God is expressiveness, so God is only in its
fullness as expressed (explicatio). Explicatio:
the way God necessarily explicates his fullness. That impulse, that
expressiveness, must express itself in the modes, so God is as present in the
modes as he is independent from the modes. I am as necessary as is God. God would not be God without me. God would not be in his fullness were he not
expressed in infinite attributes, and thus modes. This is not theism as we have
traditionally interpreted it because God is expressiveness (God as complicatio is insufficient). It is panantheism. Pantheism (Bruno, for instance): everything
is one (stocism). It lacks destinctions.
Stoicism included pantheism--a complete openness: God is everything.
God: Being absolutely infinite(i.e. not
only in its kind but in all respects).
Substance consisting of infinite attributes. God is 'being' as expressed in infinite
attributes. Many aspects of God's essence. One substance can have many
attributes. Each attribute expresses an
eternal essence. They are the way God
affects us. Prop. 10: a real distinction
between the attributes of God. So, each attribute is conceivable through
itself. Each attribute expresses the
reality of being in substance.
Freedom: not 'choice'. Freedom only is to act only from the
impulse, or necesity, of its own nature.
Only God is free. Determinist.
No free-will.
Propositions:
I. Substance is not by nature prior to the
modes. By definition.
II. Two substances or attributes that are
different have nothing in common. If two substances have something in
common, then the distinctness of the substances have something in common; one
substance could not be conceived without the other.
III.
Two substances which have nothing in
common can not be (efficient) cause of the other. There goes creation! If
one thing(substance) is the efficient cause of another, they must have
something in common. A substance is such that all of its attributes can be
explained exclusively by its own nature. A substance is clear and distinct in
its own nature. So, if God exists and is
a substance, then either my relation to God cannot be one to another
substance(necessary for God to be the cause of me), or God did not cause the
world. God is the immanent formal cause
of the world, so it must be that the relation of God to the world cannot be of
one substance to another; God and the world must be of the same substance.
IV.
Two or more distinct substances are distinguished from one another, either by the
difference of the attributes of the substances or by the difference of their
modes. There are only three aspects: the
thing itself, attributes thereof, and modes.
V. There
cannot exist in the universe two or more
substances sharing the same nature or expressed by the same attribute. If two substances had the same nature, they
would be the same. He is not saying that there is only one substance; rather,
there cannot be a common attribute in two substances because an attribute is an
expression the substance's essence. Two substances could only be distinguished
either by the difference of the attributes or modes (prop. 4). If only by the difference in attributes,
there cannot be more than one with an identical attribute. If two substances
are different by virtue of their attributes, then they have nothing in common.
Any given attribute expresses the totality of the essence of a substance. Two
substances sharing an attribute would have the same essence, and thus be the same substance. The modes are in the substance (implied in
the attributes and substance), so are not an aspect upon which substances could
be distinguished. Same with the modes
because they are of attributes which expresses the essence of the substance. Descartes: two substances are mutually
distinct if only if a clear and distinct idea of one can be had independently
of the other. Spinoza: you can't have a clear and distinct idea of a substance
if it shares an attribute with another.
Descartes held in contrast that a clear and distinct idea of a substance
independent of other substances does not mean that there can only be one
substance. Spinoza: the word 'creator'
is not a single idea but is two: the creator and the created. This is not to
have a clear idea of either. There
cannot be two substances.
VI. One substance cannot be produced by another
substance. They would have something in common if one substance caused
another.
VII. Existence belongs to the nature of substance. Essence implies existance. Conceived clear and distinct idea, essence is
self-caused. The substance being clearly
and distinctly conceived, it must exist. That the essence of substance implies
existence. Why? A substance that may
exist does not exist; the idea of necessity is in the nature of a clear and
distinct idea.
VIII.:
Every substance is necessarily infinite
after its kind. If a substance is
totally self-sufficient, then there can't be another of its kind. Two
substances of the same kind cannot be self-sufficient because you have to
explain why there is more than one. One would be necessary to explain the
other. A substance can be one with an
infinite number of attributes because there is no way of stopping it because
there is nothing else of its kind.
Dupre: but Spinoza's claim that a substance can't have only one
attribute does not necessarily hold.
IX.
The more reality a substance has, the greater its attributes. Reality is
moving. The more striving a substance has, the more complex is its essence,
therefore having multiple attributes.
Dupre: he is setting up for his claim of which substance will have them.
The more reality (complex essence) a substance has, the more attributes it
has. Spinoza's pre-philosophical
intuition: reality as striving.
X. Each attribute of a substance must be
conceived through itself. Although two attributes are conceived as distinct
(one without reference to the other), yet they are not of two substances. Through one attribute, the essence of
substance can be found without the need of seeing any other attribute. Seeing God under the attribute of thought,
that is what God is--spirit. No additional attributes necessary to express the
essence of God (God's being). Bodiliness
is a finite mode under the attribute of extension; each expresses the reality
of being of substance.
XI. God or substance consisting of infinite attributes, each one of which
expresses eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists. God must
exist. Essence is existance. Substance exists. The idea of God is clear
and distinct, so the idea of God exists.
Substance exists unless there is something in the idea of God which
conflicts with substance. Not that
existence is an attribute. The ability
to exist is power. The more attributes,
the more power. He asks, why should not
that of most power exist?
The
order and succession of ideas is the order and succession of that which the
ideas express. Why? Thought is an attribute of God, so its
essence exists.
XIV. Beside God, no substance can be
accepted or denied. If God has infinite
attributes, then any other substance would share an attribute. The least powerful in being has to yield to
the more powerful.
2/26/97
Spinoza
(cont):
He
held that 'what can I know', such that Descartes asked, is not fruitful for
philosophy. Locke: how can one get from
the idea of something to the thing itself?
No end to the justification of knowing, according to Spinoza. A critique of going on and on in the same
line. There is no need to know that we
know that we know... Speak of the
reality of our ideas. A content needed
for knowledge. Asking how we know does
not get at this. For instance, so many
articles consist of material on justifying themselves; would it not be better
to attend to the content of the matter.
In Descartes, the idea of God has little justification. So too, Spinoza explores what the concept
itself could possibly mean.
What
are the basic assumptions of Spinoza?
First, all that exists is explainable. The order of ideas coincides with
the order of reality. This is not to
imply that we know everything. He gets
rid of the Cartesian voluntarism.
Descartes is a nominalist rather than a rationalist. Spinoza is a rationalist. Everything in its foundations is
intelligible. Where lies the absolute,
the basis of ultimate truth? In its
simplicity--its basic elements.
Descartes sought this too.
Spinoza: not a blank unity; because absolute, it is the infinite. In the ultimate unity is the possibility of
diversity. The one must be conceived not
as undistinguable unity but as a complexity to the unity. If just unity, Spinoza would have been a
pantheist. The many is the one; no
diversity. Spinoza: complex
simplicity. Rationalism: that there is
nothing that can't be known. Dupre: this
goes against the mystery in religion.
Second,
God for Spinoza is the only substance; existence. To call God substance is a problem. It is the most objective term possible;
classically, it has meant the foundation.
Aristotle: ousia. The idea of God is objectified even though
Spinoza includes thought as an attribute.
Third,
philosophy becomes separate from theology.
God is nature. So, nothing
supernatural. But nature is not
necessarily empirical. Missing: a sense
of the sacred.
Four
major theses up through prop. 11: two substances can't have the same attribute,
the substance exists, the substance with infinite attributes exists. Prop. 7: substance necessarily exists. So his apparent ontological argument connects
substance with existence; not God with existence. But to understand the idea is to understand
that the object exists. No
deduction. The two come together. Not so in Descartes. For Spinoza, the idea is reality. The idea of God implies existence unless the
idea itself is contradictory. Dupre: the
world is seen as finite only in the context of the infinite. Spinoza: nothing contradictory in the idea of
the infinite. Descartes: there is a
contradiction in the idea of the infinite.
Spinoza: prop. 2--the finite exists.
Prop.
XI. If there are two substances, that with the
more attributes exists moreso than the other.
If I exist, then God must exist.
God has more power/attributes than I, so God exists.
Is
Spinoza an atheist? Theism is thought to
be: God is a person. Is this necessary
for theism? No. So he may be a theist even though he did not
see God as a mind and a will. God is not
a being to him as well. Dupre: theism
need not imply that God is a being. Spinoza: man is an explication of God. The
source goes beyond the explication. Not that God is outside the universe;
rather, the source has more power (attributes) than do the explications
(attributes and modes).
The
attributes are that which an intellect understands of a substance. Which intellect? Not mine.
Human beings--mind and body modes of the attributes of thought and
extension. The attributes are
manifestations of God, intelligible in themselves rather than to the human
mind; we know of only two attributes. There are infinite attributes. Mind is an expression of the attribute of
thought. The attribute comes before the
expression (the mind). So the attribute
preceeds the expression. My mind can not
understand that which comes before it, so an attribute can't be that which is
intelligible to the human mind. Even
so, all the other attributes must be beholden to that of thought because they
are all ways of knowing the essence of the substance. An attribute is a form of
intelligibility. So Spinoza gives a
priority to the attribute of thought.
All
the modes run parallel. Those of
thinking run parallel to those of mind.
The body is the extension of the mind, and the mind is the idea of the
body. We only know this
parallelism.
XVI:
From the necessity of the essence of absolute infinite substance,
infinite modes must follow. Anything
that can exist that is not contradictory must exist. So, an infinite universe. What is a mode? The modes produced directly by God must be
infinite. How do you get the finite out of the infinite? The infinite mode is that which looks like an
infinite system (seen as otherness).
Finitude means division whereas expression does not. God is as much in the mode as in himself. If God is not in me fully, then he is not
anywhere. How am I different than
God? I am not an infinite mode. For instance, what is the infinite mode of
the attribute of extention? The system
of motion and rest. The most generic
ways of the total closed (that everything is coherent, not necessarily finite)
system of the universe. They are the
gestalt of the universe. Finite modes
cascade from the infinite modes. Dupre:
this does not work in explaining how to get from the infinite to the finite. Religious language (being symbolic) says it
better. Spinoza did not seek to bring
this language of the Bible into his system.
Spinoza did take from the Hebrew bible the idea of the unity and
otherness of God. If he had not made
this claim, he would be a pantheist.
God's otherness. I cannot be
conceived without God, but God can be expressed without me. I am not the essence of God but am an
expression of the essence of God. My
essence is not my existence; my existence can't be grounded in myself (the
finite)--agn. Descartes.
Prop.
XII: no attribute can be concieved such that God would be divisible.
Dupre:
but Spinoza does not pull off the move from infinite to finite without
resolving the problem of division.
XVII: God acts solely by the laws of
his own nature and is not constrained by anything. God is totally free. The freedom of God is that he is acting
exclusively by his own necessity.
Totally autonomous. No law or
authority beyond one's own (Kant). There
is no choice in God because his actions come from his own necessity. So God creates necessarily rather than from
his choice. God could not have brought
about the world any differently than how he did. If God would create all that is possible,
then that would be it would not be for God not to be omnipotent. The universe is infinite because it is
created by God. Everything possible is
within God's necessity. In contrast,
Leibnez: God selects one of the possible world to create.
On
the intellect and will that we attribute to God: not in the sense of extensions
of finite intellect and will. Totally
other. The intellect of God as constituting
God's essence is the cause of his essence.
No distinction between God's freedom and his 'seeing'.
XVIII:
God is the immanent and not the transient cause of all things. All modes must be conceived of through
God. Dupre: but Spinoza takes cause as
efficient. Can efficient causality be
immanent and not transcient? Perhaps
efficient causality is used by him only in mutual relations between modes.
The
indwelling causality of God is at the root of mysticism. Augustine too.
XXIX:
In Nature there is nothing contingent, but all things are determined from the
necesity of the divine nature to exist and act in a certain matter. God is natura naturans (activity) and finite
modes are natura naturans (passivity).
Dupre: Spinoza is not a pantheist here.
Appendix:
Spinoza:
everything that is, must be.
Determinist. Dupre: how is ethics
possible? He doesn't say finite modes
are not changeable. Evil, to Spinoza,
is located in the deficiency of ideas.
The lack of freedom we have in not understanding that we don't have free
choice. In seeing the necessity of all
that happens, we come out of bondage. You are really free when you realize that
your desires are determined. Dupre: this is not a good explanation. So too is Augustine's view that evil is
required for the harmony of the whole.
Spinoza
denies that goals influence one's action.
Rather, there is one outflow of necessity. There is no goal of God. There is nothing outside God, even God's
goal.
3/5/97
Spinoza:
On Pantheism
He
was called a pantheist. But Romanatists
liked him. The absolute as the substance
was for Spinoza God. Bruno was a pantheist
(burned at Rome ). Nicholas of Cusa: the creation is the
unfolding of God's enfolded being.
Nicholas, like Spinoza, held that the divine act of creation results
from God's necessary being, necessarily.
No divine choice. Nicholas: it is
possible to conceive of a different universe.
Spinoza: no alternative. Agn.
Leibniz's best possible universe.
Nicholas and Spinoza: God's being is in God and his creation. God is all
that the finite is. God is identical with the finite. But the finite is not identical
with God. Can't say 'I am God'. Finitude differentiates creation from God. So, there is a dialectic between otherness
and identity. God is all of me, but I
am not all of God. Nicholas: God is the
none-other. All creation is his
being. God's otherness originates on the
side of the creature. Otherness starts
in me. Does otherness define the
creatures' own unique seeence and self-identity? The otherness is not a positive creation from
me; rather, my otherness is my pure nothingness. But there is something unique about me. Eckert: my essence in its uniqueness is
God's/divine. My uniqueness is my divine
identity. Spinoza: my uniqueness is not to be ascribed to a
negative determination.
I
can reflect on myself as an existence, but God is existence. Second, my real essence is not from what I am
not. What, then, is my essence? What is it that I love in the other? The very core of her being. The core of my selfness is positive. So, my uniqueness is not from my existence or
from how I am different from others, but is my unique being, being of the being
of God. That is my divine being, according to Eckhert. Spinoza: such are merely determinations. Spinoza equates uniqueness with distinctness
(exclusiveness); I am a mode, which lacks distinctions. Spinoza: identity means sameness. Not so for Eckhert and Nicholas. So Spinoza equates God and finite beings less
so than do Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa(a radical otherness in the
creature). My otherness is not another
being, or an ultimate form of being; rather, it conveys no being whatsoever but
results from the dispursion of God's being, according to Eckhart and Nicholas
of Cusa. So, it is not that God is
totally other, connected to us only by efficient cause. So God does not create otherness.
The
identity of God and the creature in theology comes out of Genesis--created in
God's likeness. The soul is an image of
God. Origen and Gregory of Nyssa: image
is of a presence. Aquinas: image means a
similarity only. Eckhart: nothing can be
more dissimilar than the finite and the infinite, yet the dependence of the
creature on God renders God more present than he is to himself. A creature has no being of himself. Total
dependence. So, there can be no image of God.
Negative theology: we know nothing of God. No likeness to God and I am nothing other
than of God: Eckhert holds these together.
The soul's likeness is nothing more than the imperfect image, into the
imageless ground.
Spinoza:
the distinction of all creatures existing in God as finite modes thereof is not
a small distinction. God and the
creation is of the same thing (substance).
Dupre: Spinoza was not a theist.
For Eckhart and Nicholas the creature gives only a vaccum of being, that
distinguishes the creature from God's unfolded nature in himself. Spinoza: no real distinction between the
finite modes and substance--no way distinguishing them and he does not identify
them. Spinoza cannot derive the finite
out of the infinite. The move from
infinite to finite modes does not explain the distinction. Dupre: maintain a strong distinction while
maintaining the identity of being. Also,
that determinations can be made in two ways (exclusion and uniqueness). Spinoza does not account for finite
uniqueness from infinite modes. How am I
different from you?
Leibniz:
A
German who wrote in French; a diplomat; a Christian. His basic idea: Spinoza did not do justice to
the finite beings; in the end there is one substance. Liebniz emphasized the idea of universal
harmony which was common in the eighteenth century. He saw a harmony between the infinite and
finite, whereas Spinoza had difficulty in reaching it via 'infinite
modes'. Leibniz sought such a harmony so
as to unify the Christian sects; moreover, he sought to bring things together. This idea of a harmonic unity in Leibniz did
admit of distinctions, so there must be ways of thinking things together. He may have invented differential calculus: a
way in which everything has a symbol.
This idea of universal knowledge--one science (calculus) that could
bring everything together without collapsing them into one entity.
The principle of sufficient reason (the
principle of Rationalism): there must be a reason (not that everything must
tend toward a good); some reason which is the ground (not final cause)--a
common ground for all things. Everything
must be justified in the form of 'why
should there be something rather than nothing'. The ultimate ground lies in God. Key: looking
for the ground of things.
The
principle of sufficient reason can be divided into two other principles. One is the principle of contradiction (Mon.
#33), or truth. Second, the principle of perfection; assumption:
that things make sense, so they can not be superfluous. Things
must be in the most intelligible order.
That means that there can't be two things that are exactly the
same. The identity of
indiscernables. If you can't distinguish
on essential traits, two things are not identical. If there were two things identical, they
would have the same characteristics; it
would not make sense to have something twice in an intelligible world. The principle of economy. The principle
of continuity: there can not be gaps between the species. A necessity for continuity in a rational
world. For instance, there must be a transition thing between a plant and an
animal. Were there gaps, the world would
not be rational. He was a
rationalist. This is all a matter of
perfection.
On the principle of non-contradiction,
when does truth contradict itself? Two types of truth. First, reason. Such truths are
necessary and their opposite is impossible. By a finite analysis, to deny
it would be a contradiction. Secondly,
the truths of fact. They are contingent and their opposite is possible. Not determined as reason is by finite
analysis. But God would know. Only God has all the facts necessary to know
whether a statement has factual truth.
Leibniz
was in the tradition of Descartes and Spinoza; all were rationalists. Leibniz: everything
starts from simple (no parts) substance: the principle of unity. Because the composite exists, then (he
analytically reasons) the simple exists.
Dupre: not necessarily. He
defines 'substance' from Descartes and argues for a plurality of substances. Dupre: substance led to materialism in the
eighteenth century because Spinoza held there only to be one. Leibniz: the
substance is that on which we ascribe predicates; it is that which is
real. He switches from the logical to
the metaphysical. The predicate is
based on reality. Even when we can't
prove that one is in the other, we must take the subject to be accountable for
its predicate. A substance is that which exists through itself and can be conceived in
itself (from Descartes and Spinoza).
What
is the plurality of substances based on?
The question of accountability: I have an moral awareness of myself that makes it
necessary that I am a substance in my
own right (self-consciousness and unique moral accountability). If not
solipcism, there must be at least one other substance. An agent is so
uniquely responsible (moral consciousness) that he must be a substance. A substance is the subject that includes all
of its possible predicates. If infinite
analysis could be done, it would be certain that any such agent is its own
substance. God is one totally simple monad.
Any monad is indivisible and industructable. The total non-identity of two
substances. Spinoza: two substances
can't have a common attribute. But
Liebniz does not go so far as to rule out common attributes; rather, merely
that two substances can not be identical.
A
logic of essences. But one essence that must exist is God. A version of the ontological argument. A
perfect essence must exist unless there is a contradiction in it. A
infinite being has no internal contradiction.
Therefore, God must exist. But creation is a matter of essences rather
than existence to Leibniz. God emminates entities that are nothing but
viewpoints. I am just a particular
perspective of the infinite number of perspectives (in God). Harmony:
each such perspective shows within it all the others. God is the only external relation that a monad
has. Each substance is independent on
itself except on God. That we can talk
is due to the universal harmony from God who feeds the ideas to us. What happens to me in my lifetime is God's
pre-knowledge. God knows what will
happen; he is responsible for creating the best possible world by his
goodness.
Leibniz's
Theodicy. Distinguish
proofs for the existence of God from objections to his existence. Theodicy has nothing to do with the latter;
rather, it is an answer to the objections.
For refuting the objections, it is not necessary that I have all the
ideas. The question is whether an objection seems to hold in reality. The death and suffering of children, for
instance, seem to be a viable objection to the claim that God is good. One need not know what 'good' is; rather,
show that there are other possibilities.
Leibniz had already proven that God
exists, so the evil in the world can't be incompatible with God. Leibniz shows that the objections do not
count decisively against the existence of God or that this is the best of the
possible worlds.
The Monadology :
The
Monad: a simple substance which enters into compounds. phar. 1
No parts, so neither extension nor
form nor divisibility.[1]
ph. 2
Monads
differ in quality (attributes) rather than quantity. ph. 8.
The
natural changes(appetitions) in a monad must come from an internal principle.
ph. 10.
Nothing
but perceptions and their changes can be found in a simple substance. ph. 17.
Unlike
the soul which has sentiment as well as perception, the monad has perception
only. ph. 19.
The
sufficient or final reason must be outside of the sequence or series of
particular contingent things, however infinite this series may be. Thus it must be in a necessary substance, in
which the variety of particular changes exists only eminently, as in its
source; and this substance we call God. Being so for all particulars which are
themselves interconnected, there is only one God and this God is sufficient.
ph.s 37-9.
This
substance is unique, universal and necessary; a pure sequence of possible
being. ph. 40.
Thus
God is absolutely perfect; for perfection is nothing but amount of positive
reality. ph. 41.
So
God is not only the source of existences but also that of essences, in so far
as they are real; the source of what is real in the possible. ph. 43.
For
if there is a reality in essences or possibilities, or rather in eternal
truths, this reality must needs be founded in something existing and actual,
and consequently in the existence of the necessary Being, in whom essence
involves existence, or in whom to be possible is to be actual. ph. 44.
Thus
God must necessarily exist, if He is possible. And as nothing can interfere
with the possibility of that which involves no limits, no negation and
consequently no contradiction, this (His possibility) is sufficient of itself
to make known the existence of God a
priori. ph. 45.
That
because there exist contingent beings, which can have their final or sufficient
reason only in the necessary Being which has the reason of its existence in
itself, the reality of God's existence has already been proven a posteriori. ph. 45.
Thus
God alone is the primary unity or original simple substance, of which all
created or derivative Monads are products and have their birth... ph. 47.
In
God there is knowledge, Power, and Will (which makes changes or products
according to the principle of the best). ph. 48.
In
the monads there are only imitations of God's attributes. ph. 48.
A
created thing acts outwardly in so far as it has perfection, and to suffer (or
be passive) in relation to another, in so far as it is imperfect. ph. 49.
One
monad can influence another only through the mediation of God. ph. 51.
A
monad is active in so far as what we distinctly know in it serves to explain (redre raison de) what takes place in another,
and passive in so far as the explanation (raison)
of what takes place in it is to be found in that which is distinctly known in
another. ph. 52.
Now,
as in the Ideas of God there is an infinite number of possible universe, and as
only one of them can be actual, there must be a sufficient reason for the
choice of God, which leads Him to decide upon one rather than another. And this
reason can be found only in the fitness,
or in the degrees of perfection, that these worlds possess, since each possible
thing has the righ to aspire to existence in proportion to the amount of perfection
it contains in germ. Thus the actual existence of the best that wisdom makes
known to God is due to this, that His goodness makes Him choose it, and His
power makes Him produce it. ph.s 53-5.
The
connection or adaptation of all created things to each and of each to all,
means that each simple substance has relations which express all the others,
and, consequently, that it is a perpetual living mirror of the universe. ph.
56.
As a
result of the infinite number of simple substances, it is as if there were so
many different universes, which, nevertheless are nothing but aspects
(perspectives) of a single universe, according to the special point of view of
each Monad. ph. 57.
And
by this means there is obtained as great variety as possible, along with the
greatest possible order; that is to say, it is the way to get as much
perfection as possible. ph. 58.
Each
created Monad represents the whole universe. It represents more distinctly the
body which specially pertains to it. So
too with the soul. ph. 62.
The
body belonging to a Monad (which is its entelechy or its soul) constitutes
along with the entelechy what may be called a living being, and along with the soul what is called an animal.
There must also be order in that which represents the soul, i.e. in the
perceptions of the soul, and consequently there must be order in the body,
through which the universe is represented in the soul. ph. 63.
The
organic body of each living being is a kind of divine machine or natural
automaton, which infinitely surpasses all artificial automata. ph. 64
Thus,
too, there is nothing fallow, nothing dead in the universe, no chaos, no
confusion save in appearance... ph. 69.
All
bodies are in a perpetual flux like rivers, and parts are entering into them
and passing out of them continually. Thus the soul changes its body only by
degrees, little by little, so that it is
never all at once deprived of all its organs.
So there are not souls entirely separate nor unembodied spirits. God alone is completely without body. There never is absolute birth nor complete
death, in the strict sense, considting in the separation of the soul from the
body. What we call births are
developments and growths, whicle what we call deaths are envelopments and
diminutions. ph.s 71-3.
The
soul follows its own laws, and the body likewise follows its own laws; and they
agree with each other in virtue of the pre-established harmony between all
substances, since they are all representations of one and the same universe. Souls act according to the laws of final
causes through appetitions, ends, and means.
Bodies act according to the laws of efficient causes or motions. And the
two realms, that of efficient causes and that of final causes, are in harmony
with one another. ph.s 78-9.
In
contrast, Descartes held that the soul could change the direction of bodies.
ph. 80.
With
regard to humans, their sensuous souls are raised to the rank of reason and to
the prerogative of minds. ph. 82.
Souls
in general are living mirrors or images of the universe of created things, but
minds are also images of the Deity or Author of nature Himself. ph. 83
Whence
it is easy to conclude that the totality of all spirits/minds (esprits) must compose the City of God,
that is to say, the most perfect State that is possible under the most perfect
of Monarchs. This City of God, this
truly universal monarchy, is a moral world in the natural world. ph.s 85-6.
It
is in relation to this divine City that God specially has goodness, while His
wisdom and His power are manifested everywhere. ph. 86.
As
there is a perfect harmony between the two realms in nature, one of efficient,
and the other of final causes, there is also another harmony between the
physical realm of nature and the moral realm of grace; between God as Architect
of the mechanism of the universe[2]
and God considered as Monarch of the divine City of spirits. ph. 87.
A
result of this harmony is that things lead to grace by the very ways of nature.
Finally,
under this perfect government no good action would be unrewarded and no bad one
unpunished, and all should issue in the well-being of the good, that is to say,
of those who are not malcontents in this great state, but who trust in
Providence, after having done their duty, and who love and imitate, as is meet,
the Author of all good, finding pleasure in the contemplation of His
perfections, as is the way of genuine 'pure love', which takes pleasure in the
happiness of the beloved. This it is
which leads wise and virtuous people to devote their energies to everything
which appears in harmony with the presumptive or antecedent will of God, and
yet makes them content with what God actually brings to pass. ph. 90.
3/26/97
Reading
for class: Leibniz, Theodicy, and the fourteen sections in Discourses on Metaphysics,
and Dupre's essay on theodicy, and package #3.
Leibniz:
Distinguish
ontological proofs from objections to his existence. Leibniz: we can't argue decisively against
the existence of God. His strategy: the
objections such as the problem of evil are not decisively. Specific evils do not count decisively
against the existance of God, and are in fact necessary.
Freedom,
idea of God, and Evil are three themes on which Leibniz falls short.
As a
predicate can be deduced from its subject, the existence of God can be deduced
from his action. Freedom can be in the
decisions of created beings in spite of the fact that God has pre-visioned the
actual world. God's foreknowledge does
not interfere with freedom of the creatures.
God also pre-determines. This
does not mean that God necessitates the will, and thus takes away its
freedom. Dupre: this is anthropormorphic
of God, but it preserves freedom.
Determination for Liebniz is that the will is always inclined one way or
another; it is never neutral. All action
is determined by reasons. The fact that
God predetermines this does not take away from freedom. Liebniz wants to make salient the dependence
of the creature on God--we are contingent.
He wants to relate this to human freedom. Difficult.
If freedom is held to be absolute and determination is of external
efficient causality, freedom and contingency are mutually exclusive. Leibniz does not view determinativeness as
efficient, though he did see God's causal relation as external. Sixteenth century: creation was put in terms
not just of efficient causality but external and mechanistic. In nominalism, intrinsic dependence (of an
internal causality: God within). This
was attacked. Leibniz still has a notion
of final causality. Also, a causality
that is internal between the divine monad and others. The self as a source of creativity. A theory of expressiveness and
spontaneity--in this sense he is a
pre-Romanticist. Though Leibniz holds a
sense of predestination by the principle of sufficient reason. Freedom in that nothing determines human
action; divine decrees are nothing more to plan this world as the best. This is
not absolute necessity. God sees this
world actual as the best possible. God
chose it according to his nature.
The
question of God. Leibniz does not deny
the possibility of a world without evil, but it would necessarily not involve
freedom. Morally, God owes it to His
moral perfection to select the best of the worlds possible, even though not
onlogically. Maximize the good and
minimize the evil: a world in which the good exceeds the evil by a maximum
amount. Within these bounds is God's
choice. Since the world is intrinsically contingent, God is ontologically
free. Each creature's choice rests upon
a specific divine decision when the creature and its actual world were merely
possible. Dupre: like Spinoza, except
that he would say that the moral is the ontological. Leibniz's distinction from divine moral and
ontological natures comes out of nominalism and led to anthropomorphic
divinity. The intelligence of God lets
him see the possible worlds--this Leibniz distinguishes from God's
decision. Dupre: this distinction is
artificial. Robert Brown, 'God's Ability
to Will Moral Evil': God is free because freedom is a perfection. Brown assumes this to be the same as
voluntarism (a separation of God's intellect from his Will). Leibniz equates
choice with freedom (God's intellect is bounded; not his decision). Dupre: But
God could then will evil if He feels like it.
Brown admits this of God's ontological nature, but not morally. This is akin to Nominalism: there is no truth
but procedural truth. Leibniz accepted
some of the nominalist conceptual distinctions within God. This is in conflict with God as
absolute.
The
best possible world. No. 118: Leibniz,
based on his principles, speculates about God.
Such speculation of which man knows nothing about is that which Kant
reacted against. No. 119: the idea of a
God which first decides on principles, then considers alternatives and makes a
decision is too anthropormorphic (Dupre).
Dupre: also, there is not a best world.
That God is making something that will work out for the best neglects
the creature's autonomy. Leibniz's
notion of God-creature relation (free will and non-absolute necessity) is
incompatible with his idea of the best possible world. Dupre: at what point can it be said that
there is too much evil in the actual world (that chosen by God)? Leibniz does not address this. Dupre: look at all the evil in the world this
century alone. Guyer: but this is a
blink in time to God; also, Leibniz would say that the City of God is that much
larger because it this must be the best.
Dupre: the concept of the best possible world and God's moral necessity
to choose it is problematic. We need to
transcend the idea of God as Maker.
Speak religiously--of piety.
Robert Adams, for instance: Creation is a grace, so the creatures are of
no merit to God. Not using capitalist
terms of justice such as 'owes'. Dupre:
impossible that something could be best and contingent. Adams: the possibilities have no claim on
God.
Dupre.
Look to the Upanisads: God is pure consciousness. 'Outside of God' does not exist. An individuation process whereby the soul
develops. So we must go through the pain
of individuation--we could not develop were we sucked back to our source. Dupre's article on evil: three theses from
Augustine were translated by the rationalists in the eighteenth century. The notion of 'efficient cause' slips
in. Free-will and causality are mutually
exclusive. The good as an ideal preceding God. God's necessity to choose it.
God entirely outside his Creation.
Dupre: begin by accepting creation as it is (including its evil) as a
visible expresion of God's nature, rather than by dictating a priori what a
divine expression must be like. God's
decisions and rules--he is them.
Otherwise, anthropomorphic. The
crux of the problem is efficient causality.
That God is perfect means that He is good and self-sufficient. So we don't know what this all means. Creation is God's necessity itself; God is
totally self-sufficient acquiring no merit from His creatures. To assume that God 'decides', there is the
problem of free-will and necessitate. To
create means that God enables free creatures not only to choose but to
create. French existentialism: freedom
is not a matter of ratification of given values, but includes creativity. A constant purification of religion and morality. The bible, for instance,: a development of
morality; book of Judges would not make sense otherwise. We create our values through history. God's commandments as refined values of the
creatures. Leibniz neglects the creative autonomy of the creature. It was present in his philosophy of
monads.
Leibniz:
the transcendent and the immanent are harmonized in his theory of evil
anthropomorphically. Spinoza emphasizes
God's immanence. Deists emphasize God's
transcendence--a distant, non-intervening God.
No mystery in Leibniz. The Theology is about the principles that God had to
obey. So, about a closed transcendence.
4/2/97
During
the eighteenth century, the historical underpinnings of Christianity were being
shaken. Sola Scriptura of the late sixteenth century meant that the meaning
of the religion would have to be found in the text alone. Luther, for instance. For Calvin, a literalist reading is accompanied
by the action of the holy spirit working in the reader to know the one typological
pattern through both testaments. Luther,
in contrast, had a literalist interpretation only.
In
these sects, a three-fold structure that would hold. The Letter (the literal meaning of the text),
Meaning (in the letter or the intended meaning), and Reference(that which the
text is of). These were held to be
consistent. Spinoza, however, claimed
that the letter says one thing and means another (the Letter and Meaning are
not identical). Second, he distinguishes
between the intended Meaning and the Reference.
The question of truth is not that of meaning. So, the three stages of meaning were
separated. The mind is the cause of revelation
because it is divine. Only Christ
received revelation without the use of imagination in words or vision. Contrariwise, prophesy is merely a use of
imagination. A powerful impulse of the
imagination. But the prophets spoke the
language of their age, so tell us nothing new about God. Religion has no ideas of truth, but
representations (Hegel) only--historical meaning.
The
second stage. Eighteenth century biblical criticism was influenced by the
English deists. They held that the
intended meaning of a proposition is that which it refers to(the Reference). The historical facts in the bible are
questioned(Letter is still separate).
How can we claim that a historical fact would have a rational, universal
impact? For instance, what difference
would it make to my life were the accounted historical facts of Jesus' life
were proven? Precarious would be one's faith
were it dependent upon the factuality of a historical revelation. So historical revelation can never be the
basis for universal truth. For instance,
Anthony Collins had an extreme interpretation of what the problem is. He was a pure empiricist. Either the historical events happened or they
did not. Problematic is the purported
fulfillment of the Hebrew prophesies in the New Testament. Either the intended meaning and Reference are
true literally or not. Collins: they are
not. Dupre: but the prophesies were
fulfilled figuratively rather than literally.
Moreover, the truth of a proposition does not rest on its empirical
verification. Collins: literalist
empiricism. So he throws out the
intended Meaning of the bible.
Collins
had an impact. A tendency to see
empirical facts as referents. Locke is
the founder of such empiricism. He
concluded that Jesus is only the messiah.
This is a narrow goal. Christ
fulfilled the prophesies in this narrow role, satisfying empirical
verification. So Locke was dissappointed
with Collins.
As
against the English deists, the continent's Latitudinarians claimed that the
bible is of positive revelation not dependent or subject to reason. The emphasis should not be on the facts in an
empirical sense. Nothing could go
against reason (like Locke), but revelation could go beyond reason (against the
deists). The Neologians opened up the
Reference beyond empirical verification, so unlike the other two, they could
admit of miracles.
In
Germany, Wolff. He had trouble with
orthodoxy and pietism in Holland. The
relation between Meaning and Reference has a broader scope. In his Theory
of Truth, he claims that knowledge can be not only to historical facts, but
also to essences. German liberation from
the empiricism of the deists, though problematic to orthodoxy. Lessing was a direct disciple of Wolff:
christianity is a part of the gradual working out of the eternal. The Latitudinarians were close, but they
ended with reason, though admitting that they could go beyond it.
The
third stage: the rise of hermeneutics.
Frei: the narrowity of Meaning-Truth as empirical only takes away from
the narrative. Barth--one does not justify God; we must conform to God. So don't discard the narrative. Dupre: Frei
refuses historical questions, going with the narrative--but what does Frei do
with the narrative? Wolterstorff and
Dupre: nothing. Frei points to the
mediators (between the deists and orthodox) who sought to place the
Meaning-Reference within a human world.
Human categories, for instance.
Dupre: but unlike Frei, they let the human word be, rather than subject
it to reason or empiricism. Moreover, the narrative requires a human context,
which has the problems of empiricism and rationalism. Better is the mediating position that says
that these are words and leaves it at that.
Historical
criticism is not the same as hermeneutics.
Frei cites Semler on the difference.
In Germany, the bible was held to be deeply important. So the reading meant too the
application. Hermeneutics as to do with
the application to the persons. Semler:
know philology (Letter and Meaning), and take into account that the Meaning and
References may be different from the Letters, and lastly know how to appropriate
it as religiously important for the current person. Stauss: mythology is the obstacle to applying
the bible.
Lessing:
Reimarus,
of whom Lessing published and borrowed, held that Jesus was a Hebrew peasant on
whom his disciples made lies. His
daughter had become a friend of Lessing.
She brought him his writings. Lessing studied Wolff, and in so doing in
Holland he came into contact with radical theologians. Frei: understand Lessing in terms of drama:
one position against another. Lessing:
truth is in the struggle to get to it.
Lessing held to a German principle that the bible contains religion but
is not all religion.
Born
in 1729, he wrote as a young man on the study of art. He also wrote plays. Two kinds or art: verbal (expressive) and
plastic (subdued). This led him to a theory
of art as expression. He then published
fragments of Reimarus and then his own reactions. Don't identify Lessing's own ideas with those
of Reimarus. Lessing uses Reimarus' bent
on reason against the orthodox. Lessing:
it is not the teaching of Christ that revelation is necessary for salvation;
revelation is necessary for the education of the human species, however. See pp. 15-20 for Reimarus' views followed
respectively by Lessing's responses.
Goeze urged Lessing to translate the work into Latin. But Lessing wrote further: the bible contains
more than religion that has nothing to do with infallibility. Moreover, religion existed before the bible. Christianity was extant preceeding the
written gospels. So Lessing emphasizes
the religious value of the bible, and he is nevertheless relativising it. His hermeneutics: the Meaning is an ideal
Meaning, the reference of which doesn't matter; religion is the basic
intentionality of the project. He
nonetheiess included the study of the languages in his hermeneutic. The expression is secondary to the primary:
the Christian religion. What is this
religion? Dupre: a mix of rationalist
cult but with a pietism with a strong moral composition. In our pietism, we know what is true (from
within us) in the external expression.
So Lessing preserves truth in the bible, but he relegates it (to a mix
of rationalism and pietism).
On the Spirit and of Power. Fulfilled prophesies which I witness are one
thing, those that others of history have witnessed is another. The fulfillment of the Hebrew
prophesies--Lessing does not throw them out as Collins did, nor does he assume
them as the orthodox did. Dupre: if history is not safe and the bible is a
historical book, what is left? Can Christianity survive the shaking of its
historical revelation. Lessing: reason does not allow us to go far with
history. A miracle of the first century
is to be taken as being as reliable as other historical reports of that time. History is not accurate enough to build
on. Even if it were enough, accidental
historical fact has nothing to do with the truth of eternal reason. The gulf from the historical to the universal
is not bridged even if Jesus' miracles are proven.
4/9/97
Next
week: Inquiry, bks 10 and 11; Dialogues; extra--Natural History; Diderot (packet)--the fermentation is its own
cause (the world).
Richard
Simon, a contemporary of Spinoza, was a Roman sect priest. The distance between bible and revelation by
tradition. Dupre: Roman position at that time: scripture and tradition, as if
they are distinct. Protestant position: solo scriptura , as if one can have
revelation without interpretation.
Lessing:
Power and Spirit dealt with the
essential difference between a historical given and a necessary truth. Dupre: Lessing confuses two issues. that a historical fact could not be a
necessary truth meant that historical revelation is on a different level of
truth, being not necessary qua absolute. But are the two mutually exclusive? No.
Absolute truth can not help to be mediated through history for
mankind. Lessing goes on to conflate
this distinction with his view that historical 'fact' is inherently
relativistic, so one can't really rely on historical accounts. Hiedeggar and Gadamer: truth is itself
historical.
Lessing's
Education of the Human Race. He was a deist at that time. So he would not allow for a positive religion
(divine intervention after the beginnig).
Voltare went to pure rationalism. Lessing, in contrast, claims that
positive religion is indispensible as facilitators of the human race to
rationality and rational religion. So
history does make sense. The article was
written against bishop Warberton who had claimed that all the truths of the
Hebrew scripture are eternal truth. He
fits the Hebrew bible into his deistic rationalism. His premise: everything of the bible was
there from the beginning: everything was there in its eternal form. An attempt to justify history such that it
denies deism.
Lessing
opposed the deists in showing a place for the text of the bible: education into
the religion of reason. That it is of
reason is in opposition to orthodoxy.
Hegel: philosophy can't exist without historical religion. But Lessing claims that revelation gives
nothing to the human race that it does not already have in itself. Thus, the positive historical religions are
not necessary for mankind to get to rational religion, the perfect
religion. But there is no guarentee that
Natural religion would get us there.
Lessing: reason is necessary because the revelation given at the
beginning has been lost (#6).
Deist
view of history: progress/development, which can't be undone. Ambigious, however, on what happened at the
beginning of history. In contrast,
Rousseau claimed that the first state was good, but that we can't get back to
it (so we must use a social contract to go further up the development
trajectory).
Lessing:
the contribution of Judaism is creation and the oneness of God. Christianity is a progressive development on
the way to the religion of reason. It
introduced the idea of the immortality of the soul.
In Nathan, Lessing selects the three
monotheist religions as having promise for rationality. All these religions are really one. They are fulfilling some purpose, having
contributed something (in Education).
Though
Lessing admits of the historical limitations of a given religion (Education, #23). Dupre: some historical elements of a religion
are limited to their time. Lessing
points out this problem with history.
Hume:
A
sophisticated writer. Dupre: he was an
agnostic--too much the skeptic to be an atheist. In Hume is the transition from deism to
atheism. He takes Natural Religion to be
based on the scholastic arguments for the existence of God, as well as the late
seventeenth-century arguments (not rationalist). He takes out any ontological argument. Is he writing against arguments (the power of
Natural Religion) or religion itself.
That he refers positively to faith, he is going after the deistic
arguments. Since Clarke (friend of
Newton), a distinction between the natural and moral attributes of God. Leibniz distinguished God's natural and moral
attributes.
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion involves a speculative critique on Natural
Religion (attacking the use of arguments). Second, he undermines positive
revelation (revealed religion) by showing how slippery faith is. Sec. 10--on
miracles in Inquiry, and the appendix
against immortality in Dialogues. He
also attacks the practical aspect of religion (e.g. keeping people in line
morally). In The Natural History Religion, he claims that an emotional religion
is the lowest kind, beginning and ending in fear.
The
first part of Dialogues: does the
world require a designer? A critical
discussion of the empiricism of the eighteenth century. In sec.s 10 and 11, he explains evil in the
world (Hume at his best). You can't make an argument on the goodness of God due
to the evil in the world. This is not to
say that God is not good. Sec. 12--Philo
has debunked the arguments and he says we need faith.
Philo
does not question the existence of a supreme designer. In section 2, he questions the
anthropomorphism involved in arguments in Natural Religion that there is a
designer. Causality being what it is,
the nature of the cause can't be assumed from the nature of the effect. That nothing exists without a cause means
that God exists as first cause. He is
attacking the deist/christian view of God as benevolent and designer. Section three: where is the book behind
nature? Philo attacks the view that one
can make an argument on that.
Dupre:
not all people have a religious sensitivity/perception.
Section
four: Diantes takes a mystical (god is beyond) and rationalist (a priori
argument needed) stance. If you decide
to place justification beyond the world, is there any end to it, Hume
asks? How far will the super-designer
argument get one to the real god? How
much of a designer is required for Natural Theology? Why go outside the world for the
justification of the world? Hume
criticizes the move to explain intelligibility by going to that which one takes
as unintelligible. Dupre: to say that
faith should have a justification is not to prove God's existence. One's faith can be self-justifying, for
instance. The religious
experience. An argument based on an
experience is no rationalist argument.
That a religious person will admit that their faith does not make sense
suggests that the justification is not in arguments.
Section
five: the consequences of analogy. What
does God look like if you make the cause like the effect? The world is finite, so that God is infinite
can not be supported by this kind of argument.
The weakness of an argument that deduces the nature of the cause on the
basis of the nature of the effect.
Dupre: a flaw in Hume here.
Causality of Plato, Aristotle and Aquinus was not the narrow efficient
causation that Hume and his world had.
This narrowness inhibits analogy: all causality is taken to be linear.
Section
seven: is it true that order in the
world needs a designer? Is it not
possible that order comes from this order?
The thesis of Prigogine (1980's): there is order from this order. Chaos theory: order in disorder. Dupre: Philo's argument that world order
could emerge from chance.
Section
nine: the issue is whether a priori
argument of causality eliminates the doubt in the empirical arguments which
Philo attacked in sections 1-8.
Section
ten: Philo argees that designer exists,
but not necessarily a good or benevolent one.
If the nature of the cause comes from that of the effect, the designer
argument must admit of evil. Philo: and
how can you measure relative good and evil in the world? To say that the world must be good or the
best possible is not warranted from an argument for the existence of God. Persupposing what you want to prove. A possible compatibility is not a real
one. Given the evil in the world,
perhaps God is limited.
Section
eleven: Any transcendent being must be
able to do better that this world. Dupre:
but this implies that Philo has made a measurement of relative good and
evil. But Philo is trying to get across
the possibility that the world justifies itself.
4/23/97
Readings:
ch.s 4 and 5 in Buckley, and Dupre's essay in the packet.
Hume:
On
the Dialogues: Four parts. First, ch.s 2-3: argument from analogy by
Cleanthes on the British empirical method (from design--from Butler). Second, Philo's refutation. Third, ch. 9: Philo goes against the apriori
argument that whatever exists must have a cause. Fourth, ch.s 10-11: Philo has conceded that
there exists a transcendent cause, but there is no basis for saying that it is
benevolent. Deism, basing its idea of
knowing God by reason alone, thus is not warranted in positing goodness onto
God by argument(by reason). Dupre: faith
and experience are necessary. In the
conclusion, Philo concedes everything.
Ch.s
7-8: Philo asks why put God outside the world rather in it. Taking God as transcendent, is the cosmos a
machine or a divine soul? Is a transcendent
cause needed to account for order in the cosmos. Aquinus: reason alone can't rule out an
infinity of time. That a world of
infinite time could order itself is not surprising. Philo: links order to a designing thought
rather than to an overly athropomorphic view of nature. Why would a chaos of formless agitated matter
have form emerge? Polanyi: order in
random. So no need for an intelligent
being to coordinate the world. For Hume,
the question is whether rational explanation can be used to show God as within
the cosmos or outside of it. Cleanthes:
absurd to demonstrate a matter of fact (God) by arguments apriori. Principle of empiricism: elementarism
(atomism)--anything of which can be conceived clearly can exist. Kant: existence is not a predicate. An ontological argument is the problem. Hume: anything of existence is contingent.
Existence is contingent, so a necessary being is not possible in the world
(must be transcendent).
Part
4: Assuming a transcendent cause to reality is not necessarily to take it to be
benevolent. Evil in the world does not
preclude the existence of a benevolent god.
Rather, Hume/Philo claims that from the world as it is a rational proof
can't be given that God is good.
Deism
is the target of Hume. Deism speaks of a
rational god but aims for a good Christian God.
Hypocricy. Hume attacks revealed
religion (miracles). Third attack is on
religious feeling (Natural History).
Ch.
12: Philo defends the analogy of
nature. The differences between cause
and effect are not decisive--but he had just argued that it is. Key: a proportional analogy-- the analogy
can't be extended beyond human intelligence.
Dupre: but this is open-ended.
Hume has rebutted the content of the rational religion, then admits that
rational religion is the best.
Superstition is out.
On
Christianity, Inquiry, ch.10: on
miracles. two rules. Two kinds of evidence, the weaker of which(historical
witnesses) can't throw out the stronger(sense evidence). Lessing's argument against historical
evidence. Secondly, anything going
against the laws of nature can be admitted only if the falseness of its
testimony would be more miraculous than its truth. Miracle as an exception to natural laws. Dupre: but our knowledge of natural laws is
changing. Qantum mechanics. What is a miracle? Is it necessarily a violation of natural
law? A miracle is a sign, so an
extraordinary affair which takes on a new meaning. The real problem with miracles for Hume: a
religion can't be proved by miracles. Dupre: because a miracle presupposed the
religion. All we can say is that a
miracle is that which is not known within natural law. Dupre: the issue is not violations of natural
laws as Hume thinks.
Inquiry, ch. 11: on the immortality of
the soul. At the end of Dialogues. Divine revelation is necessary.
Religious
feelings was a popular basis for religion, especially as it contributes to
morality. The promise of
immortality.
The
idea of a natural history of religion implies a basis in the order of
nature. What led humans to
relgiousity? Hobbes: an immenant origin
of religion in nature. Both: the seed of
religion is in the fear of the unknown.
Hume stresses the pathology of the religious passion. Fear is a primary passion; religion is
not. So religious feeling is
changable. And so religion, of fear and
imagination, is not to be trusted.
Religion is a complex construction of primary fear. The first religious principle may be
perverted by the primary passions.
Religion is not universal.
Religion carries no warrant for its own truth and morality. The passion of fear distorts perception and
interpretation of reality. There is
nothing to the content. Two kinds of
religion to Hume: primative and rational.
Polytheism to monotheism: one's own god becomes the supreme god. Our god is the best one. Henotheism(a supreme god above other
gods). Hegel classifies deism with
polytheism of ancient times: both have no practical impact.
Diderot:
Just
earlier than Hume. Diderot was devout
early on. But he asked why there are so
many unbelievers. Due to
passions/superstition in the religion.
Diderot criticizes Descartes' dualism (thinking thing and
extension). Diderot wants to bring the
two together. Newton had predicted that the dualism would
lead to atheism; the physical and mental should be unified.
Diderot:
mental elements in the body in animals, plants, and matter. All are organic. What is the function of God in Descarte--to
get the cosmos going. Diderot: matter
itself has an orientation, without a beginning (Hume). Would God be necessary? The causality problem would be solved. Philosophical
Thoughts, 1748. The argument becomes
independent from the existence of God.
Autonomous self-sufficient matter.
In Letter to the Blind, Diderot uses a
blind man to refute the design argument.
Feeling his own body does not suggest an intelligent author. Less so does seeing the beauty and order of
nature. Suppose the world is ordered,
where does it come from? Argument of
organic matter. Constant agitation of
matter gave rise to order. The order is not so perfect. The blind man does not
have eyes. For something to endure, it must have order. Order originates through combining
conglomerations of matter. Darwin 's survival of the
fittest: those best able to resist contrary forces.
[1]Physical
atoms have form and extension (occupy space), and so are not real (not monads).
[2]God
as Architect satisfies in all respects God as Lawgiver. ph. 89.
